The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 678: Jamie Siminoff (Ring Doorbell Inventor) - Shark Tank Rejection, Selling to Amazon for $1 Billion, Surviving $3M to $480M Hypergrowth, Hiring Passionate People Over Experts, and Jeff Bezos's Leadership Lessons

Episode Date: March 8, 2026

www.LearningLeader.com The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. My Guest: Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, which he sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars. He's an inventor and builder who couldn't hear his doorbell while working in his garage, so he built a video doorbell. When his wife said it made her feel safer, he realized technology had changed, and home security needed a complete reinvention. Ring became the world's largest home security company with a mission to make neighborhoods safer. Key Learnings  Jeff Bezos reads and writes his own stuff. When Jamie asked Jeff to write something for the book's back cover, Jeff actually read it and wanted his own curated quote that was from him. Jeff loves entrepreneurs, so they kept him out of negotiations. After the Whole Foods deal, Amazon learned to keep Jeff out of negotiations because he finds it tough to negotiate hard with someone he respects. Hardware companies can die while growing fast. Ring grew from $3M to $30M to $174M to $480M, which sounds amazing. But to go from $170M to $480M, you're buying hundreds of millions of dollars of product when you're selling less than that. If sales growth slows, you're basically going out of business. Going from $480M to over a billion in revenue was like being on a motorcycle at 200 miles an hour. If a leaf falls down and hits you, you're dead. At Amazon, when Ring said, "We need another billion dollars to order stuff for next year," Amazon said, "Okay, what else do you want?" There are different types of entrepreneurs. Jamie is an inventor/entrepreneur. There are business entrepreneurs who are maniacal business people we've never heard of that have just crushed it. Jamie is maniacal on product and brings invention into how they run the company. Hire marathon runners. Marathons are the dumbest thing any human could ever do. Even if you win, no one cares. Jamie finished the Boston Marathon in 22,000th place and he's so proud of himself. You want people that don't care about external validation; they just care about getting the mission done. AI has democratized all information. With AI making it so you don't even need to know C++ programming anymore, fill your business with passionate people who care about the mission and they'll crush anything. When building your team, start with the mission. Jamie tells people, "Our mission is to make neighborhoods safer. Do you want to work on making neighborhoods safer? Because if you don't, you're going to be miserable here. You're going to hear it every day, and you're going to roll your eyes."  Referrals work because people don't want to let you down. The best hires are when someone's referred by someone (uncle, friend, whatever) because they feel guilty. They don't want to let the person who referred them down. Find an infinite truth to work on. Amazon's core principles are infinite: Will customers always want lower price, more selection, and faster delivery? Yes. If you deliver in 30 minutes, they'll want it in 10 minutes. Making neighborhoods safer is an infinite thing to work on. Your wife saying one thing can change everything. Jamie built a video doorbell so he could hear the door from his garage. His wife said, "It makes me feel safer at home." That's when he realized technology had changed and home security needed a whole new approach. The hard part is bringing the infinite down to the tactical. When you have an infinite mission, you can get overwhelmed trying to solve it all at once. You have to figure out what to do every single day to work toward that infinite goal. Shark Tank was a disaster that turned into everything. Jamie went on Shark Tank desperately needing money. He got zero offers and cried in his car after. But when it aired, the boost in sales gave them cash to hire people and build Ring, which started the clock on their success. Sometimes you can't stop because you're in too deep. After Shark Tank bombed, Jamie couldn't back out. He'd already ordered too many products and owed too much money. He'd be personally bankrupt if he stopped. People think he's tough for keeping going, but he didn't have a choice. Being naive is a superpower. Great inventions are things people say can't happen because if they could happen, they'd already be out there. You have to be naive enough to say "I think I can do this" or "I don't even know that I can't." People said you couldn't build a battery-operated camera on WiFi. Jamie had never built anything before, so what did he know? They just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed like they would work. Knowing too much gets in the way of doing the work. If you're thinking and analyzing the whole world, that's time you're not inventing, building, making calls. When are you actually doing the work? The Ring.com domain negotiation was survival. The owner originally wanted $750K for the domain. Jamie had $178K in the bank on the day he was supposed to pay. He called and said "My board said I can't do the deal, but they approved $175K today and $1M total over two years." The guy hung up, called back, and said fine. There was no board, it was just Jamie.  The stress internalized and destroyed him. Jamie wasn't sleeping and was super stressed. There are different types of entrepreneurs: some can handle that stress and sleep like a baby. Jamie internalized it, and it affected him terribly. Be transparent at home. Jamie's son was six years old and knew where the business was. His kindergarten teacher would say, "I hear the business isn't going well." They just had open, adult conversations about everything. Work-life integration, not balance. Jamie integrated work, life, and family together. His son came with him to pick up the first DoorBot in China. Oliver has been to 40 countries and almost every state because he traveled to every meeting. Bring your kid to the meeting. People asked, "How do you bring your kid to a meeting?" Jamie said, "Who do you think they're gonna remember more?" We're always scared to be different. Follow your passion, but make money when you need to. It's hard to see anyone who's achieved greatness who didn't do what they loved. But there are times you have to work your ass off to make money (Jamie was a bellhop and valet parking cars). When you set out to do something, do something you care about. If you fail trying to make money, that really sucks. If you fail trying to do something you love, at least you tried to do something you love. If Ring fails, they try to make neighborhoods safer. That's noble. You can tell who's successful by how fast they respond. It's a weird flip-flop of what it should be. You'd think a successful person should respond in a month, but the people running at the highest levels are actually very efficient. There's something about it. First principles thinking eliminates recurring meetings. There's no way every single Monday at 9 AM you have something important to talk about. The world can't exist like that. Meet when you need to do something, not on some cadence. Hire the best and let them work. Get the best quarterback, best kicker, best coach. Let them work together, let them practice, have the plays. You don't need to get together every day to talk about how you're feeling. No standing meetings, zero recurring one-on-ones. Jamie doesn't have a standing meeting with his team in any cadence. He talks to people all day long, all night long, Sundays, but it's event-based. "We have to get sales up on this, where are the issues?" If you're not doing your job, we'll fire you. Service to others is the best thing you can do. A year from now, Jamie would be celebrating something on the charitable side. Probably something with their work in South Central LA with LAPD, or at their 75-acre farm in Missouri helping the town that's been impacted by opioids and industrial farming. More Learning #191: Robert Herjavec: (Shark Tank Investor) - You Don't Have to Be a Shark to Be Effective #626: Rob Kimbel - The Power of Grit and Generosity #632: Nick Huber - The Sweaty Start Up Reflection Questions What's a problem you could pursue for decades without exhausting its potential? What mission has no endpoint, only continuous improvement? Work-life integration. What are you keeping separate that might be better together? Where could you stop trying to "balance" and instead integrate? Audio Timestamps 02:19 Bezos' Endorsement for Jamie 03:30 Selling Ring to Amazon 05:04 Hypergrowth Cash Crunch 07:54 Inventor vs Business Operator 09:34 Hiring Marathoners 11:20 Interviewing and Firing Fast 13:25 Mission Origin and Big Vision 15:40 Infinite Truth and Focus 17:06 Getting on Shark Tank 19:32 Live Demo and Rejection 23:13 The Aftermath and Momentum from Shark Tank 24:57 Naivete as Superpower 27:00 Doers Beat Planners 27:33 Winning Ring.com Deal 30:17 Stress and Family Support 31:33 Work-Life Integration 33:26 Passion Versus Practicality 36:08 Scaling Authentic Culture 37:26 Frontline Leadership Style 42:15 Team DNA & No Standing Meetings 45:19 Service and Jamie's Farm Mission 47:39 EOPC

