Why Ring Hires Missionaries
Jamie Siminoff shipped thousands of broken Ring cameras days before Christmas 2013 with about $1 million raised. A weekend fix saved the company, which now does about $5 billion in revenue.
· 7 min read
Jamie Siminoff, founder of Ring, interviewed by Turner Novak (The Peel)
Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, the home security company behind the video doorbell, which he started in his garage as Doorbot. He took it onto Shark Tank in 2013, sold it to Amazon for $1.15 billion, stayed for 5 years and left in 2023. He returned to run it again after AI changed what the product could do. Ring now has more than 100 million cameras in the field and about $5 billion in revenue.
Summary
Jamie Siminoff left Ring after winning, came back when AI reopened the product, and says his fresh eyes made his decisions about 10 times faster. He deleted recurring meetings, replaced a four-week test cycle and retitled engineers as builders so more people act on ideas. His early story is a string of near-death moments: a Shark Tank demo that barely worked, thousands of broken cameras shipped before Christmas 2013, and a domain bought with $187,000 in the bank. His rule for hiring and brand building is to pick missionaries over mercenaries, because money stops motivating quickly and authenticity compounds. These signals are from an interview that Turner Novak did with Jamie Siminoff on The Peel.
