Rick Smith

“so it acts on our moonshot is to cut gun related deaths between police and the public by 50% by 2032”

“you can build a $6 billion company so um what kept you going was it just the passionate belief that you know we can do better than than blowing holes people with a bullet”

“once we get there and that's what we'll do by the end of this decade then watch us we're going to Pivot and then go into the consumer space”

“so where were you when you came up with this moonshot idea and saying that's you know and a moonshot you know is a very clear objective goal within a certain time frame that you know when you've hit it and the world knows when You' hit it and your moonshot as you've described it you know is to outperform the pistol uh not to sell the Next Generation taser we don't want to get stuck in this incrementalist Loop where the you know the iPhone 14 is a little better than the iPhone 13 we have got to we're not competing with ourselves we've got to stretch and take some risk uh and then really that became to then externalize okay how are we going to measure that when we outperform the gun like what's the measurable goal and then what's something that's very internally focused that I can use to push my Engineers but is there something that's more inclusive that we could use to create a kind of an industry partnership with our customers”

“and that's where we hit this resonance where we had police unions and civil rights Advocates all agreeing hey this this is a good goal it's kind of inclusive of all stakeholders and and it is uh for those who uh have ever used a taser or who own guns um let's jump into the technology cuz the taser 10 uh is a state-of-the-art A Unique Piece of tech”

“over the next 10 years we'll start to see uh my personal belief is we need to change the way we think about violence like violence is just bad we shouldn't celebrate it uh we still sort of think of this like today the technology in the world is if a gunman shows up somewhere it starts you know a mass shooter event the only way we stopped them was we send in more people with more guns and they have a gunfight uh I think we need to get out of this mindset that it's not like this medieval battle between good and evil it's like people that are committing violence are doing a bad thing and if we could get to a point where we have technology that can safely come in and subdue them without requiring you know our sons and daughters in uniform uh another person put themselves at risk uh I think we get a fundamental shift in we think about this to where violence is just less interesting even for people to think about doing it in the first place”

“the first outside dollar we raised was in the IPO wow we got nose from every VC we talked to you know private investment banks we talked to probably I'd say all told maybe three to 500 people we pitched over the first seven years and nothing that like a familiar story you know and I I think it's really important for folks to for entrepreneurs to hear that because a lot of folks get demoralized when they can't raise capital from the outside world and if you believe in yourself enough and you believe in your technology enough and you're willing to go and go and go um you have it's a digital outcome um and and sometimes you don't win but uh but you knew in your heart that there was a there there yes we did I mean look there were dark days there there was about a year where I had lost hope but was still you know struggling through but you're absolutely right like raising money is so so disheartening uh because you assume that these people are smarter than you right they're managing money they've seen all these Investments and and uh you know we we batted zero uh and it still worked out for us you know so sometimes you just got to have faith”

“if you get the team right everything else takes care of itself.”

“in another 10 or 20 years where it's not even a human that is protecting you”

“I think in another 20 to 30 years I think majority of the policing function will not the most dangerous stuff is going to be robotics”

“one of the things we're working on now I've challenged the team and again this was actually very helpful from this year's abundance was breaking your moonshot down to okay what are your first year goals right like how do you start to measure progress so for us the first year goals I've I've asked the team look we're going to go after the smaller police departments that have the highest shooting rates on per capita BAS B and the reason we're going to go those smaller agencies is they can move they have faster decision making processes and they can roll out technology faster whereas like an LAPD may take four or five years to roll out Tech 10 smaller agencies could do the same thing just faster and the goal is we're going to start measuring in that cohort starting from the date that they've completed their roll out so they now every officer has a taser 10 they now go into the new cohort that we're going to measure against the historical cohort uh and we're going to that's going to be our first Canary in the coal mine can we begin to move the needle in those agencies who deploy early make it measurable and uh and it becomes you know once you've got the data it becomes inspiration for others to follow suit um”

“if we can show in a rigorous way those agencies are seeing a significant drop in shootings that's going to create just tremendous sales momentum you know for the business so uh I think we we try to design our our incentives so uh so we make more profit and more money when we do the right things so you want to you know have your business model reinforce your mission and your marot of cutting it by 50% outside of the police Community but in the public is really a matter of getting those those new technologies in the hands of everybody right that it becomes the cheaper faster better more effective solution for protecting your family the the other thing that's that's kind of fun on the consumer side of things for police it has to be very utilitarian for consumers it also has to be fun”