The Man Who Changed Policing In America - EP 33 Rick Smith

**Rick Smith** (0:00)
How much electricity does it take to incapacitate someone? And I'll tell you, nobody knew the answer, because who, like, why would somebody ever do that? And so we went, we did the basic science work, got a bunch of patents around it, and then launched, well, when I say a bunch, one, initially, and then launched the M26 Taser with zero money left in the bank in December of 1999 And its whole promise was simply that we could lock up the musculature of even the toughest, most focused people, even if they're on methamphetamines or PCP, and it worked. And just the fact that we delivered on the core problem that we promised to solve ultimately made the company quite successful.

**Ashlee Vance** (0:56)
Rick Smith, co-founder and CEO of Axon, thank you for joining us.

**Rick Smith** (1:01)
Thanks for having me here.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:02)
Appreciate having you here. Obviously, we're gonna get into your life and all that Axon does, but I was gonna start this in a slightly different place than usual, which is that there's a guy named Glenn Kelman. He is the CEO of Redfin, although I guess I think they got acquired. So anyway, he started Redfin. He's a long time friend of mine. He is unique, I would say, among execs that I know in the sense that he has really good journalistic instincts and he sends me story ideas from time to time.
And I don't want to disparage tech execs and CEOs, but they don't always have a sense for like what appeals to a journalist, but he really, he has a good nose for what journalists are into and what I'm into. And a couple of years ago, he sent me this note. And he's like, you got to talk to Rick Smith. He's your kind of story. I'm going to embarrass him and possibly you. I don't think so, but I'll read the description.

**Rick Smith** (2:03)
You embarrass me, you win the stuff there.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:05)
I'll read the description that he said. He said, Rick's someone who's a little bit crazy and totally sane at the same time and compulsively interesting and unpolygetically himself and important to our society. So that was all pretty good.
And then I thought I'd read some of this because it gives a little bit of your background. He said, you've been working on this company, done nothing else in your professional life since graduating from Harvard 30 plus years ago. Your goal is to replace the gun with the Taser in order to save lives. He's the one who put body cameras on just about every police officer in America, which we'll get into. He's been Taser'd himself eight times. Eight?

**Rick Smith** (2:45)
Eight times now, yep.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:46)
Eight times, okay.
He noted, you guys have some critics, but he said, you've done seven AMAs on Reddit to try to address things head on. I was reading a couple of those last night. Then I won't believe where there's too much more, but he said, it's a miracle his company even exists. The maker of a Taser is always going to get sued. Early in the company's history, when his insurer wanted him to settle a claim for $1.5 million, he got the insurer to pay him $1.45 million, and then fought the plaintiffs all the way through the trial and won. Anyway, he paints this picture of you as this man possessed by this quest, and who's gone to great lengths to see all this through. I feel like from my reading last night, that checks out.

**Rick Smith** (3:35)
Well, thank you. That's kind. I do have to say, the thing that stands out to me about Glenn, I only met him on that one trip. He is one of the kindest human beings I've ever met, and there's this sort of image that to be a successful CEO, you have to be a bit of an asshole. And he is the proof that that theorem is wrong, because he's been successful and just a super, super nice human.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:56)
He really is. He really is. He's always been good to me. I don't know how he is to his employees, but he's nice to me. I think he's probably a good guy.

**Rick Smith** (4:03)
He may have fooled me, but as far as I can tell, he's an amazingly nice guy.

**Ashlee Vance** (4:06)
Yeah. Well, there's a lot to get into. I mean, like I mentioned in the intro, obviously people know the Taser product. I think that's where you started, but you've expanded your product line. I think people certainly know body cams. They must have seen these. Then you guys have gotten into drones. You've gotten now into merging AI into some of this stuff. Then you also do all these services to manage all this data coming into the police departments. You're a massive company.