Why is Wyze Launching this non-Camera Product - Q&A Reference

[carverofchoice]

Every time Wyze launches a new product, there are lots of comments and questions from people thinking the new product seems unrelated to Wyze’s market/industry, or being worried that it could take away from support of already launched products. This post is intended to be able to refer people to in order to see a summary of the answers the Wyze (Co)Founders have given in direct response to those conventional concerns.

The following transcript was made from the AMA (Ask Me Anything) Webinar on 10/29/2020. The times listed are the location in the Webinar video stream their answers are given, and I’ve provided a link directly to the video from the point where this topic is raised and in which the transcript was taken (it covers roughly just 5.5 minutes of talking time, so you easily watch it all yourself):

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Wyze Week 2020 AMA with the Wyze Team

(Streamed live on Oct 29, 2020)

Wyze Week 2020 AMA with the Wyze Team

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Why is Wyze making this kind of product?

START TIME 116:25 (1:56:25)
@Amie Amie Hsu (Wyze Director of Ecommerce):

“We got a lot of questions around this: I think originally people expected us to just do smart home products and now they’re seeing us expand outside of smart home to do scales, headphones, maybe even vacuums, right? So then what is exactly the long-term vision for Wyze? Some people were asking do we want to be something like an Amazon or a Google or do we want to be you know like a Sony, producing consumer tech?”

END TIME 116:53 (1:56:53)

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START TIME 116:54 (1:56:54)
@WyzeDave Dave Crosby (Co-Founder):

I can start on this one and you guys can jump in. So this kind of goes back to the early days as well when we were kind of starting to form our mission statements and our company values and that kind of stuff and when we came up with our mission statement we ended up choosing we wanted:

“To make great technology accessible to everyone.”

So, although we focus mainly on the smart home because we feel like there’s a lot of need and a lot of disruption that can happen in the smart home, our mission is really just is to make great technology accessible to everyone and we don’t limit ourselves to being a camera company or you know a sensor company or a smart home company even. What we think is when we feel like there’s an industry that’s ready to be disrupted or there is an opportunity for us to create a product at a at a groundbreaking breaking price -a very disruptive price- and our users think that that would be a cool product then we’ll go ahead and make that product .

So we’re not siloing ourselves to a smart home or to a camera line. The main thing is, let’s find a cool piece of technology that we can make at a disruptive price that our users will like and offer it to them so they can have access to that technology.

END TIME 118:05 (1:58:05)

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START TIME 118:06 (1:58:06)
@WyzeYun Yun Zhang (Founder) (Paraphrased [accurately], but not written 100% exactly word for word):

When we launched with a $20 camera, we brought down prices throughout the smart home market industry which is a good thing for users and for everyone. I believe we were the first $20 camera with Edge (local) Person Detection, and now we bring a lot of smart home cameras to the AI world as well. For us it’s more competition, but for the user and for the industry I think that’s a good thing and we continue to push boundaries and push everyone to create more value for consumers.

Now, we introduced a thermostat, activity tracker, headphones, scale, and all these are super, super affordable. I believe every home, every person should have the opportunity to turn their home into a modern smart home, no matter what type of home it is. That, we feel good about, and we continue to push everyone to do it, not just Wyze.

END TIME 120:30 (2:00:30)

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Why this will not hurt support of current products

START TIME 120:37 (2:00:37)
@Amie Amie Hsu (Wyze Director of Ecommerce):

Okay great and then so this is a follow-up question: How does Wyze continue to reassure its core customers that this leap into other non-smart home products will not take away or delay the development of upgrades on already released products?

END TIME 120:57 (2:00:57)

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START TIME 120:58 (2:00:58)
@WyzeDave Dave Crosby (Co-Founder):

If we could open up our financials…always, when I see this question I wish that people could see that the investment that we have made in our team. We have hired so many people, and very, very expensive people, like we have literally poached some of the top people at Amazon, at Microsoft here in Seattle. We have not held back on spending to find the best people to build the best technology and so it’s part of our business model, our business plan. We’re going to go wide, we’re not going like super vertical in one product, we’re going to go wide, and to support that we’re hiring the best from many different well-known companies to be able to support that.

So the answer to being able to not let our users down is to make sure that we have the right people in place to support all those products in which we’ve made those investments right now and we’re continuing to make those investments. I think we have 30 open roles right now on our careers page. So we’re continuing to bring in people to make sure that we are still supporting our current lines but also able to launch new products, and as long as we can keep our growth up the way that it has been going we will continue to be able to do that.

END TIME 122:06 (2:02:06)

[carverofchoice]

I felt transcribing the above answers to those common questions would add value for us to be able to refer people to read (or watch it themselves) direct Wyze responses to this recurring misunderstanding of what Wyze’s business model is.

Wyze’s business model is not cameras, it’s not smart homes, nor any limited vertical model, it’s ANYTHING they can find to disrupt the market in to make things affordable and drive better price competition into the market which benefits everyone, and they will continue hiring more people with every product and to get more and more people to be able to keep supporting the products they already launched too. Adding more products will not take away support they would’ve otherwise given to current products, they simply add more employees to compensate, and you can go look at the firmware history (or beta forum firmware tests, let alone alpha) for Wyze products to see for yourself things are being added all the time, including adding support for things they long ago said not to expect any more support in (such as a recent firmware upgrade to the RTSP branch on the V2’s long after they said never to expect anymore on it, and they still did!).

