Gadgetory

okay we are live hello internet and humans that are watching this welcome to another awesome Google+ hangout where we talk about small empires and we're joined with or joined by Alexis Ohanian who is the co-founder of Reddit and the host of the show small empires along with Steven Greenwood and Kirk Larson who I've introduced many times they are the people that make the show happen six times only six only six sorry but this is season two so yeah anyway so this week for those that have seen the episode small Empire went to August which makes a smartlock which was also designed by behar who is a super awesome well-known designer guys if you want to talk about the episode or you know sort of say what say how it went that kind of thing because we are not we don't have anyone from the company today unfortunately but we do have the people that made the effort yes we'll be fielding questions with hashtags bonfires on Twitter to get ads so now I'm in New York in a Burton Verge's office and they are out somewhere in the discrete locations if anybody can figure it out where was that bonus points so talk about talk about August smartlock after you showed that grilled cheese into your face so so basically you know we kind of had some trepidation about doing an episode about certainly I didn't want to do it it was too obviously for us right we thought that the season is about showcasing communities that aren't commonly maybe known by a lot of people for startups and so we we were hesitant to go to San Francisco but at the same time we really wanted to do a company that in a space that we had income and hardware was one of those things that a lot of people have been asking us and we'd be talking about doing for a long time so we found a great hardware company bargain august smart law and there was like two years old now less than that yeah I think around here and change there at August itself had really what employees do they have tiny in downtown San Francisco right next to be soft I actually showed screenshots of those Assassin's Creed glitches to the windows of hoop you saw what was really cool is and we discovered August they have a unique story because a guy who has started a couple companies and kind of been through the wringer on a software side had some success at some other ones that maybe weren't as successful decided that he wanted to get into hardware to solve a problem personally that's a loud car horn sorry and basically he went out and take it up with yves behar as a co-founder to come together and both share the equity of his company that they would set out to launch together and that was about that how that happened cuz you know you've got to be sort of someone to walk up to a designer of that caliber and say hey designed my product for me but Jason actually he was the CEO of a couple of really successful companies okay you come with the money from what if it's like one of the sales would have two companies to start a thing called founders row oh I didn't see that tonight oh yeah kind of like just like a place for founders of like startups to hang out and so he pitched the idea for August inside a founders row and a bunch of people were like hey that's cool and he was like yeah let's do it together so even was part of founders row party founders row but he's sort of he got the momentum from the founders row thing and he and he had really hit it off at a previous conference and so they just got talking when Jason was like Jason basic and Eva was like I want to fix keys in somehow and he was like all right let's do it Aysen already had the backing or at least the support of the other quote the founder throw what's uh Rhonda Ryan Manning edited part of this episode do you guys know the story that I'm about to tell Stephen have you heard what he said so right before he sits down to edit he has all the footage ready to go and he says he gets a call from his girlfriend that she was locked out of their apartment home letter in the apartment comes back to the office starts editing the video what the hell is this yeah incidental really really crazy that that happened so but I think the the problems that they're trying to solve a pretty interesting because they a lot of what they were talking about is that you know people might need to let other people into their home for a certain window of time right so maybe have a dive lock or you have a house cleaner or a friend just needs to come and stop and get something you can schedule that in certain windows with certain people and create accounts they have access to your place so what happens if your phone is dead that's the first question that came to mind I'm sure they've addressed it but I don't know the answer but their answer is basically have user use your key I mean honestly what they said was like you could go to you could either walk through an extra neighbor and have them download August's and you can put your access code in or find a charge somewhere or keep your key because you can still it doesn't change the lock on the front of the door so you can that thing opens that like metal case opens oh that metal case is on the inside of the house and the friend just looks like a normal log so people people walk down the street don't know that you haven't expensive piece of technology I see I see but it's like if you're gonna make the you know transition to go keyless then you don't want to carry your keys right yeah I know but they I mean frankly the answer is news sorry I used which is I like I can't imagine what another answer would be you know like yeah sorry oops notice our box there's a battery on the thing and you can pop a charge from it but that would be minutes though or if you could get like an external NFC sticker to put on your thumb it didn't require power yeah yeah that would be like a fail-safe so we you guys mentioned this New York Times article that recently came out I mean we're talking about the company as a whole talking about that article I mean their article is basically this is really cool this is a really cool product but it it's just like the first version of this product and so like kind