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to LearningLeader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to LearningLeader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader, Jamie Siminoff is an entrepreneur, inventor, and the founder of the Home Security Company Ring. He's best known for appearing on show.

Shark Tank getting rejected only to later sell his company to Amazon for over a billion dollars. During our conversation, we discuss why Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie, quote, a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied with the status quo. So cool. And then Jamie talks about the exact hiring filter he uses. He calls it looking for quote, marathon runners and why it's not about resumes or pedigree for him. And then we want deep on a CEO or senior leader having a frontline obsession. Jamie still has this email address on every ring doorbell you buy. It's crazy.

He's always talking with customers and is constantly working on making things better. I love it. And I think you're going to love this conversation. with Jamie Seminoff. This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them.

If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit Insightglobal.com slash learning leader today to learn more.

That's Insightglobal.com slash learning leader. I read that Jeff Bezos said Jamie, quote, is a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied by the status quo. He's poured his missionary spirit into this book. and his story is a real world primer on founder mentality. What did it mean to you to have Jeff Bezos say that about you? It's pretty cool.

I mean, I'd say like there's some pretty cool things that have happened in my life and pretty amazing ones that I pinch myself. That one was definitely a pinch myself moment. I mean, I asked Jeff, you know, when I wrote the book, I said, I wrote a book on The Story of Ring and I said, you know, would you do something for the back cover and read it? And, you know, I'd say like a lot of people you'd think like that would just sort of do some sort of can thing or have someone in their comms group sort of come back to you and say,

here you go, which I still would have been, by the way, humbled by, but Jeff is Jeff and he did it and read it and looked at it and wanted to have his own very curated quote that's from him. And so it was pretty incredible. And I don't think he's ever done any other book backjacket like that. So in a lot of ways, it was humbling and incredible. We're skipping ahead. And we'll get there. But I'm curious, I remember I had the founder of Whole Foods on. So he negotiated with Bezos and John Mackey. That was a fun conversation. What was the negotiation like? Because you eventually sold your company for over a billion dollars to Amazon. How involved was he? What were the conversations like? I'd love to go inside the process of that transaction.

Yeah. So for our transaction, which happened after Whole Foods, I think they learned that, you know, Jeff just loves entrepreneurs. And so I think I think. they learned to keep Jeff out of the negotiations because he does. I think he's like, I love entrepreneurs. I find it hard when you're, you know, to negotiate hard with someone who you respect is, is that's pretty hard to do. Yeah. Because it's like, you know, Jeff's a builder. He is an inventor. So for ours, like we worked with like the corp dev people and, you know, it was a little bit sort of more how you to picture like one of these deals going. That said they were very like, they understood we were a startup. They leaned in, you know, these are never, they're never easy.

