We interview Dave Selinger from Deep Sentinel about Home Security - Around the House® Home Improvement: A Complete Guide For your Home

Episode 1404

The Ultimate Home Security with Dave Selinger and Deep Sentinel

This episode is not just about home security.

Dave Selinger has a fascinating story. He is a technologist at heart and has been involved in some extremely successful start-ups. Places like Amazon, Redfin, and RichRelevance and now Deep Sentinel. He also gives back as he has gotten to serve on the board/advisory board of a number of non-profits including MyTwoFrontTeeth (now a part of Family Giving Tree), The Darfur Stoves Project (now Potential Energy)and most recently Silicon Climate. In this episode we talk with Dave about his  latest adventure Deep Sentinel as Co-Founder/CEO. Deep Sentinel is a pioneer in AI-based home protection. The company’s intelligent crime prevention transforms home security from false alarms and ineffective after-the-fact crime alerts to real-time crime prediction and prevention. With Deep Sentinel, Americans can gain a reliable, cost-effective way to protect their homes and stop a burglary, mail theft or driveway break-in before it happens – and feel dramatically safer at home, at work and on vacation. If you are living in an area where crime is a concern for your home or small business, you need some added security or you are just tired of that camera system giving you hundreds of false alarms all day long, this is a show you should explore.

For more information on Deep Sentinel: https://www.deepsentinel.com/

To save 10% on your equipment purchase they have provided a 10% discount code for Around the House listners. Just use promo code ATH.

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

We have moved the Pro Insider Special on Thursday to its new feed. It will no longer be on this page. You can find it and subscribe right here: https://around-the-house-pro-insider.captivate.fm/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

Mentioned in this episode:

A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard

For more information about the latest in decking and cladding head to https://www.millboard.com/

Baldwin Hardware

Baldwin Hardware

Transcript
[:

[00:00:28] Eric Goranson: I tuned mine out all the time. Now I don't have to worry about it. I'm like, oh, I just have it for the

[:

[00:00:42] Dave Selinger: I was like, sweet, glad I'd spent the money. But man, the more expensive systems, they didn't have fewer alerts. They had more, right. I, I had attended doorbell and I was only getting like 30 alerts today, which is still too many when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to [00:01:00] know, but we've got you covered.

[:

[00:01:04] Eric Goranson: Welcome to around the house with Eric G thanks for joining us today. And this is where we talk about home improvement, interior design, healthy homes, all those things. And today. Now I'm a believer cuz I'm a user of this stuff. So this is something everybody should check out. Dave, Sellinger welcome to a back to around the house, brother, Eric.

[:

[00:01:43] Dave Selinger: I, uh, I opened up my electrical. And, you know, I mean, this is one of those things where, you know, you do it or you shouldn't do it. But I found that the electrician who had come in and installed my hot tub was a little bit of an idiot. And oh, he had put in, [00:02:00] uh, some, uh, some, some, uh, branches. That should be on dedicated circuit.

[:

[00:02:23] Dave Selinger: Right? Exactly. And so it's sitting on a bus bar and you've got, you know, one that's supposed to get 20, one's supposed to get 50. So I was like, I need to fix this myself. So I, I had the electric company come out, do my main disconnect. And since I spoke to you last, I have gotten to meet so many, incredibly nice physicians in our emergency department because I manage I'm alive, I'm alive.

[:

[00:03:04] Dave Selinger: Yep. And, uh, and it was one of, that's a new kind of pain. The, the reason I wanted to share this with this audience is for crying out loud. You know, you can be doing the I'm, I'm dealing with high voltage. I do that perfectly. I do everything perfectly. I'm cutting the wall. I did that perfectly is power tools.

[:

[00:03:43] Dave Selinger: Uh, yeah. I don't even know what else to say. My assistant was over my house and she refuses to do stuff with me anymore. Cuz she's like , if you're not gonna wear your gloves, I can't be around you cuz you're just not being safe.

[:

[00:04:05] Eric Goranson: So it's almost like these two are going together. There we go. We just heard about serial killers, killing people at homes, and now we've got deep

[:

[00:04:25] Eric Goranson: And I, and I gotta say, I got, um, you guys got me in a little bit of trouble today with my wife, which was hilarious. And this is, we'll talk about your product in a second, but this was funny.

