Ring Founder Jamie Siminoff’s journey from Shark Tank to… Shark Tank
So, what does it take to build a billion dollar company?
Melisa Seah is a junior studying Business Administration and Communication Design. Last semester, she was the lead of Founders, Spark SC’s initiative to share stories between startup founders and students through community discussion and unconventional events.
Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, just sold his company to Amazon for over $1 billion this year. But, it wasn’t an easy journey that led Jamie to such a successful acquisition. He started Ring by working late nights in his garage, and never envisioned growing the company to what it is today.
Through Founders, I hosted a fireside chat with Jamie that provided fascinating insights into his entrepreneurial mindset and journey. After sitting down with him and hearing his story, here are some of my key takeaways from our conversation, along with a few quotes Jamie said during the chat.
Passion for entrepreneurship can start young.
“I was always an inventor. I loved building stuff as a kid.”
Jamie’s experience tinkering with all sorts of things as a child allowed him to put his creative energy to good use. On top of that, Jamie’s inherent self-starting nature shone through as he got older. In college, he used to put up posters around town, saying that he would do anything for $10, and he did — working all sorts of odd jobs with a friend. His genuine interest in creating products and opportunities for himself served as a powerful foundation for the start of Jamie’s entrepreneurial journey.
However, finding your entrepreneurial vision takes time.
“I don’t know if there are serial entrepreneurs — I think it’s people who haven’t found out what they like yet. A lot of the times, you think that’s a serial entrepreneur, but it’s really just trying to figure something out.”
Jamie worked on two companies before founding Ring. While he successfully sold both of his companies, neither venture truly struck a chord with him. It was only when the idea of Ring came around that Jamie really found a vision that resonated with himself and so many consumers nationwide. The mission to build something for others that
Inspiration comes from everyday problems.
“It’s interesting when you have a billion dollar idea sitting in front of you, and you don’t know about it.”
Jamie’s wife served as the initial inspiration for Ring: She had wanted to know who was at the door when they came ringing, and Jamie thought of the solution to connect the doorbell to a phone so she could see who was there, and feel safe. When he invented a solution, he never felt like there was an “aha moment” where he knew that this product was his next company. In fact, he said that all the projects he was experimenting with slowly started to converge, and then working on the electric doorbell became what he focused all his energy on.
Persistence in the face of failure is the toughest thing you can do.
After starting Ring in a garage with a couple of college friends, Jamie pitched his venture — then called DoorBot — on Shark Tank, leaving him broke and without a deal. While it could’ve been easy to claim that this failure only spurred him to work harder, Jamie said that the years that followed were the toughest. Strapped for cash, he pushed through towards building up what he had envisioned for his company. His honesty and genuine answer to how hard this rejection and lack of funding hit himself and his company was refreshing, showing the reality of the highs and lows that every entrepreneur has to face in the process of creating a company.
Focus on a social mission.
Ring’s primary goal has always been to reduce crime in neighborhoods, and by creating a product with a focus on something larger than just itself, Jamie explained that building a company with the aim to help increase safety in communities really allowed him to find a purpose within what he was doing.
You never know what’s in store for the future.
When Jamie started Ring, he never thought about an ‘exit strategy’ or an end goal for where he wanted his company to end up. When Jeff Bezos came around early this year and acquired Ring for one billion dollars (the second largest acquisition Amazon has ever made, with the first being Whole Foods), it seemed like the perfect way for Jamie to continue to grow his company with Amazon’s resources. No entrepreneur truly has a plan that’s laid out in front of them, and that’s what makes the journey so much more exciting.
Things can come full circle.
With Jamie now serving as a guest shark on the latest season of “Shark Tank”, he proves that facing an early rejection at the start of building a startup doesn’t have to be the end of any entrepreneur’s journey, but can be in fact just the beginning. His willingness to work with grit, perseverance, and passion sets him apart from other founders and is what brought him to build such a successful and impactful company.
And a final takeaway from myself…
Delving into an entrepreneur’s story is fascinating.
Personally, getting the opportunity to learn about Jamie Siminoff’s story from the man himself and hear about his life and mindset was an unreal experience. I’ve always found that understanding not just the “what” but the “why” behind what a founder has built provides such unique insights into an individual’s mindset, and our conversation gave me not only a broader grasp but a deeper context of his entrepreneurial journey.
Jamie was such an authentic, approachable, and funny individual, and I cannot wait to see what he continues to build with Ring in the future.