I mean, you're selling a company for over a billion dollars. There's a lot of emotion on all sides that takes place. So you could have kept going without them. Personally, it's probably really hard to pass up the money. Amazon is one of the biggest and best companies in the world and of all time. It's their founder, right, as we're talking about, is also someone that I think is well respected by all and has built something incredible. Why say, okay, yeah, I'm going to go join them or be a part of them or sell to them as opposed to saying, No, guys, let's just keep doing this on our own.

Hardware companies take a lot of cash. So balance sheet matters. We grew when we started revenue, 3,000, $30,000, $170,480, which by it sounds like to anyone listening, like that's amazing. Like, what a great growth. But the problem is when you think about it is how do you go from $170 to $480 is you're buying hundreds of millions of dollars of products

when you're selling less than that at that time. So you're basically always in some ways going out of business if sales growth slows because you're over ordering in order to sell. And so we were in a position where like we were going from 480 to over a billion, as great as that was when we were selling, it's like anything that happened in the market, we were toast. It's like on a motorcycle going 200 miles an hour. Like if a leaf falls down and hits me, I'm dead. And so at Amazon, you know, we say like, hey, we need another billion dollars to order stuff for next year. were growing, they're like, okay, sure, what else do you want? And again, it's just because compared to their balance sheet, just the size of ring compared to Amazon, it just was able to tuck in and

fit in. So from that side, I really wanted my missions to make neighborhood safer. I wanted to keep sort of doing that. I wanted to be the world's largest home security company. I wanted to have a huge impact. And I did not want to ace the thing into the ground, which was a very likely scenario if we kept going alone. Looking back, I think we probably would have been fine because again, you can see how the capital markets were. You can see how the growth was. I mean, you can kind of see everything now. But I'd say with the information we had at the time, it was a great decision. And I'd say what we did with the business has been great. I mean, like the impact we've had has been incredible. It's crazy to think from an outsider's perspective.

You're like, oh, he's making whatever. They're doing 500 million bucks a year in revenue. Obviously, this dude's crushing it. He's probably being able to relax, enjoy life, you know, go to work and work hard or whatever. But it sounds like that sounds amazingly stressful to have a company doing that much in revenue and yet could die at any moment. Our growth was so fast that it's what kind of killed us. And it's, and it's such a weird, irrational thing because you're right. Like when you hear it, oh, we did 500 million this year, people are like, oh, that guy's rich. That company, they must be worth a fortune. And it's like, sort of, yeah. But again, the other side is if sales went down 20%, that's $100 million in sales on a company that just doesn't have the balance sheet.

Like, we just didn't have it. And so it was super scary. And at some point, I just got to the point where like, yeah, it's like, do you want $1.15 billion or to keep trying to go with this thing? And, like, I mean, in some ways, it's almost like Vegas where you're putting your money on black and you double and you double and you double. And at some point, you're like, I'll probably lose if I keep doubling. I'm curious this balance of you are a scrappy inventor. You're a builder. That doesn't always mean you're going to be a good business person.

And in a lot of cases, they're not, right? It's like one or the other, the great musician, but they don't understand how to set up. So they have to hire other people. How is that for you being this scrappy inventor, this builder? I don't know. It sounds like you know what you're talking about. That's funny.

When you say it like that, I think I am a great inventor and I say that like still humbly, but like I have, I guess, a track record that's, you know, decent of inventing things that never existed that have done pretty well. So I'm going to like take that. And then I've done a lot of invention around how to like build a company fast, like how to allow it to scale fast, like the invention around that. What's interesting is that if you're trying to like follow this, there's a lot of people that made more money than me. And I'm fine. I'm not like trying to complain, but because they're more business people, like they would have looked at how to operate

ring from a more profitable. Because like, but I was deliolent. I was deliourable. including myself with raising money. And there was ways to sort of engineer it to make more money as me if I had looked at it in that way. But I didn't care. All I wanted to do was grow it fast, get product out there, build more product, invent more things. And so I kind of like see that there's something like business people. And I always say there's like different types of entrepreneurs. I'm more of an inventor entrepreneur. There's entrepreneurs who are like literally business entrepreneurs. There's people that like we've never heard of that have just crushed it because they're just maniacal business people.

I am not a maniacal business person. I am maniacal on product and that I bring invention into like how we run the company. I was reading that you're hiring people from Craigslist. You're trying to find people that maybe something's happened in their life. They're scrappy themselves. They're humble. They're going to work. Can you walk me through maybe earlier in your time what you looked for when hiring

other than like the table stakes of they got to be able to do X, right? but I'm talking about attributes of people, as well as maybe how that's evolved, if it's evolved over time when it comes to hiring more people to work with your companies. I still try to hire people just based on passion. Like you said,

there is like a table stakes. Like if you're there to do C plus programming, like it turns out like you kind of need to know C plus programming. Like there are some things that are like, you have to be able to do the job. But for most jobs, I'd say, and especially with AI, by the way, AI has made it.