[:

[00:04:57] Eric Goranson: Hey, Mr. Gossen. Yeah. Um, [00:05:00] somebody's trying to get in your door, the keypad, and it looks like she went around the back and I'm like, oh, I'm in, in trouble now I'm in trouble. Cuz guess what? I dropped the ball there,

[:

[00:05:15] Dave Selinger: Cause exactly. You know, you gotta, you gotta be, you can never trust the woman that that's been coming and going every day. now you gotta, gotta be careful with that one. There we go. So

[:

[00:05:27] Dave Selinger: pretty funny. I was like, she punch in the, like the, the keypad to unlock your front door. The guard saw her fiddling with the door and then go around to the back.

[:

[00:05:42] Eric Goranson: Exactly. So let's back it up here and talk, you know, you've been on the show before, so, but there's a lot of new listeners we've got, let's talk about deep Sentinel for a minute because this is cool stuff.

[:

[00:05:54] Dave Selinger: Cool. Well, I, again, I thank you for, for trusting us, right? Like that's awesome to know that after our interview, [00:06:00] you liked it enough to, to try it out. So I really love hearing that. First of all, what deep set in the list is. We do the thing that everyone kinda wishes would happen with their rings and their cameras around their house.

[:

[00:06:30] Dave Selinger: No, no, they don't. And I was like, dude, what bubble have I been living in my whole life? Right. And so I started looking at like, how do we actually do that? Cause I mean, I've got, I've got two little girls, I've got my wife, you know, we like to travel. I want them to be safe. And when I dug in, I realized there really isn't a solution out there that is designed to, to actively survey your home and protect it.

[:

[00:07:08] Dave Selinger: So what did we do in deep channel? We built the technology that basically replaces the guard, uh, sitting outside of your house. But we did that through cameras and we take our cameras. They, you know, again, your, your example's great. As soon as your wife started walking up to the, to the front door and playing with the front door, there's an AI in those cameras.

[:

[00:07:43] Dave Selinger: Um, we can also trigger sirens and all kinds of stuff in the middle, but, but the thing is. Again, if you've ever woken up to your stuff, being stolen, you get on your cameras and you realize, Hey, there's this video of these guys stealing my stuff on my porch or my driveway. Yeah. That's the problem we solve you don't we don't wait until that happens.

[:

[00:08:03] Eric Goranson: Well, and that's the problem with like all the video doorbells out there. Great. You got a video doorbell, but every cat, every car, every person walking down the sidewalk. Yep. Whatever it is, you get a hundred dings during the day.

[:

[00:08:28] Dave Selinger: experience. I bought this huge camera system from my house.

[:

[00:08:51] Dave Selinger: And then I installed this really expensive one. I was getting like 250 alerts a day. What are you gonna do with that? I mean, you literally cannot live your life [00:09:00] and, and protect your house at the same time. And so, I mean, what you're saying is exactly spot on too. And I, and again, I wanna be really clear, like I, I'm not one of those.

[:

[00:09:24] Dave Selinger: Oh, exactly. So that's that's next level, but yeah, I mean, that's, that's a very real thing. I mean, I had a, I have a friend who lives on the other side of town for me here and he had somebody break his front door down and he had gotten the alert on his phone. He was driving his son to baseball practice and he's like, oh man, dude, I get hundreds of these a day.

[:

[00:10:03] Dave Selinger: She thinks that it's her husband playing a practical joke on her. So thank God because she comes running out of the bathroom in her towel, yelling at her husband, Darren, Darren, what are you doing? And it scares the crap outta the burglar and they, yeah. Yeah. So it all ended very well. Thank goodness. But you know, I mean, it's very real, you get these alerts that they're molding you into this state where you can't respond.

[:

[00:10:49] Eric Goranson: I don't have time to sit there every time, my phone and buzzes and go, oh, what's

[:

[00:11:02] Eric Goranson: deep Sentinel, but I have a, I have a, um, See, it's an Xfinity.

[:

[00:11:21] Dave Selinger: And it's not sitting and watching your cameras all day long, right.

[:

[00:11:25] Eric Goranson: all night or night.

[:

[00:11:34] Eric Goranson: oh, no, it's all good. It's all good. I, I, she laughed about it and, and we talked about it, but it's funny, but that's,

[:

[00:11:44] Dave Selinger: I already did it.