of like what the episode was all about hardware is really hard and I think it's like the first iPhone kind of stuck you know anything like it was cool and it's the cool step but it's not quite right and they actually spent a lot of time kind of going back from scratch after they initially started designing the block because they realized that it needed to be universally used to be able to fit over every type of door lock that's out there and originally they were just gonna I think there are their approach was that they were going to have something that you install instead of your existing right you realize that that was too there was too much friction there and too many people that wouldn't be able to install that in their door so it had to be something that goes on top so like that was that was one of the big problems that they solved in their first run-through and I think they did a pretty good job of that and obviously found a lot of good partners to manufacture in the actual hardware in what was he saying about the motor oh yeah the motor is always like it's gonna match it's like resize this medical device it's for like cutting through bone you know well yeah yeah to be both precise and powerful but in the case the August lock it's turning about yeah but and there's like a 100-room yeah it has right cuz well that was an interesting it's an engineering problem because every door is different right right depending on words it is depending on the temperature the last block the last time you adjust any doors can be adjusted yeah who knew so so it's like it's superficially I think the kind of idea that easy like the New York Times article is pretty snarky you almost certainly don't need that unless you run a boarding house or bordello you almost certainly don't need a digital smart lock to your front door nor do you find God yeah it's like he's reportable they're durable they're cheap to replace and everyone understands how to use them Yankees yeah it was there are certain points that are true like personally like the amount of times that I have someone coming in and announced is twice a year so like I have like right and I run a youth hostel out of my apartment takes equity stakes and exchange founders this plan eight idea I I think it'll be really interesting to see five years from now if this I think it's the kind of product that either really really succeeds or really really doesn't I think I personally think that as like batteries and Bluetooth get better this should it feels like more different like this should be out yeah if I feels like yeah it's just like my battery on my phone dies in four hours so I would never I could do it right up and are there more competitors like there are other people that are doing this smart thing right there August is sort of the most beautiful and it seems like the most design said that usually they're definitely going to nest a lot about the nastic said that you know II had you talked I mean I think I think that the device is really cool it feels really nice yeah it looks like just a thick nest yeah yeah basically so yeah we're at that point with smart home where I think a lot of people are still trying to figure out what is going to catch what is just unnecessary yeah point where like we can start putting chips into everything right we can make everything connected right yeah right but it's interesting that you mention NFC before because the new iPhones and plenty of Android phones have NFC in it already so you know what right so does this company make money are they selling units what's the deal they've sold a good group units I mean we obviously they're privately owned took right there it seems like they're in Apple stores no gentleman was to get featured in welcome to online and retail stores now yeah and I know that they're they're definitely working hard to keep up sounds like okay I don't think I mean hardware is hard right that's like the whole fun yeah that was the pun to manage expectations for your consumers that would be the biggest one and we see you know one of the seminal huge hardware for your campaigns went through ICS pebble and though they did end up shipping it was the biggest chick starter to date at that point though they did end up shipping lane I think by and large they're you know customers were we're very happy with the product we're now entering a weird space where like you know me saw that you've got you've got things like the Smart Watch which require a ton of good software in a good hardware then you also see things like what was that cooler called which is the new most popular Kickstarter the coolest cooler it's a cooler with like a Bluetooth speaker and a blender yes okay and this cooler campaign a year ago failed miserably didn't hit its goal came up with a much better video Luke and blow away started 13 million dollars and they asked for 50 grand yeah actually the idea of having a good video influence your company is being then will arise later in the season but so so I think we're a really cheating point we're like we'll see companies like pebble very early-stage very ambitious founders who want to invent the SmartWatch and create it and you're able to create a new market then you see others like no offense to the cooler company for like I mean they want to make these are all solved problems yes they're just putting them all together right what people love it I don't regret them for their success so you know we're seeing this whole range and and August is somewhere in the middle here and for anyone aspiring to do this kind of a hardware of making this company it's beautifully it's a really seductive time right you can make an amazing video raise hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars but still need to deliver on it right and then they have nothing to show if you don't deliver a product bottom is not Kickstarter is easy money for you yeah land like and I think we're gonna see over the next couple years we're gonna stew the haul out of some campaigns doing extremely well and satisfying and some failing miserably and I don't think I you know again of the day it is buyer beware it's