Jamie Siminoff
Most consumer technology ideas die in the gap between a working prototype and a business that can scale. The pressure comes from all sides at once: capital runs thin, distribution stalls, investors pass, and the founder has to decide what to keep building and what to cut. The organisations that want to back, buy, or learn from founders at that stage need an honest account of what the decisions actually look like from inside the company.
Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, the Wi-Fi video doorbell company that Amazon acquired for roughly 1 billion dollars, and he speaks to leaders about how consumer technology businesses are actually built through rejection, constraint, and category creation.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jamie Siminoff
- He has the full founder arc on the record: invented a product category in a garage, pitched it on national television and walked out without a deal, rebuilt from near-bankruptcy, and sold to Amazon for about 1 billion dollars.
- He has run the acquired business inside Big Tech, giving buyers a rare view of what integration, reporting lines, and product autonomy look like after a landmark exit.
- He has repeated the cycle: founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc., took the CEO seat at the acquirer, then returned to Amazon as a VP running Ring and adjacent smart home units. Most speakers have one exit story; he has a sequence.
- The Shark Tank rejection is specific and documented, which makes the resilience material credible rather than motivational. It is cited by the Sharks themselves as one of the biggest misses in the show’s history.
- He co-authored “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door” with Andrew Postman, published in November 2025, which gives buyers a named, durable reference point for the material.
Biography highlights
- Founder and original CEO of Ring, acquired by Amazon in 2018 for approximately 1 billion dollars.
- Pitched DoorBot on ABC’s Shark Tank in 2013 and left without a deal; returned to the show as a guest Shark in 2018.
- Earlier founder of PhoneTag, the first voicemail to text service, and Unsubscribe.com, both acquired.
- Founder of Honest Day’s Work, acquired by Latch Inc. in 2023; subsequently appointed CEO of Latch.
- Rejoined Amazon in 2025 as Vice President running Ring and related smart home businesses, leading a pivot to AI.
- Babson College, Class of 1999, and Honorary Doctor of Laws from Babson in 2021, where he delivered the undergraduate commencement address.
- Co-author with Andrew Postman of “Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door,” published November 2025.
Biography
Ring began as DoorBot, a Wi-Fi video doorbell built in a garage in 2011. By 2013 it was on Shark Tank, where every investor passed. The company was close to running out of money. Seven years later, Amazon bought it for roughly 1 billion dollars. That arc is the material Siminoff brings to the stage, and he brings it with the receipts.
The more useful part of the story for serious operators is what happened between the rejection and the exit. Siminoff rebuilt the product and the brand, raised from Kleiner Perkins, Qualcomm Ventures, Goldman Sachs, DFJ Growth and Sir Richard Branson, and built Ring into a category defining consumer technology business. After the Amazon acquisition he stayed inside the company for five years, running Ring alongside Blink, Amazon Key and adjacent smart home lines. Most founder talks stop at the exit. His continues through integration.
He has since extended the pattern. He founded Honest Day’s Work, sold it to Latch Inc. in 2023, stepped in as Latch’s CEO, and in 2025 rejoined Amazon as a Vice President running Ring and nearby smart home units, now pivoting the category toward AI. In November 2025 he published “Ding Dong” with Andrew Postman, the first full account of how Ring actually got built. A Babson graduate and Honorary Doctor of Laws from the same institution, he is one of a small group of founders who can speak to rejection, category creation, acquisition, and re-entry as connected stages of one working life.
Key speaking topics
- Consumer technology product invention and category creation
- Scaling from prototype to acquisition
- Founder resilience through investor rejection
- Operating an acquired business inside Big Tech
- Smart home, connected devices, and AI in consumer hardware
- Brand building in hardware startups
- Hiring and team building in early stage companies
Ideal for
- Founders, CEOs and product leaders in consumer technology and connected hardware
- Corporate innovation, strategy and M and A teams working on acquisition integration
- Investor audiences and startup ecosystems running portfolio or founder programmes
- Entrepreneurship centres and executive education audiences in business schools
Audience outcomes
- A concrete, non-generic view of what it takes to get a hardware startup from prototype to billion-dollar exit.
- A working model for how to treat a high-profile rejection as distribution rather than a verdict.
- Specific insight into how an acquired category runs inside a company like Amazon, and what that means for teams going through similar integrations.
- A clear read on where consumer smart home and home security technology are heading as AI becomes the core layer of the product.
- Hiring and early team construction principles drawn from building Ring from a Craigslist hire list to a company sold for 1 billion dollars.
Talks
A founder level account of how a clearly held mission drives both commercial value and product decisions, drawn from building Ring from a garage prototype to an Amazon acquisition.
Key takeaways:
- How a single, specific mission shapes product, hiring and capital decisions at every stage
- What it takes to hold a company together through public rejection and near-insolvency
- How a founder led mission translates into value for customers, employees and shareholders simultaneously