[:

[00:11:58] Dave Selinger: batteries are like one of those things though. [00:12:00] Like, you know, as our lives have gotten more convenient, I think batteries.

[:

[00:12:19] Dave Selinger: Um, my favorite ones at my flood sensors. Thank God, cuz we've had so many floods in my house. Um, you know, we've got, uh, little actuators, we've got LEDs that are battery powered now, too. Cuz they can run on batteries and they make it really convenient. But at the same time, sometimes they are kind of like a, a pain to remember to, to charge 'em or

[:

[00:12:37] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And I mean, this is a nice Baldwin front door set and it's a beautiful setup. It's very high end. And the cool thing with it is I have to put four AA batteries in it maybe twice a year. So it's not that big a deal. I just have been so busy. I haven't been monitoring what the, you know, that it was probably in the yellow for a lot longer than it should have been.

[:

[00:12:56] Dave Selinger: Gotcha. I find, man, I even, [00:13:00] I try to stay on top of the stuff, even though I'm in the biz, just like you, it's easy to be like, well, I'll next week. Tomorrow .

[:

[00:13:17] Eric Goranson: You know, I've got kind of that first generation and it's awesome. But that battery that goes in there, one, I didn't have to wire it up. The battery lasts for weeks yeah. At my house, which is great. It's not something that I'm having to do a lot

[:

[00:13:39] Dave Selinger: And the, the first thing that I heard was that most of them had at any one point in time, one or two cameras that didn't have charged batteries. They were just, they weren't doing anything for 'em and they were okay. Having them not have batteries because at the end of the day, even if they did have batteries, all they'd have is a recording of a crime and they're hanging up there doing sure 90% of the value of what most cameras do, which is [00:14:00] scare people away before they do.

[:

[00:14:20] Dave Selinger: And most of our customers are now on solar and other systems like that. So they don't have to change the batteries. But even if you are on a battery, I don't want you having to worry about it. The other thing you'll see, I'm I'm sure you, you see this is that in the hub, you have an extra battery. So at any time, oh yeah, if you have a camera that's running low, it's a really quick, uh, swap change.

[:

[00:14:48] Eric Goranson: It works well. And, and like when I'm heading outta town, if I notice it that I'm down to like 25%, I'm like, ah, I'll just change it out now.

[:

[00:15:04] Dave Selinger: great. Awesome, man. I'm SU I'm super stoked. I mean, out town is one of those. Those use cases again, that we built this for.

[:

[00:15:28] Dave Selinger: And she's like, do we need to get a house sitter? Can we just, can we just leave deep settle, watch in the house. And I was like, wow, I'd never even thought about that. Yeah. And, uh, and so we did, and it was one of those kind of miraculous experiences. Like that's pretty liberating. And, uh, and as you know, now we have an RV and that's the best.

[:

[00:16:00] Eric Goranson: It's great. I'm in, I'm in a low crime area, but it doesn't take all it takes is one person rolling through.

[:

[00:16:16] Dave Selinger: That's I mean, again, that's exactly it. Like if it's your neighbor, okay. Then you're lucky and you don't have that event, but if it is, you.

[:

[00:16:42] Dave Selinger: I, if I can, can I stick in a little, uh, a DIY piece of advice for people here? Yeah, of course. Okay. So, so here's my piece of advice. So I've been working with a bunch of police departments across the country, uh, obviously, cuz of what we. And some of them are starting to train their officers in something called [00:17:00] Septe, C P T E D crime prevention through environmental design.

[:

[00:17:25] Dave Selinger: With the advents of LEDs. What I didn't realize is you can now run full outside light systems that are, that are really functional. I mean, I used the last generation of solar powered lights and I hated them. They sucked because they would only work for like half an hour after du. And that's just, that's just tricking you, right?

[:

[00:18:00] Dave Selinger: Just make it number three on the list. You don't have to be the fastest first. All I gotta do. You just have to not be number one. Cause what the bet loser are looking for is the easiest target. Sure. Number two, trim your trees in the front. Make it so, oh man. Right. Out from your place anywhere up to about six feet.

[:

[00:18:34] Eric Goranson: add on to that and say, don't have that tall Bush right next to the front door that somebody can jump behind.

