Shaquille O’Neal loves solving problems.
The basketball icon and four-time NBA champion, 54, has two master’s degrees, a doctorate, served as a sheriff’s deputy and honorary U.S. Marshal, and once played for Doc Rivers.
Back in 2016, the basketball icon needed to install a home security system only to have a company quote him $60,000 to $80,000. During one of his routine trips to Best Buy — his favorite store — he spotted the Ring Doorbell Camera for sale at a fraction of the price and decided to give it a whirl.
“I went to China the next week and thought, ‘Damn, this thing works in China!’” O’Neal recalls to Variety.
He began hounding Colin Smeeton, his longtime manager and business partner, about meeting the owner of Ring and investing in the company. The following January, O’Neal made a beeline for Ring founder Jamie Siminoff at CES, the annual tech trade show in Las Vegas, telling him, “I’d love to find a way to partner with you but I don’t want to just be a pitchman; I want to have equity in the company.” So, O’Neal was granted what Smeeton calls “a sizable equity stake in the company” that made him millions when it sold to Amazon for $1.15 billion a year later.
