EP 145: Rick Smith (CEO, Axon): The Wild Ride From Near-Bankruptcy to $50B+
Rick Smith (CEO, Axon) joined Logan to share the 30-year journey of building a nearly $50B public company behind the TASER, police body cameras, and now AI-powered tools like Draft One. He talks about taking Axon public in the early 2000s, navigating intense public scrutiny, and evolving from a controversial hardware startup into a software and AI pioneer. Rick also reflects on leadership lessons, regulatory battles, and his long-term mission to make the bullet obsolete. It’s a candid and compelling conversation with one of the most unconventional founders in tech.
(00:00) Intro
(01:31) Axon: Reducing Violence Through Technology
(02:12) The Evolution of Axon: From Taser to Body Cameras
(04:56) Challenges and Triumphs: Going Public and Beyond
(07:17) The Impact of Ferguson and the Rise of Body Cameras
(11:16) Navigating Cultural and Business Shifts
(17:04) The Role of AI and Future Innovations
(25:26) The Taser: Technology and Purpose
(34:17) Making the Bullet Obsolete: Future of Law Enforcement
(37:10) Consumer Market Evolution
(37:59) Proving Taser's Viability
(40:17) Targeting Gun Owners
(41:45) Taser-Related Deaths and Media Perception
(48:07) Employee Taser Experience
(50:59) Impact of Body Cameras
(52:43) AI Innovations in Law Enforcement
(56:15) Challenges in Product Development
(01:04:27) Regulatory Hurdles
(01:11:31) Leadership and Company Culture
(01:14:58) Future Vision for Axon
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
#227: CEO & Founder Axon, Rick Smith: Push Risk
Guest: Rick Smith, CEO & Founder of Axon (formerly TASER)
Being a founder-CEO is a “unique superpower,” says Axon’s Rick Smith: People like him get a longer leash from the board to try things that outside CEOs might not.
“My job is to push risk into the organization,” Rick says. “If there's a project with a 50 percent chance of success, a 50 percent chance of failure, but it's going to pay 100 to 1, any finance person will tell you, you should take that bet all day long.”
One of those bets was the transition from running a weapons company called TASER into a broader public safety firm called Axon, which makes cloud-supported body cameras fro police, tactical drones, AI records management software and more. “If we never have a product failure, then we're not taking risks anymore and we're going to end up getting disrupted,” Rick says.
Chapters:
(01:09) - Tasers vs. guns
(03:35) - Axon’s growth
(07:09) - Biggest surprises
(09:33) - How TASER got started
(13:11) - Reinventing the taser
(17:24) - A humiliating launch
(23:33) - Rick’s family
(26:14) - The Auto Taser failure
(30:21) - The darkest days
(34:26) - Hans Marrero
(37:25) - Family and burnout
(42:49) - Rick’s family
(45:49) - Pivoting the business
(51:37) - Axon body cameras
(53:46) - Axon’s current products
(58:08) - Re-educating the cops
(01:02:09) - Pushing risk
(01:05:44) - Competing with the gun
(01:10:16) - Exponential stock plans
(01:14:17) - Who Axon is hiring
(01:14:46) - What “grit” means to Rick
Mentioned in this episode: UnitedHealthcare and Brian Thompson, Harvard University, human-machine interfaces, Star Wars, Timecop, Star Trek, Jack Cover, Project Apollo, Ed Owen; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms; Tom Smith, Rodney King, the Sharper Image, Steve Filmer, Phil Smith, Silicon Valley Bank, Emil Michael, Bob Kagle, Benchmark, Norwest Ventures, Molly Wuthrich, Josh Isner, The Terminator, Ferrari, Richard Branson, Burning Man, Steve Jobs, Brenda Smith, Hadi Partovi, Amazon AWS, Microsoft, DraftOne, Ambience Health, OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Brown, Computer Aided Dispatch, Elon Musk and SpaceX, and Luke Larson.
Links:
Connect with Rick
Twitter
LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Recode Decode: Rick Smith
Axon CEO Rick Smith talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his company's best known product (the Taser), how it's thinking about the ethical implications of new products aimed at police, and the controversies around facial recognition in body cameras. Plus: Is the weapon of the future a pistol that doesn't kill you?
Featuring:
Rick Smith (@AxonRick), CEO of Axon (@Axon_us) and author of The End of Killing: How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problem
Hosts:
Kara Swisher (@karaswisher), Recode co-founder and editor-at-large
More to explore:
Subscribe for free to Reset, Recode's new podcast that explores why — and how — tech is changing everything.
Listen to Kara's interview with NYU Policing Project director Barry Friedman, who served on Axon's ethics board.
About Recode by Vox:
Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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