[:

[00:19:02] Dave Selinger: Was protected from the street. So when they actually viewed this video of these guys breaking in, you could find this by the way, cuz they came at, they came forward about this and they said, I want to teach people about the mistake that we made. And so they're like they were on the news, they were on the national news.

[:

[00:19:37] Dave Selinger: They exactly have these guys with masks on you can't do anything with that. And, uh, and so yeah, remove those barriers right in front of your front door. So it's visible to the street. And then again, add there, add lighting as. Lighting lighting, lighting visibility. Just make your property not number one, simple things.

[:

[00:20:19] Eric Goranson: Yep. Long enough for somebody to, to do that. And another funny, deep Sentinel story, I was walking out with a group of people that were over at the house. We were walking up to the restaurant. That's literally a block and a half away up here. We're gonna have drinks after dinner, walking out and I gave a particular sign and I'm just gonna leave it as that, to the camera.

[:

[00:20:49] Dave Selinger: that? Well, the big roller here, Eric G has got private security. Now that just wishes him a good night when he rocks out of the house.

[:

[00:21:04] Eric Goranson: Is that a recording? Nope. That's awesome. A security

[:

[00:21:19] Dave Selinger: Nobody else has that type of thing. And so they advantage of it, have fun with it, you know? Yeah. And

[:

[00:21:40] Eric Goranson: And I feel bad for this guy. He's a friend of mine. He's done work at my house, but literally because it's an electrical company. There's people almost daily trying to get into that. He's had people cut through with a chainsaw through the roof of his building to get in dude, you know, and it's just night after night after night after night.

[:

[00:22:01] Dave Selinger: It's well, and it's very real man. Like I didn't realize. How much that impacts not again. That's your business. That's not your home, right? Yeah. But still it's, it's so deep in here cuz that's your livelihood. That's how you buy the food for your family. That's how you guys go on vacation.

[:

[00:22:41] Dave Selinger: And yeah, we've gotten through it and no, my life hasn't been threatened, but I, I have an ulcer. I have, I haven't slept, my wife is valid. He doesn't have

[:

[00:22:52] Dave Selinger: Right. And, and then if you do, it takes two years to get claims settled. It become a real issue.

[:

[00:23:17] Dave Selinger: It's not about left or right politics. It's not about this, right. It's this has been happening for 20 years and even violent crime where people are getting more and more aggressive, bringing chainsaws to people's businesses. It's it's pretty nuts, man. I mean, the things that we see people trying to do and,

[:

[00:23:38] Eric Goranson: I mean, I'm sure you guys, you guys could write a book on the stuff that you see with that. I mean, your YouTube page is packed with it, but

[:

[00:23:55] Dave Selinger: And it it's intense, man. I mean, and I'm, I'm, I'm glad that I'm like [00:24:00] an ex list celebrity, right? So I'm, I'm way down on people's list. But man, the B list ALIST, uh, celebrities, their lives are really intense. Right? Yeah.

[:

[00:24:19] Eric Goranson: Yeah. You know, it's crazy. One thing I do like about, and this is gonna sound like a, I don't want this to sound like a deep Sentinel commercial, cuz there's no dollars being traded here. We're I'm just a believer in this, but the cool thing with this is even if you've got a police department that is slow to respond, there's an option where you guys can.

[:

[00:24:46] Dave Selinger: It does. I mean, we, we have various levels of siren. So for people that are in like really serious areas, we have like 130 decibel full orange that will turn on. Uh, and, and yeah, I mean, It's a different level, again, depending on your level [00:25:00] of risk and what you wanna have.

[:

[00:25:19] Dave Selinger: How many things gonna become available to us? We're, you know, we're looking at all kinds of different options too. Like, I, I, I. I built a turret at my house. Uh, it's a little 2d turret. And, uh, you know, I I've thought about like, is that, is that something we want to turn on too? Right? It's got airsoft. Yeah.

[:

[00:25:40] Eric Goranson: I water pressure, you

[:

[00:25:54] Dave Selinger: Nice. And Brad calls me and he is like, get this. So what you do is you put baking soda in the, [00:26:00] and I was like baking soda and then vinegar. And he's like, Nope, just baking soda. And I was like, okay. And he said, so here's what you do. You spray the baking soda on somebody. And then you say attention, attention.

