After Siminoff appeared on Season 5 of "Shark Tank," the business saw immense growth.
"It has now been four years since 'Shark Tank,' and the business is now valued at $1 billion," Siminoff said on an update for "Shark Tank" that aired Nov. 12, 2017. "Today we're over 1,300 people, 10 core products, [sold in] 16,000 stores." Ring even landed Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson as an investor after he saw one of the company's products.
Richard Branson declined to comment on the Amazon deal to CNBC Make It through a spokesperson Tuesday.
Before his doorbell idea, Siminoff built and sold a handful of other companies, one for a price tag as high as $17 million in 2009, according to the Los Angeles Times. (The profits were split between Siminoff and his partners, and Siminoff invested his share in new businesses.)
He's a constant inventor who has been tinkering since he was 7 years old. Siminoff remembers projects like a blanket through which he could pump icy water from an aquarium to cool down on hot summer days as a kid. And despite early success with other businesses, like SimulScribe, offering voicemail transcription services, or Unsubscribe, which promised to declutter email inboxes, he wasn't fulfilled. None of his ventures had captured his whole imagination.
So in late 2010, Siminoff set up shop in his garage and put all his focus into dreaming up new products. There was just one problem: He couldn't hear the doorbell ring from his work space. He looked for a product that could buzz his phone with a notification when someone rang and couldn't find one.
"I literally built myself a WiFi doorbell," he said, not seeing it as a future business but a solution to an annoying problem. He remembered thinking, "I need this damn thing so I can be in my garage inventing."
Then his wife remarked how much safer she felt with a device that could tell you who was knocking before you let them inside. When he began to envision a bigger mission around home security, he realized he'd found his idea.