C’mon really?
Similar to Juicero they could have gone to market with a simpler and less over engineered product and have a viable company but leadership had their heads in the clouds. He even starts the article with how amazing the Swiss watch engineer respected their work - as if that matters in the door lock market.
From the article: “... our customers would fall in love with the way they engaged the product and actually experience joy as they used it.”
I’m having a hard time visualizing myself experiencing joy unlocking a door.
He doesn't seem to have literally copy-and-pasted that palaver from somewhere else, but the first page of these search results suggests a malfunctioning robot stringing together memorized phrases at random:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=our+customers+would+fall+in+love+w...
I would argue that it wasn't really engineered at all. Almost anyone can build something with a practically unlimited budget; engineering is a game of trade-offs. That juice press was ridiculously over-designed and didn't need to cost anywhere near that much.
The mechanism of a deadbolt is pretty simple. Other smart lock companies do fine with simple mechanisms. The way to differentiate a product in that space is ease of use and battery life, not by needlessly over-complicating a part that the users won't see.