The chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc.’s video doorbell subsidiary Ring is stepping down, making way for an executive with experience at Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc.
(Bloomberg) — The chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc.’s video doorbell subsidiary Ring is stepping down, making way for an executive with experience at Microsoft Corp. and Meta Platforms Inc.
Jamie Siminoff will take the role of chief inventor on March 22, he said in a blog post on Wednesday. He’ll be replaced in the CEO role by Elizabeth Hamren, chief operating officer at chat company Discord Inc. She previously held executive roles at Microsoft’s Xbox unit and Oculus, Meta’s virtual-reality arm.
Besides Ring, Hamren will run Blink, another camera and doorbell startup Amazon acquired, Amazon Key, a service that gives delivery personnel access to customers’ residences, and other related businesses.
Siminoff founded Ring in 2011 and two years later unsuccessfully pitched what was then called DoorBot on the ABC reality show “Shark Tank.” But other investors saw promise in internet-connected doorbells, which use motion sensors to start recording when someone approaches the device and broadcasts video and audio to a smartphone app.
Amazon acquired the company for $839 million in 2018, scooping up what then-CEO Jeff Bezos called a “very valuable” position in a growing category of electronics despite internal concerns about the startup’s security and compliance practices.
Ring’s video-connected doorbells and cameras immediately became a centerpiece of Amazon’s growing suite of home electronics, built around the Echo smart speaker and Alexa digital assistant. The company has expanded its domain to home and business security systems, smart lighting, a car dashboard-mounted camera and a yet-to-be-released flying home drone.
Ring has at times been a public-relations headache for Amazon. In a series of viral episodes, people reported strangers taking control of their Ring cameras. The company separately said it fired some employees for improperly trying to access customer data and subsequently revamped its security practices, including adding encryption to its video devices. Civil liberties groups, meanwhile, criticized a Ring program that lets law enforcement agencies request camera footage from users. Ring has defended the practice, saying users can decide whether to share video with police.
Through it all, Siminoff, with a founder’s messianic zeal, repeated that it was his aim to make neighborhoods and neighbors – as Ring calls its customers – safer. In the blog post, he said the incoming Hamren recognizes that Ring’s “work wasn’t about trying to make a faster chip or shinier plastic, it was about changing the way neighbors think about security for the better.”
He added: “I will focus on inventing even more great products with Liz — and maybe have a little more free time too.”
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