In this thread, we will discuss Alex (ST CEO) being a guest on a podcast

General Discussion
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Has anybody else listened to this?

Alex, the SmartThings CEO, was a guest on the podcast and it was a good listen IMO. They go through what inspired him to start SmartThings, what its like being a part of Samsung, and the high level future of IoT. A few tidbits that caught my attention:

  1. The hosts asked about this stuff working without power, and Alex mentioned v1 not being able to. But then he mentioned v2 having battery backup (correct) and implied it also had cell backup (wrong).

  2. He said the user base grew 4X last year and will grow more than that this year

  3. He believes SmartThings has the most connected devices on the market. Not sure if he considered Xfinity Home, ADT Pulse, etc in that statement.

  4. Really cool discussion around the SmartThings and Alexa/Google Home relationship. Apparently homes with both SmartThings and a voice assistant result in something like 60% more utterances with the voice assistant, which is obviously appealing to Amazon and Google

  5. Small discussion on ADT partnering with SmartThings and this being ADT’s “next generation” product.

Anyway, was worth the listen IMO.

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