The founder of Ring is American entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff, who originally created the Wi-Fi video doorbell in his garage under the name Doorbot. While many know him from his dramatic rejection on Shark Tank, his path to building a billion-dollar home security brand involved years of failed ventures, empty bank accounts, and a simple garage experiment born out of necessity.
Understanding how Siminoff built Ring requires looking past the polished corporate exit to Amazon. His journey offers a masterclass in product persistence, bootstrap marketing, and recognizing everyday friction points that major corporations miss.
Who Is Jamie Siminoff?
Jamie Siminoff grew up in New Jersey, working odd jobs from a young age before attending Babson College, an institution known for its focus on entrepreneurship. Long before inventing the video doorbell, Siminoff was a serial creator who launched multiple early-stage technology companies.
His early enterprises included business plan writing, international voice-over-IP telecom networks, a voicemail-to-text transcription service called PhoneTag, and an email cleanup tool named Unsubscribe.com. While he successfully exited some of these early ventures, none of them captured a massive consumer market or solved a deep, personal pain point in the way his next project would. For broader information on this issue, detailed coverage can also be found at Financial Times.
Working out of a workshop lab called Edison Jr., Siminoff struggled to hear his doorbell ring while working in the garage. That minor household annoyance triggered a practical idea: routing the doorbell audio and video directly to a smartphone.
The Birth of Doorbot and the Shark Tank Rejection
In 2013, Siminoff launched his invention as a crowdfunded startup called Doorbot. He spent his last $20,000 building an elaborate presentation set and appeared on the reality television show Shark Tank to pitch the product.
Seeking $700,000 for a 10% stake in the company, Siminoff faced a harsh reception from the panel of investors. Most of the Sharks doubted the market size or dismissed the concept. Investor Kevin O'Leary offered a complex deal involving a steep royalty structure that Siminoff turned down. He walked off the stage without a funding deal, completely broke and facing mounting debt.
"The good news for me was I was already too far in on the business. The only way for me to get out with any skin left on me was to make this thing somewhat successful." — Jamie Siminoff
Despite failing to secure an investment, the television exposure generated a surge in consumer awareness. Siminoff used the momentum to keep manufacturing units, handling customer support himself, and slowly expanding operations out of his garage.
Rebranding to Ring and Scaling the Brand
Recognizing that the device was more than just a tool for doors, Siminoff rebranded Doorbot to Ring in 2014. He shifted the brand's core mission away from simple hardware gadgets toward neighborhood safety and crime reduction.
Siminoff implemented creative guerrilla marketing strategies to keep the company afloat. He secured appearances on home shopping networks like QVC, forged partnerships with local law enforcement agencies to integrate community watch features, and relentlessly focused on customer feedback to iterate on video latency and battery life.
By positioning Ring as a comprehensive home security ecosystem rather than a single gadget, the company captured mainstream adoption. Millions of units were sold globally, turning the front-door camera into a standard suburban fixture.
The Billion-Dollar Acquisition by Amazon
Five years after walking away from Shark Tank empty-handed, Siminoff achieved one of the largest tech exits of the decade. In 2018, Amazon acquired Ring for approximately $1.1 billion to $1.15 billion.
The acquisition cemented Ring as a cornerstone of Amazon's smart-home strategy, sitting alongside Alexa and Blink devices. Siminoff stayed on to run the company as an independent subsidiary within Amazon for five years, eventually stepping down from his day-to-day role in 2023 to focus on new ventures and writing. In late 2025, he published a tell-all memoir detailing the startup's volatile history, titled Ding Dong! The Untold Story of How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone's Front Door.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did any Shark Tank investor regret rejecting Ring?
Yes. Several investors on the panel later publicly cited passing on Ring as one of their biggest missed opportunities in the history of the show, given the company's eventual billion-dollar valuation.
When did Amazon buy Ring?
Amazon officially acquired Ring in February 2018 for roughly $1.1 billion, making it one of the largest acquisitions in Amazon's history.
What was Ring originally called?
The company was originally founded in 2013 under the name Doorbot before being rebranded to Ring in 2014.
Is Jamie Siminoff still involved with Ring?
No. Siminoff remained with Amazon to lead the Ring division for five years post-acquisition before stepping down in 2023 to pursue other entrepreneurial projects.