So by the way, C plus programming, you don't need to know C plus programming. just go to frigging Claude Code. So I do think passionate people that care that want to succeed at whatever the mission is, those are the people you want to hire. So I always say, for me, it's marathoners. It's like someone who wants to run a marathon.

Like, marathons are the dumbest thing that any human could ever do. Even if you win it, no one cares. I did the Boston Marathon twice. So stupid. 30,000 whatever people run it. I finished like 22,000's place, and I'm so proud of myself. Like, it's like my proudest moment is alone finishing the Boston Marathon in 22,000's

place that I worked a year for training every day and spending hours doing it. And so, like, you want those people that whatever they're doing, they care about getting the mission done. And so if you can find those people, and especially with AI democratizing, like, all information, just fill your business with those people and you'll crush anything. how did you and how do you find those people? What do you ask in the interview process? People are getting better at trying to fool others. So how do you make sure you're finding those people?

There's two ways to do it. One is, again, I just sit with them and talk to them. I don't have like specific questions and all this stuff. I just want to listen to like, what are they saying? What are they saying in their lives? I tell them what our mission is. Our mission is to make neighborhood safer. Like, do you want to work on making neighborhood safer?

Because if you don't, you're going to be miserable here. You're going to hear it every day. you're going to be like rolling your eyes. You don't have to care about that. Like, not everyone does. But if you do, great, you're going to love it. And if you don't, you're going to hate it. So, like, it's always like, start with the mission.

I hire fast and I fire faster. And I think, like, the reality is I haven't figured out a way. And maybe it's my own failure in interviewing to raise the percentage of finding the best people versus finding to your point that people that say, like, oh, I'm super passionate. Oh, my, I love making neighbors safer. Oh, I'm like, it's my life's mission. And then they come in and they just tell they just hate it. And so, you know, if you hire fast and fire faster, like, I certainly don't like firing

people. Like I don't, I don't like the impact on their lives, on their families, but get them out quickly. Have you found certain things that have increased your batting average? Maybe it's they've actually run marathons. Maybe it's they've had a rough upbringing or a great one. The best is when someone's referred by someone because they usually feel guilty. because we're very transparent.

Here's what's going to be. Here's what we're going to do. Here's how we work. If you hate that, don't come here. And I think when someone's referred by their uncle, by their whatever, that they don't want to let them down. And so I have found that referrals, once I don't like referrals,

so you don't want to make an organization that's like, oh, you have to be the friend of Jamie to get in. But the other side is, I think there is a thing with referrals where they don't want to let you down. where someone who's just like sort of off the street doesn't know anything, no connection, maybe just doesn't have that same level of care.

Where does this mission from yours come from? So, you know, it's funny. We started, I invented this, you know, I was in my garage, I couldn't hear the doorbell, I'm working on other stuff, I just got in an iPhone, I built a video doorbell. I just built it to like, so I could hear the door.

My wife says it makes her feel safer at home. Again, Venture me was like realized when she said that that the way people were doing home security up until that point was not looking at it from an efficacy side. They were looking at it from like a marketing and getting a contract for the home side. I don't blame them. Technology had changed. All sorts of stuff had happened. But with having the phone, with being able to be connected to your home at any time, you needed a whole new set of things. And I realized like these things can make neighborhoods.

They could actually reduce crime in neighborhoods. Like, my head kind of exploded. And that is why Ring became so big. It's why it became probably the world's largest home security company, which I think it is today, because I didn't like, you know, say like, oh, I'm going to build the best doorbell in the world. I'm going to build the best video doorbell. I'm going to get patents. Like, it was like, we're going to change the way home security is done with this, like,

new thing that just happened, which was basically the phone. Now, I mean, I've got one. Everyone's got them. It's like, well, yeah, obviously. you would have this. But it's just bizarre that not that long ago. And I think you even said on your Shark Tank pitch, the doorbell is like one of the only things that had not been updated or whatever

the language you used since forever ago. 18, whatever. Yeah. It's just crazy that now at the time, though, obviously had never been done. You invented it. And now it's ubiquitous. We all have them.

It's wild. And it seems because you are a tinkerer. You're a builder. You're an inventor. your wife said one statement to you and all of a sudden it goes, wait a second. This could be a thing. But it's one thing for your wife to say that and for you to have a little bit of an aha moment. It's another thing to actually create a full-blown company and create a product that seems

kind of like a pain to build and then make it so that we all have them. I mean, what's the next step after your wife says that? How do you get this going? How do you create a company? Once we had the mission, and Jeff said this like, in public too, this idea of infinite truth. So like Amazon, if you look at like Amazon's core principles, they're infinite. Well, customers always want lower price, more selection and faster delivery. Yes, like it doesn't matter. Like, if you deliver within an hour, they'll want it in 30 minutes.