[:

[00:26:43] Dave Selinger: You just tell 'em go ahead and put 'em in handcuffs. They're gonna be fine.

[:

[00:26:56] Dave Selinger: turning themselves in emergency rooms. Just, just [00:27:00] getting in line. You know, there's a little, there's a little special entrance for people needing anthrax 3, 4, 6, 7, go straight to prison.

[:

[00:27:08] Eric Goranson: Yep. Just go in there. And there's just an officer sitting on the other side of the door. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for playing. That's fair. oh, that would be so funny. But you guys have some neat stuff coming up in the future here too. It looks like.

[:

[00:27:22] Dave Selinger: we do. We have, uh, we we've, like I mentioned the, the different sirens and the BOS we've got.

[:

[00:27:46] Dave Selinger: Um, I, I could talk about it a little bit and, and

[:

[00:27:53] Dave Selinger: So, okay. So it's, it's, uh, it's a, a white color, which is, you know, the first thing you're gonna notice, our [00:28:00] original one's kind of a gun metal, uh, color, and, and there you go.

[:

[00:28:06] Eric Goranson: it, but I'm holding it up, but

[:

[00:28:20] Dave Selinger: Uh, it's very similar in terms of the internals of the camera. We do have a new kind of, uh, higher resolution sensor. We've got higher resolution, uh, night vision. We have better night vision. We have a, a spotlight. It's got an integrated charger in. It's gotta improve waterproofing and kind of mechanical stuff, but really kind of at the heart of this thing is we've got a higher level of AI.

[:

[00:28:59] Dave Selinger: One of the things that a [00:29:00] lot of people don't realize about the deep Sendal system. So you've got, you know, one of these huffs in your house, the, the gun metal one. What a lot of people don't realize is that this isn't like a hub. When you, you know, you have an Alexa or you have something like that, a lot of people think, oh, you know, this is the same.

[:

[00:29:35] Dave Selinger: And come up with new artificial intelligence and machine learning insights using that bigger AI processor. And so it'll be interesting to see what types of improvements we're gonna be able to launch over the next year. Cuz honestly we don't even know yet because we it's not out there yet. Yeah. So if

[:

[00:29:53] Eric Goranson: We're looking at it here a year ago, you could have had that range for a year. All of a sudden they went over and started using it. They're like, [00:30:00] oh, it got an update. Now it's an air fryer. No way they had built that. So you could build an air. It was, it had the ability to be an air fryer, but they just did an update.

[:

[00:30:11] Dave Selinger: dude. That is the single most useful thing I've ever heard of in, in, in a home appli, you know, other than Tesla, Tesla talks about it all the time. Yeah. That is amazing. Yeah. So

[:

[00:30:25] Eric Goranson: Oh, now you've got an air fire ear,

[:

[00:30:28] Eric Goranson: I think it's cool. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a heck of a lot healthier. I don't do a lot of it, but. So

[:

[00:30:43] Dave Selinger: What, why is this such a freaking big deal? I'll go buy you a toaster oven and I'll put a freaking fan of it and we can hold each other and, and post pictures on Facebook and say how cool we are. And, and she was super pissed. Like she said, you know, it's an air fry. [00:31:00] So anyway, so, so we got,

[:

[00:31:03] Eric Goranson: I was like, it's just dude, air fry, convection oven. We have a conviction of it already. What,

[:

[00:31:21] Dave Selinger: Uh, so sure. But, but we use it literally. I love it. Nice for heating stuff up, like where microwaves would kind of make something mushy. The air fry makes it a little crispy. Uh, I will say for those of you that are parents and listening to this and like, Ooh, this could change the equation. No, the kids don't eat more leftovers because of this.

[:

[00:31:49] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So that's a good way to go. It's a good way to go. I, I

[:

[00:32:01] Dave Selinger: We generally cook with olive oil anyway, but I, I have to say for, for the, the countertop, when you go to the businesses and they talk about the hardest thing for any of these businesses is for getting a consumer to give. Any amount of countertop space. That is the hardest thing. We'll, we'll give you some space for the coffee maker.

