Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff
Courtesy of Ring | Brandon Friend-Solis
In 2023, Jamie Siminoff called up Amazon‘s former devices boss, Dave Limp, to say he was stepping down from leading the video doorbell company he sold to the e-commerce giant for $839 million in 2018.
Siminoff, who started Ring in 2013, said Limp and Amazon offered him the opportunity to work elsewhere at the company, but he declined.
“I said, ‘I think I have to leave,'” Siminoff recalled in an interview on Friday. “I don’t think I can be half in. I’m either all in or I’m all out.”
He wasn’t gone for long.
In April, Siminoff announced his return to Ring, replacing Liz Hamren, a former Microsoft and Discord executive whom Amazon had hired to succeed him. Now that he’s back at the helm, Siminoff says he’s restoring Ring’s original mission, to “make neighborhoods safer.”
And now his team has even more artificial intelligence technology at its disposal to supercharge those efforts.
Siminoff took the stage Tuesday at Amazon’s annual hardware event in New York to debut new Ring cameras, along with a feature called Search Party that uses AI to identify potential matches in camera footage. It’s aimed at “reuniting lost dogs” with their families, but Siminoff said there could be other applications in the future.
During Hamren’s two-year tenure, Ring moved to adopt a softer, more whimsical image marked by silly videos of backyard animal encounters and family-friendly hijinks. It also removed a tool widely criticized by civil liberties and privacy advocates that let police request doorbell footage from users in its neighborhood watch app.
Siminoff, 48, said Ring’s cameras have many uses, including keeping an eye on pets and loved ones. Siminoff is based in Los Angeles and has two dogs, a Belgian Malinois and a Chihuahua.
“I’m focused on: How can I get the highest density of camera coverage in a neighborhood matched with AI to make neighborhoods safer?” he said. “It’s not just hard crime.”
Ring is part of Amazon’s vast devices and services division, which is overseen by Panos Panay, a former Microsoft hardware leader who joined the company in 2023. Beyond Ring, the unit spans Amazon’s Zoox robotaxis, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices and Kuiper, the company’s internet satellite service.
Ring’s security cameras typically start at $50 and range in price depending on coverage. Users can also pay up to $20 a month for its subscription service that lets them continuously record and access more cloud storage, among other features.
‘It was terrible’
Siminoff said a personal encounter with violence played a part in his return.
Several months earlier, Siminoff said he witnessed a shooting at a laundromat in South Central Los Angeles that left him feeling shaken.
“It was terrible,” Siminoff said through tears. “Kids are crying, it’s a whole f****** scene.”
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff unsuccessfully pitched his company on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2013 before returning to the show as a guest judge.
Eric McCandless | Contributor | Getty Images
The incident reaffirmed his belief in Ring’s mission and its potential to aid law enforcement officers when they “don’t have time to go door to door,” he said.
Those relationships with police have been controversial over the years.
Amazon claimed a Los Angeles Police Department pilot program in 2015 found that Ring’s doorbells reduced burglaries in neighborhoods “by as much as 55%,” according to a 2018 release. But reports from several outlets have disputed whether Ring cameras lead to a decrease in crime.
Privacy advocates have expressed concern that the company’s cameras and accompanying Neighbors app have heightened the risk of racial profiling and turned residents into informants, with few guardrails around how law enforcement can use the material.
Siminoff, who said he’s “pro public safety” and “backs the blue,” said he felt some of the coverage of Ring’s video-request feature for police was unfair or inaccurate.
“That’s the stuff that irks me,” Siminoff said, referring to the claim that Ring gives camera access to police.
“We allow them to request footage from people in a super privacy centric, anonymous way that keeps their privacy. But that’s not a good headline,” he added.
A few weeks after Siminoff’s return, Ring reintroduced its community request tool through a partnership with Axon Enterprise, the maker of Tasers and police body cameras. Police can solicit footage from Ring cameras through Axon’s online evidence management system, and users can choose whether or not to share it.
“I don’t think we should be working directly with police,” Siminoff said. “It’s not the business we’re in in any way.”
Siminoff said Ring, which is profitable, is exploring other potential growth areas, such as security solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses.
Ring isn’t currently exploring offering up its tech to a more homegrown customer — its sprawling parent company. At least when it comes to sticking its cameras in Amazon delivery vans or warehouses.
Siminoff has considered it, but “then you realize it’s just a distraction,” he said. “Amazon’s so big you could probably do something for everything.”
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