Few major success stories come without a bout of rejection. Take Amazon’s Ring.
The popular home-security brand first came into the limelight when founder Jamie Siminoff pitched the product on Shark Tank in 2013. But Siminoff didn’t land a deal with any of the Sharks he was hoping would invest in his idea. At the time, the product was called Doorbot; Siminoff had asked the Sharks for a $700,000 investment for a 10% stake in his company, valuing it at $7 million.
He marketed it as a caller ID for your doorbell and said during his pitch the company had done about $1 million in business with each unit priced at $199 during its first nine months. Several Sharks, however, doubted Siminoff’s product could do enough or they could offer enough value to his company.
“I’m wrestling over where this goes in the market,” Daymond John said. Siminoff declined an offer from Kevin O’Leary, a.k.a. Mr. Wonderful, where he would’ve provided $700,000 with a 10% royalty that dropped down to 7% after he recouped his initial investment, plus 5% of the company’s equity.
Siminoff left empty-handed that day. But just five years after Siminoff’s Shark Tank appearance, he sold his company, which had been renamed Ring in 2014, to Amazon for $1 billion. More than 10 million people now have a Ring doorbell, according to a 2023 stat cited by Politico.
