A letter from the founders, what to expect in 2023

Wyze News
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A LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS. WHAT TO EXPECT IN 2023. HAPPY NEW YEAR, FROM WYZE!

Friends,

Wow, what a year it has been.

Over the last 5 years building Wyze, we have felt the highest of highs and some of the lowest of lows. This year, in particular, it seems we have had moments on both sides.

We’ve felt some effects of a slowing economy. We could have been better at balancing resources across the business. Our inventory levels have been way too high after the supply chain bullwhips of last year and we have had to run deep discounts to reduce overstock. Hopefully, you snagged some extra Wyze gear through the correction :slight_smile:

Despite the challenges, we have so much to celebrate at Wyze.

The Wyze family has now grown to over 10 million users! Over 1 Million users are Cam Plus users!

There are 20 million Wyze devices out in the wild!

Wyze AI detected 67 billion events!

These numbers are unfathomable to us.

We launched several products that have received great customer reviews, including Cam Protect, Wyze Air Purifier, Wyze Lock Bolt, Wyze Garage Door Controller, Wyze Gun Safe, Wyze Cam v3 Pro, and Wyze Mesh Router. We also revamped our website, warehouse, and shipping capabilities, making huge improvements to shipping speed and removing preorders for a better customer experience.

We are still a founder-run company. The same 3 of us who started this company when we had 10 users are the same people running it with 10 million. We’ve had a lot of learning to do as we’ve had to manage a much bigger business, but the startup mentality and focus on users will never leave us. We are here for you just as we were on day one.

That day-one startup mentality will be ultra-focused in 2023, because this year, much like our first year in business, will be the year of the CAMERA. With your help, we will revisit everything about the Wyze Cam experience. We will focus hard on hearing all your feedback and making the best camera hardware and software in existence. Product launches in 2023 will also be focused on cameras, with few exceptions. Get ready for some big camera announcements in just a few weeks! And we will of course continue to support and update all Wyze products.

Can’t wait for another year together with you. THANK YOU for being Wyze users. THANK YOU for your loyalty.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Wyze Founders,

Yun Zhang

Dave Crosby

Dongsheng Song

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Nice to hear that they are going to focus on cameras in 2023. I’m hoping to get the ability to automatically arm/disarm Wyze Cam Protect based on location. :grin:

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Hopefully Wyze will focus on features and stability improvements of their current product lineup in 2023.

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2023 is year of the cameras. Bigger camera coming. Are we going to see Wyze Dashcam?

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That is part of the plan!

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I’d buy that! Maybe even RV backup and side cameras. :smile:

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That’s a great picture of these guys! I had the opportunity to meet them in person earlier this year and I have to say I was quite impressed. They are genuinely really good, nice guys, and Dongsheng is seriously EXTREMELY TALL! I’m 6’ and I felt really short meeting him! :rofl: I seriously didn’t expect that. This picture doesn’t do his height justice. It left an impression that even though he is such a big guy, he’s one of the kindest guys you’d ever talk to. Remarkable. And Yun really LOVES the company and cares about the people he works with and wants to work with them for years to come. I was fairly convinced that Yun cared about the company, people, and vision of the company for the LONG TERM way more than he cared about profits or money or anything. He seemed like a man of vision and legacy and disrupting industries and the world for the better to me. He really believes in what he preaches about making Tech affordable for everyone and pushing to the limits of too good to be true. Almost everyone already knows the kind of guy Dave is as he’s the most famous one (and his family too), and he may be the face of Wyze in many ways, so most of you know Dave fairly well and the thoughtful and cool things he has done. I teared up watching his video of him surprising his wife with buying her land and building their dream home. :slight_smile: Touching stuff. He cares in person too.
–Really great intelligent guys who actually DO care. I look forward to all their updates and efforts.

A lot of people are going to be excited that the main focus is going to be cameras and supporting current products.

I like that they put out these “State of the Wyze” addresses occasionally. :slight_smile: I enjoy them.

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They spread themselves too thin with all the products and I think it showed. I’m glad they are commuting to a focus. Selfishly I wish it was cameras/security and they continued to work on the HMS. Basic things like being able to have other profiles to set than home, away or disarmed and not being able to set by voice through smart assistants is a miss to me.

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Spread themselves too thin, with too many products, and forgot about those of us who were here supporting them from the early days. Buy our cameras, no subscription and they will work! Now, it’s buy a subscription and hope they will work.

Also, make sure you don’t ever cancel a subscription. I just cancelled a yearly subscription and boom, back to basic even though there were several months left. I understand the greedy nature of a no refund policy, but now you want to take away what I already paid for because I’m leaving?

I’m done with Wyze, will take a lot to get the bad taste of the experience to go away.

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It’s great for the founders to take the time for this, but I am a little disappointed at “Product launches in 2023 will also be focused on cameras, with few exceptions.”

Great for cameras, but the app needs the most work if you ask me. I’m plagued by the lack of sharing/multiple sites options. I’ve felt like all the work to date has already been focused on cameras at the expense of the infrastructure needed to use them effectively.

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Thanks for your expressed gratitude and really hope for your success in the new year 2023. Please reach out directly to your customers by keeping them informed on your progression. Thanks again for your message! Capt Rob

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I like this sentence from the founders. Thank you Wyze. Let’s all keep giving Wyze feedback that can help them achieve this goal.

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excellent. Many perhaps most of us look forward to see the focus on the cameras and improve, integrate, enhance the current products / app.

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Hopefully the full rewrite of the Wyze App that includes Native Landscape Mode is one of those “Few Exceptions”

SJ

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Happy to read the 2023 letter. We’re huge fans of Wyze and have enjoyed watching the product line and services grow. Like anyone who’s spent their career in tech I can roll with the highs and lows and growing pains because I appreciate the mission of bringing good tech products to people at such amazingly fair prices. Makes me want to hop on I405 and run by their offices in Kirkland to see if they could use an old tech broad like me :slightly_smiling_face:. But I digress.

Wyze products — occasional glitches aside and even with the new features I’d like to see (and would be happy to send to Support in “user story” format) — make something easier for our family pretty much every day. Including saving us from a near disaster on Monday when we saw via Pan Cam that our basement sump pumps weren’t pumping. We jumped in the car to make the 90 minute drive home just in the nick of time.

Best wishes for the New Year to the founders and the entire team at Wyze.

Britt

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Lets work on the 180° rotation. After a month, I am tired of seing my video upside down since the last update.

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So…does this mean no to dev tools for home assistant integration and a Google assistant integration for the robot vacuum?

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Great note. I am glad they expect to focus on improving their existing products. The big one for me is to improve shared permissions across multiple accounts.

Have a Happy New Year!

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I would love Home assistant integration. Though I believe their first inter-platform focus is likely to be MATTER compatibility and allow Home Assistant access through that, rather than dividing their efforts on 3rd party platform support. That would be my dream though if they did give dev tools to Home Assistant.

Regardless, I wouldn’t say that either of those are a solid “No” anyway, especially since they also said:

And while their primary focus will be related to cameras, they can also make sure their future designs take the long term view into account.

In my opinion, anyone who doesn’t at least consider Home Assistant and inter-platform compatibility is in for a rough road in the long term and future proofing because that’s the way everything is slowly angling.

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