• last year
The CEO of the nation's most widely known doorbell company shares his lessons and perspective from his entrepreneurial journey that led him to sell his company to Amazon for more than $1 billion.
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 What's your mantra on running a lean ship?
00:18 I am curious about that.
00:19 I love discipline.
00:21 I think every time you give up a little bit of discipline,
00:26 you never get it back.
00:28 They're one-way doors.
00:29 Every time you just add a little something,
00:31 it's impossible to get it back.
00:33 And we're like goldfish.
00:35 If you know that goldfish grow to the size of the tank,
00:38 no matter how big you build that tank,
00:40 the goldfish will always grow to it.
00:41 So the more team you have, the more busy they will be.
00:46 And so it's very hard to figure out--
00:49 when you try to, at a time like now,
00:51 when people are looking at, are we efficient,
00:54 go and poll all of the people working with you.
00:56 They're all busy.
00:57 And by the way, they're legitimately busy.
01:00 The question is, is that producing
01:02 what you need as the output for the business?
01:04 And it goes very hard.
01:05 So to me, I would try to stay as disciplined as you can,
01:09 as long as you can.
01:10 And it is, I'd say, a muscle we have not
01:13 been good at the last 10 years, because money was kind of free.
01:17 And so it was kind of like, get revenue,
01:20 raise $100 million at a $50 billion valuation.
01:23 And now all of a sudden, the VC is like-- which is funny.
01:26 The same VC is like, get profit, whatever, get rid
01:31 of your office.
01:32 But they used to be only focused on your top line.
01:35 But now it's like, all the lines matter.
01:38 But I wanted to bring that up, because when
01:44 we're talking about exits and strategic partnerships
01:48 in today's day and age, margins matter.
01:52 Positive EBITDA matters.
01:54 It kind of always did.
01:55 I think we went through--
01:56 I think it did, too.
01:57 And I think we went through a weird time where it didn't.
02:01 But I always love the saying that the market
02:06 in the short terms of voting machine, the long term
02:08 it's a weighing machine.
02:10 I always say, a good business always has value,
02:13 in any market.
02:14 So right now, people are like, oh, the markets are so bad.
02:17 It's like, just build your business.
02:19 There's still trillions of dollars trading.
02:22 There's still trillions of dollars of--
02:25 all these products.
02:26 Like GDP, don't like, oh, it only grew by 3%.
02:29 That matters to you when you're doing a million-- no.
02:32 It doesn't.
02:32 Like, build a great business.
02:34 There will always be an investor for a great business.
02:36 There will always be an exit for a great business.
02:39 Again, the valuation last year might have been 10x.
02:42 But you can still build a great business in any market.
02:45 And in fact, I'd say the next three years, what people
02:48 will do in the next three years, we'll
02:50 build the most wealth in 20 years.
02:52 So in 20 years, we'll look back, and this
02:54 will be the-- like, this three-year period or four-year
02:57 period will be when the most of that base wealth was built.