[:

[00:32:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. And you're right. They're just, they're complete. And the fan club of them is huge

[:

[00:32:37] Dave Selinger: I mean, that's one of the things too. Like we pack stuff up in the RV and one of the things we always try to remember is to bring the air fryer. Cause it also, you know, in an RV, especially in the summer, it gets really hot. You gotta kind of a cruddy. Yeah. You know, AC system in there. You generally never work inside, but if you can use an air fry, it doesn't generate as much heat and you don't end up heating up the interior.

[:

[00:33:12] Eric Goranson: I love it, man. I love it, but that's but it's just, it just shows you what. You know, over the air updates can do for

[:

[00:33:31] Dave Selinger: Because it's not sexy. It's age steel drum and a motor and a pump. And those three things still worked. The thing that broke was your stupid control board, right. You know, it's a $500, $800 washer dryer, and a, and a $700 control board. Cause I tried to fix it. I replaced all the belts. I replaced the motor. I replaced the wheels and it ends up being the controller and you're just hose.

[:

[00:34:01] Eric Goranson: I, I have a worse horror story of this. So my buddy, who is a, uh, national automotive guy and we'll leave him as that. He's been on the show before he gets a hold of, he goes, Hey, my mom's got a.

[:

[00:34:36] Eric Goranson: They had it in the .

[:

[00:34:42] Eric Goranson: service call, but it was saved

[:

[00:34:56] Dave Selinger: I I'm more on the medium rare, but she same, [00:35:00] she was using a Celsius thermometer and well done. It does not even begin to describe this piece of me. I mean, There, there are, uh, there's stores that sell leather that actually called her and said they would, they put in offers for this thing, cuz it was, it was that bad.

[:

[00:35:38] Eric Goranson: Yeah. This. Gray. Yeah, it was gonna be gray. And they were like, no, we want gray and black. And I'm like, , can't do it. Just go ahead, man. Take the tongs. It's all you.

[:

[00:36:03] Dave Selinger: That's my belief. That's my belief. Yeah. Now you could have your own preferences, but you are, you're super missing. Are you a, so eat dude on, on meat? Oh,

[:

[00:36:18] Dave Selinger: is like I said, two sponsorships here, so, yep.

[:

[00:36:43] Dave Selinger: And we came up with our recipe and, and we cooked that for like six years, every couple, a couple times a week, like that this is a staple for us. Yeah. Yeah. And the one thing about it though, is that with a tri-tip you've got a fat end and a thin cause of the cut, right. A thin. So one end's, you [00:37:00] know, less well done than the other.

[:

[00:37:11] Eric Goranson: for four and a half hours. Ooh.

[:

[00:37:28] Dave Selinger: And the thin it,

[:

[00:37:38] Dave Selinger: Because of the way. And the other thing about it that, so, so try tip again. It's a, it's a kind of a unique cut and that it's got a little bit of sin you to it.

[:

[00:38:06] Dave Selinger: Yeah, but it's pretty darn close, man. It's tasty. It's good. I actually had a tri-tip sandwich for lunch today cuz we had it this weekend and I had leftovers, but soy is another thing. Like if you, if you get a chance, you know, to try that out with a friend it's, it's pretty freaking fantastic.

[:

[00:38:28] Eric Goranson: Like you have

[:

[00:38:47] Dave Selinger: He was like, this is what I wanna do. And he went and worked with the major range manufacturers and built the builtin. I think I, I think they use, um, induction to eat. Right. They've got the induction yeah. Heat and [00:39:00] then the magnetic, uh, stir in the bottom. And so it's all integrated into there. You have the sensor, you just drop it in the water.

[:

[00:39:23] Dave Selinger: Is that dude existed.

[:

[00:39:37] Dave Selinger: story. Well, thanks man. Yeah. I, I mean happy to share, I, I, I've obviously got a little bit of a, a DIY in my, in my hands and that comes from growing up in Southern Oregon.

[:

[00:40:13] Dave Selinger: A a real strength of my upbringing that I'm really glad my folks said that was one of my best friends should take that to an extreme group. Went, moved to Alaska and he's next level, right? Like that dude. Yeah. He, he, you. Pulled down the trees that he then milled the logs into that he built oh yeah. House with.

