Ring

Jamie Siminoff was working in his garage when he realized he couldn't hear his doorbell. It was a tiny problem—a doorbell is just a $10 commodity product—but it nagged at him. When he mentioned it to his wife, she said something that shifted his perspective entirely: it made her feel safer at home. That comment unlocked a bigger insight. The security market had been built on 1800s-era alarm technology: trip a sensor, call a central station. Nobody was thinking about how to use modern technology—smartphones, WiFi, cameras—to fundamentally rethink home security around presence and prevention rather than reactive response.

Siminoff's approach was contrarian from day one. While most founders ask, "What can I do with this new technology?" he asked, "What problem do people actually have?" He didn't chase trends or shinier chips. He was solving a real, human problem that affected billions of homes globally.

The early days were pure invention. Siminoff started tinkering in his garage with soldering irons and the emerging ecosystem of consumer WiFi and smartphone technology. He wasn't building a "camera company" or an "alarm company"—he was building a tool to make neighborhoods safer. That clarity meant everything about the product would flow from the mission, not from whatever tech was trendy.

By 2016, Ring was taking off faster than Siminoff expected. His wife was out trick-or-treating when she called him, amazed: "This is insane. Every house has a Ring." They'd later play a game while driving around their neighborhood, yelling "Ring!" every time they spotted one on a house—until they had to stop because they were yelling the whole time. The product was everywhere.

Ring's traction came through word-of-mouth and organic adoption. People saw it on their neighbors' houses and wanted one. By 2017, just a few years in, the company was doing $480 million in revenue with triple-digit growth rates. But that explosive growth came with a paradox: the unit economics were amazing, but the company was burning cash at an insane rate. When you're growing 500% year-over-year and your customer service team takes 3-6 months to ramp, you're hiring 2-3X what you need right now just to avoid crushing under demand. "Money was just being lit on fire everywhere," Siminoff said.

By late 2017, Siminoff found himself in an impossible position. He had two exits brewing: he was deep in negotiations with Amazon, and simultaneously preparing to raise $200 million in financing where he'd finally get meaningful secondary money to take off the table. But then everything collapsed at once.

First, Amazon's Nick Camaros told him the deal was off. Siminoff had to call back and mention a small lawsuit injunction from ADT—he'd poached some engineers from an ADT-backed company and hadn't handled it diplomatically. "We're out," Amazon said. Within hours, Siminoff had to call his backup investors and mention the same lawsuit. "We're out too."

Within days, Ring's cash position flipped from high-flush to a -$70 million hole. The company was essentially bankrupt. Siminoff went into what he calls his "pilot checklist" mode—calm, mechanical, survival mode. He gathered the team and said: we have to blow out Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We have to break every record. Everything else stops.

They went all-in. Every social post, every push, every resource went into those weeks. Ring became the #1 seller at Best Buy. Siminoff estimates that sheer desperation and intensity added at least 10-15% extra sales. And then, in the middle of that chaos, ADT called. "Would you like to talk settlement?" It was like someone offering oxygen when you're suffocating.

They settled fast—Siminoff describes it as a surreal scene where a retired judge shuttled back and forth between two conference rooms, and by day's end, it was done. On December 9th, 2017, they signed the settlement. Three weeks later, on December 31st, 2017, Amazon wired $1.15 billion. The deal closed less than 30 days after the lawsuit was resolved.

Siminoff stayed at Amazon through 2023, growing Ring from the $480 million revenue point to roughly $4 billion. But the intensity that built the company also burned him out. "I felt like I delivered the package," he said. In 2023, he stepped down. He missed the mission. He missed inventing.

He reflects on the whole journey with unusual honesty. At the time of the wire transfer in April 2018, he was making $150,000 a year as CEO—he'd prided himself on being the lowest-paid executive—and he had nearly zero dollars in savings because he was donating to charity galas he felt obligated to attend. If Ring had collapsed, he would have been wiped out. "That made me desperate," he admits. "And desperate is a feature, not a bug."

Today, Siminoff applies his "snowball method" to spotting new billion-dollar ideas. The concept is simple: find a small, unsexy problem nobody else is obsessing over (like a doorbell you can't hear, or flies on your farm), start rolling down the hill, gathering momentum and knowledge, and let the snowball grow. He's explicit about one rule: work on one thing. Splitting energy across multiple ideas kills 99 out of 100 founders.

When asked about the biggest lesson from working with Jeff Bezos post-acquisition, Siminoff points to patience and positivity. Bezos doesn't celebrate effort—he gets things done. He's patient about the future, doesn't panic, and lets solutions emerge rather than forcing them. It's different from Siminoff's "punch a wall and yell" intensity, but he's learned to blend both approaches. The same traits that take a company from zero to $1.15 billion can also blow everything up if you're not careful. The trick is knowing which mode you need, when.