On IT Visionaries, we talk a lot about security, but we mostly talk about cybersecurity and making sure that your networks are protected from cyber criminals. We don’t really talk about in-the-flesh criminals and how technology is helping to keep them out of your home.

But what is the value of home security? Is it being able to constantly check your front door to see if a package has arrived? Is it the calmness that comes with being notified that there’s movement in your driveway? Or is it simply the piece of mind that you get when you know that if something goes wrong, you’ll know it? 

In 2014, Ring did something no other company else had done: andit gave homeowners a sense of security by providing a 24/7 view of their front door… 

“[We ] had a mission around how to create a better layer of security for people to always be home. Our slogan is always home. What that did was allow people to either answer the door comfortably from their phone, whether they actually wanted to go to the door, or if you weren't home, at least give the perception that you were home and the doorbell was really an amazing product to start with.

Over the last seven years, Ring has built a businessan business empire fromoff of not just doorbells, tobut an entire smart home that is accessible to everyday homeowners. Josh Roth is the CTO at Ring, and it's his responsibility to build an ecosystem that gives those homeowners some piece of mind. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Josh discusses how Ring went from a start-up trying to find product-market fit, to an Amazon acquisition thatacquisition  billion-dollar company that now sells hundreds of thousands of security and smart devices every month.Enjoy! 
 

Main Takeaways

• More Than A Doorbell: You products need to be able to make that initial connection with consumers, but your products and services must consistently remind the user why your technology is different from other products. For example, while a video doorbell was unique and gave users access to their home they didn’t have before, it was the software within the product and the Ring ecosystem which led to different consumer touchpoints and as a result added additional value.
• Letting Your Engineers Grow: Software engineers need the ability to explore new things, and they also need the freedom to fail. Your management style should cater to both those realities. And when you’re managing a group of engineers, it’s helpful to think about the product from their perspective, and also allow them to design and develop with as little friction as possible. When engineers feel as if they have more liberty, their creativity and innovation can break through.
• Customers Driving Innovation: Regardless of the size of your organization, you need to consistently be listening to your customers in order to drive innovation. Don’t just listen to your customer service team, especially when you are in the early stages of designing a product and customer feedback can make or break you. And when customers do come to you with problems, don’t pass them off, solve them yourself because if you can solve one problem for a single customer, you can solve that same problem for thousands.

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