Tony Stark lives in Scottsdale—or at least his doppelganger: Rick Smith, founder and CEO of AXON, a $30 billion market cap leader in public safety technology markets. Few entrepreneurs deserve the “visionary” moniker more than Smith. From AXON’s founding in a garage in 1993, the company has grown from its original Taser products to a multi-billion-dollar enterprise with the purpose to “Protect Lives.”
Over the past five years alone, their shares have returned nearly 700%. AXON joined the S&P 500 in 2023. (FYI, I’m a shareowner.)
I recently visited AXON to interview Smith and AXON’s president Josh Isner. (Video of our conversation here.) Smith and Isner represent a rare combination: a visionary leadership dyad. Think, Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell at SpaceX, or Steve Jobs and Tim Cook at Apple. Smith brings the sci-fi. Isner and team create the reality.
From Science Fiction To Life
Arriving at AXON’s headquarters, you’ll enter through a peculiar portal—an oval-shaped stainless steel room managing access via facial recognition (or via their friendly receptionist, Laura Rodriquez).
AXON’s communications lead Alexandra Engel quipped with a smile, “Rick wanted an entrance like the one in Men In Black, so that’s what we got.” Catwalks crisscross the complex. That’s due to Smith’s observation that, “every great lightsaber fight happens on a catwalk.”
It’s all part of AXON’s dynamic, discerning what customers might desire in the future and making it so.
Balancing Vision and Execution
During its first decade, AXON (originally known as Taser) experienced exponential growth and significant growing pains. Smith recalls, “Early in my career I had Steve Jobs syndrome,” so he didn’t listen well to customers. After market-defining initial successes, “we had 2 or 3 contemporaneous failures.”
Smith realized he was part of the problem. “I’m really not good at hiring people [or] having hard conversations.” After Smith’s management epiphany, he started trusting others to run operations, freeing himself to live in the future.
As Isner rose to lead sales and eventually to the chief operating role, Smith increasingly relied on him not only to manage the business, but also to challenge him. Isner “pushes back” when the superhero founder goes too far. “There’s this dynamic tension between the two of us, which is good.”
Smith connects the dots between customers and AXON’s product development team, while Isner runs the business. Smith muses, “If he weren’t doing this, Josh would probably be Bill Belichick,” referencing one of the greatest NFL coaches of all time.
Other visionary entrepreneurs faced similar journeys. After founding Dell in his dorm room, Michael Dell eventually learned to rely on exceptional managers like Kevin Rollins to transform the company from a scrappy challenger to industry-leading enterprise. Visionary leadership dyads work when two individuals combine complementary capabilities, vision and high trust to generate long-term outperformance.
Vision As A Team Sport: Reframing
No matter how compelling the ideas emanating from the C-suite, Smith asserts, “creativity is a team sport.”
One of the ways AXON inspires and focuses its teams’ creativity is an approach I call reframing: reframing challenges and asking better questions.
Early on, the company focused on making better tasers. That’s great, but not enough to lead the future. Smith admonished, “Our job is not just to sell the next version of taser. How do we make the bullet obsolete? I challenge you guys to give me a weapon that outperforms a bullet in stopping power.” As a result, they started discovering far more innovative answers and offerings.
Customer-Obsessed Creators
Unlike most companies, AXON doesn’t allow its current capabilities and products to define its boundaries.
AXON’s vision is bounded by possible future customer needs, rather than by AXON’s current businesses, or even by what customers say they want. AXON’s team listens intently, but also scans horizons. Customers rarely ask for breakthroughs.
In a 2017 future concept video, AXON envisioned a rapid-responsive future of policing. For instance, the video proposed AI-powered completion of police reports from bodycam data—not possible at the time. In April 2024, AXON made it real with the launch of Draft One. Imagine the hours officers can now reallocate to achieving their missions.
Starting in the 2010s, AXON closely monitored advancements in drones. In 2018 they launched AXON Air with external partners. Later in 2024, the company acquired two of those drone company partners, Sky-Hero and Dedrone. AXON cultivated partnerships and expertise, building optionality and offerings before the competition.
Anything, Anywhere, Anytime
AXON’s strategy reflects the essence of what my co-author Kaihan Krippendorff and I term Proximity in our recent book by the same name. Proximity observes that digital technologies compel value creation ever closer to the moment of demand. I first started sharing Proximity on Forbes in 2017.
AXON brings more and more capabilities closer to the moment of need for public safety professionals. Drones for situational awareness and rapid response, AI-completed police reports, virtual reality for training—anything, anywhere, anytime. That’s quintessential Proximity, and it’s winning.
Ethics & Purpose Of Public Safety
Smith offers a provocative perspective on the ethics of technology and public safety. Reflecting on the 2002 film Minority Report, he challenges conventional wisdom. Many people interpret the film as posing a dystopic future. “They had a technology that took murders to zero in a violent country, took false convictions to zero.” Smith counters that logic. One person gets framed and that invalidates the entire system? “To me, that is an unimaginably crazy good system.”
The AXON team engages across the public safety community in rigorous ethical dialogues, which evolve as technologies and threats change. Technologies like predictive AI must operate within accountable systems designed to minimize bias and uphold individual rights. Advancing public safety while maintaining public trust will be essential to ensure communities feel both protected and respected.
AXON’s commitment to public safety and technological innovation finds its most ambitious expression in “Moonshot 2032.” AXON’s initiative endeavors to cut gun-related deaths between police and the public by 50% over a decade.
AXON’s moonshot motivates continuous exploration of public safety challenges, addressed with the latest technologies, equipping public safety agencies to respond faster and more effectively while simultaneously protecting lives.
“Luke, I Am Your Father”
Smith’s vision for AXON’s future remains bold and cinematic. The company’s stunning new headquarters under development amps the sci-fi theme: more catwalks and a platform reminiscent of the scene from The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke Skywalker discovers his father.
Rather than becoming the Evil Empire, Smith aspires for AXON to remain the rebel force. “I’m terrified. I want to continue to be the disruptor—and not the disrupted.
Meanwhile, life is better with lightsabers.