If a product launches and it isn’t one you are interested in, there is no reason to be upset. If you don’t like it, let it go and just wait until one launches that you are interested in. If you don’t care about anything but cameras, great, just buy a few cameras, and ignore all the rest, Wyze loves your interest in that one product, but none of us can tell Wyze what their industry is.

• People tried to tell Amazon they are a physical book company and should go vertical and just stick with that (it’s been a smart move for them that they didn’t listen).
• People tried to tell Microsoft they are an OS company only, and should just stick with that (it’s been a smart move for them that they didn’t listen).
• People tried to tell Apple they were a desktop computer company and should just stick with that (it’s been a smart move for them that they didn’t listen).
• People keep trying to project onto Wyze who and what they are, but they aren’t letting people pen them up in a tiny boxed label or limited industry to only go vertical either. They are following their mission statement and core values, and have driven AWESOME competition into the market to make things so much more affordable for everyone.

For that alone I love Wyze, even if sometimes I do grab things from competitors instead, I am still immensely grateful they are driving such awesome competition and creating lower prices in multiple industries. Thank you Wyze. As far as I’m concerned, the more products and markets you jump into, the better for all of us!

[Customer]

Wow you put a heck of a lot of effort into compiling that, thanks. I think your well argued position is still debatable but I’ll leave that aside for now. I just found this Wyze quote rich in unintended irony since they no longer offer any such thing, or anything like it, did not offer it at the time of the quote, and even before that only offered it for a few months…

@carverofchoice

I believe we were the first $20 camera with Edge (local) Person Detection, and now we bring a lot of smart home cameras to the AI world as well.

[bartipoo]

$20 camera Wyze Cam v3 | Wired Security Camera with person detection.
I am guessing the part you are pointing out is that either there is an added price for Person Detection with CamPlus subscription (very very low price) and they have spoken at length on the complexity of this AI needing the cloud currently but they want to move it to the Edge.
Originally it was on the Edge from Xnor.ai but that contact was suddenly ended due to their own acquisition by Apple
Here are some of those details Person Detection Update: A New Experiment for Premium Features

[carverofchoice]

Yeah, I had similar thoughts about the Edge PD comments when I was transcribing it, but felt it was certainly worth including anyway.

He does make a good point though that as far as I know they were the first to offer this affordable innovation, and then afterward it pushed a bunch of other companies to try to compete with it (and now I have 3 Eufy cams with Edge PD, possibly partially thanks to Wyze driving them to compete).

To be somewhat fair, it’s worth saying that in the same webinar they also say they are working on bringing Edge PD back to cams again (hopefully the V3), and I did see last year when they posted 2 job positions they wanted people with experience to specifically focus on these local edge AI programming, so I believe they really are planning to try to do this. The question is whether they will do so with the V3, or if they’ll have to wait for the next iteration.

[Customer]

@bartipoo

Originally it was on the Edge from Xnor.ai but that contact was suddenly ended due to their own acquisition by Apple

Yes, I participated extensively in that thread and am well aware of the history. That’s why the quote I highlighted is ludicrous. They’re bragging about a feature that they don’t sell and didn’t sell at the time of the quote. In fact, strongly to the contrary, the argument has been that they never officially advertised the local / edge PD feature so could not be held to the promise for people who bought after the XNor debacle. It was flimsy then and that statement mocks the people who weren’t sufficiently grandfathered. My observation stands.

[itbedave]

Wyze has official jumped the shark with all of these WISH products they’ve decided to “upgrade”, repackage, and use their success with the WyzeCam to sell them to you. I literally just saw an ad for Wyze security monitoring services. WTF? THE ENTIRE BUSINESS MODEL WAS FOUNDED ON AN AFFORDABLE SECURITY CAMERA THAT DIDN’T HAVE MONITORING FEES!!!

Stick with being the BEST at making a few related products Wyze.

[The_Midnight_Driver]

First, @Carverofchoice, that is a careful and excellent collection and analysis of data. It confirms some of my own thoughts, provides food for thought on others, and your own insight helps me to understand why other customers simply are not as disappointed as I have become in Wyze.

And now for a little “baseless speculation”. I think the reason Wyze is creating SO much product- without the interest in spending a lot of $ on support is because that capital is instead being spent building out a remarkable portfolio of truly clever, feature-laden, and attractively priced products.

I think, based on ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, that the logical reason for the creation of this catalog of ingenuity without any plan to update or upgrade the present offering is that Yun & Davis wanna’ sell. Quick. To me, Wyze seems like a really attractive takeover opportunity. Not any obvious US suitors come to mind, but there are any number in Korea, some in Europe, and countless parties in China & South Korea. And don’t rule out India, either. My guess… within 4 years the then erstwhile founders have a “uuuuge” payday and take an early retirement!

It’ll probably never happen. Just like Wyze implementing functional “Auto-Unlock” on this silly lock, or getting a response on these from an interested engineer about the software that can be so ^%$#@ vexing when it isn’t amazing me.