Key Takeaways

This as-told-to story is based on a conversation with Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring and author of Ding Dong, which explores how he turned his garage-built prototype into a video doorbell that led to a $1 billion acquisition by Amazon.

I’ve always been an inventor. As a kid, I would tinker all the time. That ultimately led to working on a bunch of small tech startups as an adult, but nothing huge. I sort of had an entrepreneurial midlife crisis and told my wife I was just going into the garage to work on things. When I was in the garage, I couldn’t hear the doorbell. It was 2011, and I’d just gotten an iPhone, so I figured there must be a doorbell on the market that could connect to my iPhone with Wifi. But nothing existed.

Since I was already in the garage working on various projects, I decided to build one. I took a camera, hacked some stuff up and developed a contraption I called the Doorbot. I put it on my front door. My wife said it made her feel safer at home, which was really the aha moment. It wasn’t just about building the doorbell. It was about understanding that by being connected to the world through our phones, we could approach home security in a totally different way. That changed everything. We set out with the mission to make neighborhoods safer.

The Kickstarter pre-sale and ‘Shark Tank’ appearance

A couple of years later, we ended up doing a pre-sale on Kickstarter, which gained traction, and took the product on Shark Tank in November 2013. I consider Shark Tank the Olympics for entrepreneurs and inventors. It’s a huge opportunity for credibility and awareness. So I trained as if I were an athlete preparing for the Olympics. I built the set in my backyard and had neighbors come over and ask me questions.

Producers had told me to get ready for the Sharks to talk over each other. It’s a lot to manage — and it can’t be boring if the episode’s going to make it on air. You could have the best........

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