If you deliver in 30 minutes, they'll want it in 10 minutes. Like, like, they'll always want faster. They always want lower price and they're always going to want more selection. So it's like, like you can work on Amazon's customer offering of like e-commerce forever. Like, until you're delivering it, the instant you order it at $0 and 100% selection, like, there's like you can go forever. So when I found making neighborhood safer, it's like, that's an infinite thing to work on. And as soon as you had that, that's what unlocked ring from being another little business that I was working on in tinkering to literally what is today probably the world's largest home security company, because you were now working on something that had infinite possibility,

the infinite market. And then the hard part is when you have that is now how do you bring that down into tactical, tangible short term like every day. What do you do every day to work on that? Because you can also get overwhelmed by and you see it. Companies are like, oh, we're working on solving all X and when they're trying to do it all at once. And so it is like, how do you eat an elephant? Like you cut it into very small bites. Like you eat it like one little bite at the time, you don't eat it all at once. So it's called DoorBot and you go on Shark Tank. What was the process like to get on the show?

What were you thinking before? I just rewatch the pitch. But, you know, so you're like standing behind and you did the doorbell thing. What was it like leading up to it? Were you nervous? I would love to go inside how you were feeling. So, I mean, here I am in the garage. I'm basically failing.

I mean, like nothing's going right. But you had started and sold two companies prior to this. Yeah, but for like very little money. So not, okay. So online, it looks like you've, made millions, it sounds like you did not. No. Okay.

I wasn't broke, but I was definitely not like, I was not rich. Like, I was not like, I should not have been in the garage just tinkering. Like, I didn't have that kind of money at all. Like, I definitely did not. And so I'm kind of like working on this door about thing. It's eating cash because it's hardware. Guys is, listen, I'd love to go to lunch with you and chat about my business. And so I'm like kind of driving to this, this lunch.

And I'm literally thinking my head like, I'm like, Jamie, this is why you never make it. like, because you're literally like, you can't focus. Like you're literally going out to lunch while you're basically, you're burning to the ground, your family in your garage. And so I go to lunch, it's super nice guy, great business thing to talk about the whole time. He's like, what are you working on? I'm like, oh, I'm working on this doorbell. And by the way, when I would tell people about a doorbought at the time, they would laugh.

And they'd usually say, come on, seriously, what are you working on? Because it was like, I'm working on a doorbell that goes to your phone. They're like, oh, like, that's hysterical. Like, you know, it's like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I mean, literally, that was the response. And so he's like, oh, that's. so cool. Have you thought about going on Shark Tank? Still a big show, but like at the time was like, I mean, it was the biggest, I think it was the biggest show. I think it was the biggest show on TV at that time

or like the top five or something. It was crazy. 30 plus thousand people were applying a year to be on the show. So I'm like, no, I didn't apply like sending my one of 30,000 application, which I should have, by the way, I just was like down to my luck kind of talking. And he's like, oh, the one of the producers is asking, they're trying to get bigger products and stuff like this. here's his email. So I email the producer person. I'm like, hey, it's Jamie. Here's my website. You know, kind of like, and I start driving home from the lunch, the guy calls me. He's like, this is great. You got to be a shark tank. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, it's just like insane. So that was kind of my getting to shark tank, which then I still had to do a million things

to actually get on the show from there. Like I thought at that point that I was just like, I'm like, oh my God, I'm on. But it turned out there was still a million things to do. And then we go on Shark Tank, to your point of the taping, and if you rewatch the episode, which you did, so they said, like, you have these producers and they have, like, your pitch and you got to do all of stuff. And they're like, you need to do a live demo of your product. And I'm like, yeah, you know, because I'm like not telling them that it's like really not working very well. Like I did not, of course, like did not disclose that, but like this thing is like super challenged and like barely working, if at all, didn't seem like the right thing to tell them.

So they're like, yeah, you have to do a live demo. I'm like, okay, yeah, let's do a live demo where we just tape it beforehand and then we show it because it's just like, you don't want to have all the like things happening. They're like, no. I'm like, well, let's do a live demo beforehand because like we could tape it because like there's interference. Like, I mean, I tried everything. They're like, no. So we do a live demo on the show and like it wasn't working. Like the engineer I had was like literally dying trying to set this thing up like they're breaking the ones I really had like four in the whole world doorbots that had been like produced by hand so I go to ring the doorbell if you look at my face when I like turn around because I look up it's it's actually the live

feed like that's on there and you kind of see this face it's like it looks like I'm kind of excited I'm actually like I can't believe that the picture came up like I'm like literally I'm like it worked I'm like flabbergass I was like I was like this was really impressive it's a live demo. In fact, that picture quality from DoorBot never was, is that good again ever. Like, that was like the best, if you could ask for like the genie for like one wish. It was like, just make that that one goddamn doorbell push work on Shark Tank. Please. Like, just make that one work. I don't care if anything else works. In my life, just make that one thing work. And it worked. You even held up Mr. Wonderful's face right in front of it. I was like going crazy. I like,

yeah, I went for it. Oh my gosh. Okay. And so they're all saying no, no, no, no offers. Mr. Wonderful is the last, I watched it. This is a family show for us, right? Mr. Wonderful's like, hey, oh, let's do some royalty garbage that he tries to do with everybody else. And you kind of stand firm and you ultimately walk away without a deal. Like, how are you feeling in that moment?