often not much taken on just the world it is how things go it's just now the hype cycle is built and it's great but it's built ahead of time before you'd necessarily demonstrated you can build it right and I'm invested in hardware companies that failed miserably I invested in a precursor to the jawbone called wake mate which was really ambitious really cool but failed miserably because they didn't get the hardware right and they didn't spend enough time doing the diligence overseas and they were just recent college kids who can can do it it's just a lot easier when you're only dealing with software because your failure points are a sight crashing right there not being catching on fire or someone getting injured or so that yeah I mean it's it was a little responsibility right yeah even just money-wise they cost a lot of money just to make this job well like this you're that company you're just talking about didn't have a cool Kickstarter video north of where they on Kickstarter where they know it was before Kickstarter oh wow oh that's super ambitious then they did a traditional I mean they were ahead of the game it's just you know timing is a lot of stuff but the good news is as more companies are doing it they're gonna create blueprints for other companies more people that do this the more examples and yeah yeah like Eric midget cops key for instance the founder of pebble he's he's on the rolodex for anyone who has successful like hard Hardware campaign that they run because they're you know third they'll do anything to get twenty minutes just to pick a spray so we can tell them don't use this vendor use this vendor don't do this don't do that and that knowledge is being spread now so that's that you know everyone stands on the shoulders of giants so that is gonna help but you really you know hard what hardware is hard and I think that it's hard oval punch no I guess it's just that as Jonah grommet yeah I but it is hard right hard it's hard you can't really say it software soft because that's not true at all yeah yeah it's a Alexis all right you guys want to dude this is not a plan this is literally a hangout everyone watching right now and I seen will be a quiz 1 throwback yeah yeah they've got a business right there printed X yeah into money okay so how did you find out subscribe to the person YouTube people ass the verge this is terrible did you know who alexis was before the show what like what we have what we're gonna do we're about to find out damn what should we want to see what so this got leaked out a couple days ago a bunch is gonna really hurt okay bunch of high schoolers have a facebook called high school hackers they're all their developers they all you know they go to hack together maybe it was college I don't know regardless a bunch of students posted up the internship offers they were getting from oh yes I would be monthly internships from all the tech companies you could think over the Facebook the Google is everything I believe how much you could pay it for a month a lot yeah seventy five to eight thousand thirty five hundred eight thousand dollars plus I was yes as if you tap as an interest so like I can't stress I can't stress this enough learn to code yeah the co-founder is telling you to learn to code yeah Korra's 8250 pincher 7,500 Dropbox 8.5 Google is only coming in at 7 but they do include a house stipend to provide moving please yeah you know my internship not literally zero dollars not even one dollar that I think yeah so again learn to code okay buddy he's there I know we're actually doing this hangout talking about a hardware company and why it's even harder than affiliate when you walk up to your door yeah pretty dope but I really yeah so I'm gonna state I didn't drop out I was too cowardly both Steve Steve both better degrees before starting yeah almost to the day you sold reddit I ready wait what you you sold you sold reddit like right after you graduated college like within the first year is like a hundred days or something year and a half later a whole year only a year and a half it's good so stay in school build something awesome while you're in school and then sell it and under yeah yeah or just run it for the rest of your life just hang out and enjoy working on a cool team sure that's the best part honestly I think the the fact that you get to choose who you work with is so rare and I had enough jobs growing up working for people and with people who like didn't respect keep it real I'm sorry no ya know who you are like that's that's the biggest gift that I feel like right I think that's why reddit sort of grewed but it was right because like you and Steve effectively our reddit like it is a product is your child and that just you know you guys are good you guys are good people and the product is humongous that's for sure you guys should do you guys should do make him spit ballin out the verge should do a series this might be two other weeks you might hate this but like of like profiling all these engineers in tech because all of the CEOs get all the face time but all the engineers are the ones I know it's like who is actually building the product the CEO is just like 15 dudes in this really dark little zone yeah but uh ya know I really hope it inspires folks to do cool so you gotta go do it now and then or season season 7 season seven ish yeah no I mean can't we just tell give it away for the for the people that are watching this or do you guys not want to do that alright people watching it's gonna be our biggest company that we covered the Seas their value is four point seven billion dollars and inquired and they let you do some creepy when your neighbor's house their Zilla and I just so load this restaurant dad and the realistic look how much anyhow spots they recently acquire Trulia right but yeah so that'll be episode nine weeks yeah we're not going to tell you oh man if you follow me on instagram though you already know an episode eight building hike it's good we got some interviews to do thanks for joining everyone we'll see you next week the next show go offline pyre subscribe to the verge on YouTube all that good stuff peace