[:

[00:40:46] Dave Selinger: I have a little bit of that in my jeans. And I'm, I'm really glad to have that. Uh, I then, uh, I got to go to Stanford where I studied machine learning. And artificial intelligence, you know, again, just another amazing [00:41:00] contrast and blessing in my life. I got to study with some of the, the best names in, in the industry for doing that.

[:

[00:41:20] Dave Selinger: But like the I've used

[:

[00:41:24] Dave Selinger: that the handset stuff for that push back on you and they vibrate, or your Xbox controller that vibrates that's all haptics. And that was, that was the research that I did in school. And, and one of the most interesting things I learned in that, that most people don't really realize when they, you know, you're sitting there holding your Xbox controller, is that your brain processes, these signals.

[:

[00:42:01] Dave Selinger: You're in this little car that moves four feet up and four feet down and that's it. I did that three weeks

[:

[00:42:11] Dave Selinger: yeah. They, you doing that. Yeah. And so that was what I studied was this like psychology interface with your senses, interfacing with robotics mm-hmm and that's that type of ride.

[:

[00:42:38] Dave Selinger: And, uh, so I got to study that at Stanford. That was amazing. Um, and then went to Amazon and, uh, and Amazon, I ran the first AI team there. I get to work with Jeff Bezos who was cool. I mean that dude's a dude, right? I mean, that guy's intense. Yeah.

[:

[00:43:01] Eric Goranson: He did

[:

[00:43:19] Dave Selinger: No. Uh, you know, a company that sold books and put Barnes and noble off the map or borders off the map. Turns into Walmart plus IBM, plus your television home Depot plus. Yeah. Yeah. I have a fire TV, TV, like it's not, you know, Toshiba branded with fire TV. It is an Amazon branded fire TV, fire TV. What the heck?

[:

[00:43:47] Eric Goranson: when you started there, you didn't think. Man I'm gonna have one of their TVs one day, dude, that probably wasn't even

[:

[00:44:02] Dave Selinger: So we were each paid a pretty significant part of our income may, maybe up to like 30, 40% of our income was in stock and Amazon. And they would always say, Hey, should I sell it or should I hold onto it? And you know, my advice at the time was like, gosh, I, I love what we're doing here, but. If you're worried about that, you should probably sell.

[:

[00:44:29] Eric Goranson: Sorry about that. 40 million. Yeah.

[:

[00:44:43] Dave Selinger: You, you definitely would not have guessed that we would be where we're at today by, by a country mile. Um, but it was, I'm sure it felt like any other startup. Yeah. I mean, It was, it was very, very, very weird to see some, you know, a company that had, we had like 15% gross margins. Right. Which is why [00:45:00] wall street hated it at the time.

[:

[00:45:21] Dave Selinger: You know, working on homes and working on real estate and improving real estate, things like that. Uh, and, and Redfin was an amazing experience as well. It's technology kinda helping you buy, buy properties and then continued that journey and started another company called rich relevance. I think that if I can, the part of my story that I didn't get a chance to tell here that I think also really interesting is I've tried to weave in all these stages of my career weave in opportunities to make the world a better.

[:

[00:46:09] Dave Selinger: And I try to do that through nonprofits. I tried to do that through I've built schools and developing countries. I've built orphanages, I've built all kinds of things. And one of the things that, that I, that my wife really encouraged me to. So I'll give her credit for this one. Was you, you know, I'm reaching out into developing countries and trying to help there instead of trying to help the people right around me and yep.

[:

[00:46:56] Dave Selinger: But if you're, if you're forgetting to touch people in the [00:47:00] community, that was one of the lessons I learned kind of at the end of a 10 year journey. And my wife kind of brought me home to that and reminded me to do that. And that's where we spent. A lot of our time and I've, I've found that to be really, really a big part of our lives and really rewarding.

[:

[00:47:37] Eric Goranson: And that is so much more fulfilling, cuz to be honest, I see it every day. I get to see it. I get to experience it versus fly off to a country and, and I maybe don't ever go back there again. Yeah. So it kind of gets to be a distant memory and it's nice just to be able to do so much more. Locally where you're feeding it every day.

[:

[00:48:11] Dave Selinger: I think that's really important, but then to be able to act as much and in, in this local sphere, I, again, I, I think in Silicon valley, we tend to think about the world as, as you know, we can change everything and we go do all this stuff and we're gonna go do big stuff. Yeah. But at the same time, like you gotta, you gotta be involved.