I cried in my car on the way home. I mean, I really did go in there being like, Mark's going to give me the money. We needed money. Like, I wasn't trying to just get marketing around. Like, I needed money. I mean, since now people are like, oh, it's so great. you didn't get a deal. I'm like, it's like, I knew it was going to be a billion dollars. So like, why take a deal? You know, it's like, but at the time, I needed money badly. And Mark was out

immediately. And then the Mr. Wonderful deal just you can't like, you know, I was just telling you how bad hardware is on cash flow. If immediately you're giving cash flow out, like it just, there's no way it would have worked. I left that. I was, I was devastated. Doesn't he know that, though? Why offer a stupid deal like that? Uncertain things it can work, but not like yours, where there's all that cost. First of all you offer it because like someone's willing to give you like a crazy good deal on a business like you take it. Like you know,

so I think that's like the first thing. The second thing is the way the show format works, if you don't have that negotiation at the end, it's likely you won't air. Ah, okay. And so a lot of what he's doing is actually he's probably the most friendly to the entrepreneur because by us having that negotiation, it creates the bookend to the intro to the end.

And if he hadn't done that, deal, I might not have ever got on air. A lot of people know there's a lot of people that go on shark tank to tape don't actually go on air because it's just like, it's like a boring episode. Like it's just like, you know, I get on there and pitch and nothing happens and I leave. No one wants to watch that. Got you. So you leave. You're crying in your car. I literally cried. Devastated. But something changes. What happened to go from that to where we don't have any money. I genuinely need money to a billion dollars. The good news is at that point I was too far into it.

So I couldn't back out of the business. If I had at that moment just went back to the garage and said, I'm done, I would have basically been personally bankrupt because I had already ordered too many products. And like I owed too much money already. So like it was like a boiling the frog thing. I didn't realize I was that deep in. But like, you know, it was like 30,000 for this. And just you kind of like, okay, great, we'll sell these.

And then all of a sudden you realize like if you don't sell them, I was in a bad. place financially from that side if the business didn't continue. So I couldn't stop. Like, I didn't have the right to stop. So people always say like, oh, like, people think I'm like tough. That's so tough that you kept going. It's like, no, I actually had to keep going. It's actually the opposite of tough. Like I was like a chicken shit. I just couldn't stop. And so I kept going. And then when Shark Tank did air, it gave us a huge boost of sales. That gave us like a cash injection, which then we were able to hire some more people to build ring than we were able to sort of have raised some money around that. And so that like, you know, there still was a lot of hard sort of

things along the way. But I'd say the airing of Shark Tank would start the clock on if you wanted to plot success. Like that's when it kind of started. Because from that moment on, we kind of had like momentum that we could kind of keep trading on. I also read that you were naive at times. And sometimes that can be really, really helpful. How was being naive helpful to you? What's a superpower? I mean, everything that you try to do, I mean, great inventions are things that people say can't happen because if people said they could happen, then they'd already be out there. So, like, you know, if you look at like James Dyson and some of these amazing inventors, you know, Elon, I mean, people said the electric car couldn't work. You can go back and there's all

this stuff about how it like can't have enough this and you won't have enough capacity. And like, so you have to be smart enough to sort of not put yourself into too bad of a situation, but naive enough to say, like, I think I can do this. I don't even know that I can't. And so people said you couldn't build a battery operated camera at this time to go on Wi-Fi. Like, but I didn't know. I never built anything. So like, what did I know?

So we just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed to what they would work together. It's funny. My first sales job after I got them playing football after college, Jamie was, is this sales rep. it was 2008. And people were like, dude, oh my God, that had to be the worst thing ever, terrible market, all this stuff. And I was like, I honestly didn't even realize it. I didn't watch the news.

I didn't do anything. I was just like, you know, going to work out in the gym, do my sales job, hang out with my buddies. I didn't even realize that there was anything going on. I'm like, I'm glad it was just like a complete meathead idiot. But sometimes that can be really good for you. I think a lot of times it is because we get so wrapped up and like the GDPs, going to be down 1% off of whatever and the stock market is crashing. Oh my God, but the reality is

like the markets are still huge. The consumer's still huge. Like, by people build more businesses usually when things are down than when they're up. And so you're right. I think sort of like, it's a hard thing to tell someone because you don't want to give somebody advice to be like, be stupid. Like it's not like good advice. But the other side is if you try to sort of like do everything right, it usually doesn't work. Yeah. And there is something about like naive as kind of part of that is like, especially break out big things usually come from people that were like and you'll see it like everyone says like that you can't do this and part of it too is if you are thinking and analyzing the whole world that's time you're not doing the thing you're not working you're not inventing you're not

building you're not making the calls and so sometimes it can knowing too much or trying to know too much gets in the way of actually doing the work and i think that's a key takeaway for anybody is It's if you're sitting there like building all these plans and thinking about stuff and all, it's like, well, when are you actually doing the work? Yeah. Because that's ultimately what's going to build Ring. And speaking of Ring, the guy who owned Ring.com, I believe wanted to sell to you for $2 million, right?

