Jamie Siminoff is a born inventor.
When he was 7, he started finding “problems” around his home to solve with his creations. As an adult, he transformed his garage into a sort of invention laboratory, but doing so created another issue that needed fixing.
In 2010, Jamie was dreaming up inventions in his “shop” when he realized he couldn’t hear his home’s doorbell while he was working. He searched for solutions and, finding none on the market, decided to make one himself.
The result was a video doorbell that incorporated Wi-Fi to allow users to see and speak to whomever was at their door. He called the device DoorBot, and his wife told him she liked it because it made her feel safer. Hearing that, his mind opened up to the possibilities.
Jamie started working on DoorBot in earnest, but he quickly ran into trouble when it came to funding the project. The inventor needed an investor, so he was over the moon when he landed a spot on “Shark Tank,” an entrepreneurial reality TV show.
On the show, Jamie appealed to sharks Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O’Leary, and Daymond John for $700,000 in exchange for a 10 percent stake in the company. In a move that proves sometimes even the experts get it wrong, all of the sharks passed on Jamie’s offer.
Jamie was sad to leave “Shark Tank” empty-handed, but he believed in his product and refused to give up! He resolved to work even harder to get the funding he needed.
“It might be the competitive side of me or something, I’m just not willing to fail,” he said. “I think the only way to fail is to stop, and so because of that I’m just not willing to stop.”
Even though he didn’t earn any investor money, everyone who saw Jamie on “Shark Tank” was impressed.
“After ‘Shark Tank,’ we started selling DoorBots like crazy, and that drove sales to $3 million within the year,” Jamie said. “As the business grew, we didn’t want to be just one product, so we built a whole line of home security solutions and rebranded it as Ring.”
Jamie’s little garage invention really took off! Three years after his “Shark Tank” debut, billionaire investor Richard Branson put $28 million into Jamie’s business. By 2018, Ring was purchased by Amazon for an eye-watering $1 billion!
Now that Jamie is an unequivocal success, he’s truly come full circle. In 2021, he was invited to return to the TV show as a guest shark for the premier of season 10, which also happens to be their 200th episode!
“I’m the first entrepreneur to have gone from pitching the sharks to sitting in a shark’s chair – something I couldn’t have imagined even in my wildest dreams,” Jamie said.
Yet he did not return to the show to gloat. Instead, he hopes to share his unique perspective with budding inventors and inspire them to persevere in the face of failure.
“I’m looking for that person that is just so committed, so excited, so passionate about what they’re doing, that no matter what they’ll make that business work through the hard times and through the good times,” he explained.
Sometimes what looks like failure is actually the beginning of something magical! Jamie may have lost his chance on “Shark Tank” all those years ago, but now he’s back as living proof that giving up is never an option!
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