[:

[00:48:50] Dave Selinger: I, I was, I was going the wrong direction for a while. I.

[:

[00:49:01] Dave Selinger: Uh, oh, I, so I was in Merlin. So the guys in Klamath falls you'll know Merlin because that's where the rum Creek fire is right now.

[:

[00:49:26] Dave Selinger: It's like 25,000 acres or so, but it has over 1500 firefighters on it. They poured resources in it because it was right on the border. Of a huge, you know, a bunch of people's homes and properties and stuff like that. Yeah. So they, they got that one handled really, really quickly. Uh, but yeah, it's Merlin.

[:

[00:49:54] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's beautiful out that way. I used to go down as a kid cuz my parents had 10 acres at gold beach, so oh wow.

[:

[00:50:00] Dave Selinger: way. So you've on the gold, the road river, dude. I love that river. My wife and I. So we got married on the river up there. Oh nice. And it was just gorgeous, so, so beautiful. My buddy owns uh, a Jetboat company. That takes people up and down the rogue river. So for part of our wedding, we got to get our entire, we had like 140 people.

[:

[00:50:39] Dave Selinger: My dad had his day off on Thursday. We'd go rafting on Thursday and then we'd go on the weekends. I grew up fishing every weekend. I, I, in fact, just this morning I got on my Facebook memory. My Facebook memory 10 years ago today was catching a salmon on the road river in Hellgate canyon, uh, with my buddy out there.[00:51:00]

[:

[00:51:13] Eric Goranson: That is awesome. Yeah. It's uh, I've got a kid going down to we're heading down next weekend, dropping off at, uh, Southern Oregon university.

[:

[00:51:41] Eric Goranson: And I think it's something that homeowners, small business owners, medium business owners should really take a look at to make things more secure and safe around their

[:

[00:52:01] Dave Selinger: Every one of those is. That's the that's the first and foremost thing, you're gonna see people getting stopped in the middle of, you know, simple stuff, package stuff, uh, vandalism trespassing, but you're also gonna see some, some really serious stuff, right. People that are, that are breaking in their they've brought weapons.

[:

[00:52:45] Dave Selinger: The amount of crime that's happening is just so up into the right it's it's outta control. We need to provide safe environments for our families, for our kids, for our friends, for our businesses and our customers. Cause [00:53:00] that's the foundation of a society. That's the number one thing that a society should be providing to its citizens is safety.

[:

[00:53:13] Dave Selinger: you over there? Dub dub, dub dot deep sentinel.com. S E N T I N E L. And then if you want to, uh, read some of my, you know, ranting and, and raving musings. You can also go on LinkedIn and follow me personally.

[:

[00:53:47] Dave Selinger: And honestly, it's, it's about, you know, like you, you and I talking today, it's about sitting and talking to each other. There's so many solutions that exist between human beings, that the two political parties are just pulling us apart. [00:54:00] We don't have to greet, we just have to respect each other and.

[:

[00:54:06] Eric Goranson: I like that. So, yeah. So

[:

[00:54:23] Dave Selinger: Solutions are between us as human beings and, and hearing each other's stories. So that's why I'm excited to be here. I think that's what you're all about. And I, and I think that's what, you know, our, our future should be about

[:

[00:54:38] Dave Selinger: appreciate it. Eric's so great to be back.

[:

[00:54:54] Dave Selinger: I love talking to people about what I do and what, what we do. So, uh, you know, don't just go to the corporate side. If you want to want [00:55:00] to chit chat. I'm I'm all.

[:

[00:55:12] Eric Goranson: Well, I'm Eric G and you've been listening to around the house.

About the Podcast

Show artwork for Around the House® Home Improvement: A Complete Guide For your Home
Around the House® Home Improvement: A Complete Guide For your Home
Help for your remodeling, renovation, healthy home, interior design, and home improvement project for your kitchen, bathroom, and house!

Join Around the House Insider or Donate a Tip!

We would love you to join the Exclusive Club for Around the House Insider! You get exclusive content and the weekend podcast a couple of days early PLUS easy access to Eric G! Plus you get access to the hundreds of back episodes and so much more!
Join or Donate HERE
A
We haven’t had any Tips yet :( Maybe you could be the first!