Two million bucks. And you're like, I don't know, well, two million bucks. Are you out of your mind? Can you tell me the story of how you were able to get ring.com? It might even be more. He wanted to sell it for a lot of money. I ended up getting it down to like $750,000. and the day I'm supposed to pay him, I have $178,000 in the bank.

So you got to start to figure out that math. So I call them up and I'm like, hey, listen, my board said we can't do the deal. Like they just, you know, which is sort of true because it's like I didn't have a board, but it was me. So like it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't completely untruthful. So my board said I can't do the deal. But they did approve me to do $175,000 today. and a total of $1 million for the purchase.

So I'm increasing now the price and paid over two years. And so the guy is like F-bombs and just, I mean, the guy thinks he's getting $750,000 that day. And I like basically tell him the day of the wire. And so just, you know, just not happy, hangs up the phone, calls me back like, you know, he's like, fine, you know, it was like, like, it was like. But then I'm like, okay. So because I'm like, figure I'm like, listen, we'll give him a 175.

and like if we can't afford the domain, it's because the business went out anyway. So like, I don't need the domain for a bankrupt business. And if a business works, we'll, you know, we'll buy it.

And so it ended up being, you know, ended up working out for us. I guess for him, it worked out because he got $250,000 more than he thought he was going to. But like, it certainly wasn't my best

from a negotiations. I would say it wasn't my most moral negotiation. But you gave him all the money you had. Isn't that a very scary moment? It was a terrifying moment. I had a venture capital. investment from True Ventures coming in. And that's why I kind of like was timing it. But I didn't tell True Ventures. I didn't tell them that I was buying a domain because I was

worried that, so they were giving us like $5 million, I think. And I was worried if I told them that basically like 20% was going to a domain name that kill me. I'm trying to keep everyone happy without like blowing the thing up. And so then True Ventures delays their wire like a week or two just like, they're just like, yeah, like we have this going on. Do you might be? I'm like, oh, sure, it's okay. And they're like, oh, we want to do this? Why? I'm like, can we maybe do Monday?

Because like Tuesday was payroll. And so I'm like, can we maybe do Monday, though whenever? And they're like, sure, okay. I'm like, great, great. And so they like, wire the money on that Monday. And like, you know, Tuesday we make payroll. But like that was definitely like, I was like, we're not making payroll. Like we're not making payroll.

I can not. I don't know if I can live. I mean, that's why you're, you know, whatever you don't, you done. But I also read you did struggle to sleep, mainly because you're working so much. but I would imagine that would hurt sleep too. Stress was like, I'm not, there are different types of entrepreneurs. I met lots of different types. There are people that can do that and literally sleep like a baby.

They don't even care. I internalize this stuff and it just destroys me. So like I wasn't sleeping. I was super stressed. I mean, so I wasn't doing it out of like a chest pump like I'm tough whatever. It was more like survival and doing things to survive, but it was affecting me terribly. I mean, it was really bad. How did that affect you in your personal life?

My son was like three, like when I started. So he was kind of like at that point, probably six years old or something. I just have one kid. So we actually were very like transparent at home, which helped. I just talked like openly. Like when my son was six, like he knew like where the business was. Like he would be like literally like a kindergarten teacher would say to us like, I hear the business isn't going well.

I'm like, yeah. But we were just open. Like it was just a very open adult conversation always, which I think helped on that because it wasn't like I was trying to hide anything from them, but it just takes a village. I mean, like having my wife and son sort of supporting me the whole way, but yeah, it was still pretty tough. I mean, it was definitely stressful. What is your messaging around work-life integration, work-life balance, not killing yourself

along the way with stress and not sleeping and trying to stay healthy, but also trying to build something extraordinary? How do you think about all of that now? What advice do you give to others? I just integrated my work and life and family together. So, like, my son, the first doorbot that came off the line in China, like, my son came with me. So we just integrated the work life together. And so there wasn't like a balance.

It was just integrated. And I think that's everyone's different. But for me, that was the best way to do it. So we spent a ton of time with it. My son's been to like 40 countries and he's almost been to every state. Like, I mean, I literally bring him to every meeting. I didn't care. We were going to meet with Home Depot.

like Oliver was there when he was seven, six, five. Wow. And then people would say like, it's funny, people would be like, how do you bring your kid to a meeting? And I said, like, who do you think they're going to remember more? The guy that brought his six-year-old to a meeting or just some idiot with another product. It's so amazing.

Like, we're always scared to be different. But I didn't guarantee you, if someone brings their kid to a meeting with me right now, I will remember that meeting over the 3,000 meetings I'm going to have this month. What a life for him. he's been in some crazy rooms, I bet, and heard some amazing stories. How old is he now? He's 17 now.

Jeez, what's it like for him? Because now he's an adult, basically. I mean, God. It's pretty funny. It's just like he, and it's funny, like he doesn't, you know, maybe because he saw all this stuff. Like, he just like loves basketball, wants like work in sports. It's not like he's trying to sort of follow in the footsteps and be an inventor and stuff. Like he's like, he's happy.

