Jamie Siminoff has maybe the best Shark Tank origin story of anyone. He went on the show in 2013 to pitch Doorbot, a video doorbell he built in his garage because he couldn't hear the regular doorbell while working out there. The sharks passed on him. Every single one. He walked out without a deal.
Then he rebranded Doorbot as Ring, kept building the company, and sold it to Amazon in 2018 for around $1 billion. So yeah, that worked out.
Siminoff went to Babson College and had been doing the entrepreneur thing for a while before Ring. He'd started several other ventures, including Unsubscribe.com. But Ring was the one that hit. The idea was simple and the timing was perfect. Home security was ripe for disruption and a smart doorbell that sent video to your phone was exactly the kind of product people didn't know they needed until they saw it.
The Shark Tank appearance is actually credited with giving Ring a huge visibility boost even though no deal was made. Sometimes just getting on the show is worth more than the investment itself. Siminoff has talked about this a lot, how the exposure was a turning point even without the check.
He later came back to Shark Tank as a guest shark, which is the ultimate full circle moment. The guy who got rejected by every shark in the room now sits in one of those chairs.
Key points:
- Founded Ring (originally Doorbot) in his garage
- Famously rejected on Shark Tank, then sold Ring to Amazon for roughly $1 billion
- Returned to Shark Tank as a guest shark
- Babson College graduate with a degree in entrepreneurship