Here’s why he thinks success is a little bit like playing the lottery.
April 9, 2020 2 min read
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Ring founder Jamie Siminoff’s very public failure eventually landed his company a $1 billion sale to Amazon.
A lifelong inventor, Siminoff often tinkered with new ideas in his garage. Frustrated by his inability to hear the doorbell while working, he wondered if there was a way to connect it to his phone.
Sensing that he had stumbled onto something big, Siminoff began building a Wi-Fi-connected doorbell that would use video surveillance to screen visitors. His goal was to make homes safer and rid neighborhoods of crime.
Hoping to take his budding business to the next level, Siminoff landed an appearance on Shark Tank. With his bank accounts drained, he laid it all on the line for a shot with the Sharks.
But when the day finally came, he went home without an offer.
“Driving home from Shark Tank without the money, as much as I was almost in tears in the car, still dead broke … I only had one thing to do the next day,” Siminoff says. “[I had] to try to keep going, because stopping was death.”
Siminoff now believes his appearance on Shark Tank was his best marketing technique. Within a month of the episode airing, he had raised $1 million in seed funding en route to his billion-dollar sale and has since gone on to be a guest investor on the show.
“I think the secret is luck, a lot of hard work and more luck,” Siminoff says. “Every hour of hard work you put in is like buying another lottery ticket.”
In this episode of How Brands Are Born, learn how Siminoff is working to make communities safer and smarter.
How Brands Are Born is presented by Cardone Ventures, in partnership with Original Stories Media. Learn how Grant Cardone and Brandon Dawson can help your business transform and scale to 10X levels HERE.