He wants to do sports stuff. which is great. I think everyone should, again, to the thing, like, people should follow their passion. Like, you should do what you want to do. Like, that's the best way to do it. So I've gotten all sides of this. I'm glad you brought this up. Some say that's what you should do. And other people say, that's insane advice that billionaires give after they become a billionaire because it's easier to say, what you need to do is go earn a living. You need to get good at something and then you'll become passionate about it afterwards. Like, how do you feel about that? Passion and work and, and, doing the thing that you're passionate about?

What's your overall thoughts on it? I think it's a fair argument that like someone becomes wealthy and then says like, oh, go do like what you love. It is hard to see anyone though that's achieved anything of greatness in the world that didn't do what they loved. And so I think the other side of it is there are times like, you know, when I was a bellhop and valet parking cars, like that wasn't my passion. You know, I did that in high school and college.

I did it to make money. Like there are times when you have to like work your ass off to make money. Like I've done sales. So like, and so, but I think when you start like the career of what you want to try to do and you're going to set out to do something, like do something you care about versus I think the worst thing is when people do entrepreneurship and they're trying to do something to make money because they if they fail, like if you fail trying to make money, that really sucks. If you fail trying to do something you love, at least like you try to do something you love. Like I always just say like if ring fails, we try to make neighborhood safer. Like we worked on something noble. If it fails because we just tried to make a buck, that's not fun.

You talk about sales. I also think you're a much more effective sales professional when you are deeply passionate about the mission and about the product that you've created because of that mission. You can feel it in your voice. I have since the second week connected on Zoom, you can feel that this kind of oozes out of the person versus someone who's just like, all right,

I got to make some money, so I got to sell it. I think that's a real thing. And it's certainly aspirational. I hope for most people, if you want to become excellent at anything, there's got to be that care, love, and passion behind it. If you look back at almost any brand,

the original, and over time, they lose this and it doesn't matter, but usually very authentic when they start. Yeah. Like Nike was extremely, like Phil Knight is an authentic person. Nike might now just be more of just like a big brand

that produces shoes, whatever. I actually still like it, but at the beginning, like these brands, have usually true authenticity to them that goes deep. Ring is a big brand, but it's because it was so authentic. It is authentic.

Like we care about what we do. We just launched this dog search party thing. That was my Super Bowl commercial yesterday, which was kind of cool. But, you know, it's like, how do you invent something like that? Why do you do it because you care? Like, that's authenticity, which then drives also the brand. So as the company grows and you're adding more and more people, There are odds that some of those people are taking it as a job to earn a living.

And they'll work hard, right? But they don't care like you do or like some of the earlier people do. That's just natural as a company grows in size. So how do you maintain this culture of authenticity and care and get after it as you grow and scale? One is you have to be realistic that, yes, as you get bigger, not every single person in the company is going to like wake up eating their like making neighborhoods safer cereal. I get it. Like that's just the reality. I think leadership though is that for my side, if I truly am authentic with it, it does like sort of usually trickle down. So that keeps it, I think having a founder that's there that like keeps that energy and authenticity to it matters.

Having other people around us, you know, helps. I do think also you have to as a company as a bigger just be willing to be accepting that yes, like it's going to be a slightly less it can't be perfect because if you try to keep it to perfect, you're going to die. That said, I think you can also do a lot of things to keep it much better than just letting it go to just like a big corporate board. There is a difference between being an inventor and being a CEO of a company, especially a company that gets bigger. There's more and more people involved.

There's a lot of elements of management, leadership, vision, public speech. speaking, I mean, a million things that go on with being a CEO. How did you get good? You're a world-class inventor, one of the best of our generation, right? But how did you get good at being a leader? How did you get good at being a CEO and running a business? I think this is where people overthink what it is to be a CEO. A good CEO, a good leader is someone who's leading.

It's like first principle thinking. Like, how do you lead ring? You lead it by leading it. You lead it by going out and installing devices. You lead it by caring. You lead it by continuing to invent. You lead it by being transparent with people and honest. Everyone knows it ring that I will work harder than they will.

And so that's leadership. I think people have come down to leadership as a process. And it's a how do you do this? And how many emails do you send a week? But everyone knows they're coming from some group that's writing the emails. And I think authenticity, and with AI, it's going to get way more important as a leader. Just be authentic. I mean, I think people want to follow someone that is authentic and cares and wants to do it.

And so for me, it's like, it's not, like I'm not a good CEO. I am a great leader. You know, because I'll charge over the hill when the bullets are coming any day. It feels to me like you still have and maybe have never not had a frontline obsession. The guy who started on the front lines and even as the company has grown has stayed on the front lines. You know the business inside and out. You're authentic. I mean, we didn't have a comms team before this meeting.

You can just show up and talk because you're on the front lines. You understand what's actually going on. Yeah. I mean, my email is still on every box. The letter J at ring.com is my email. It's on every box, has been from the beginning. And when you're on the front lines, everyone else respects. When customer service knows that if someone emails me, I'm going to respond.

They don't feel like they're doing a lesser job. Because they're not. Like, they're doing the most important job. As in my, like, we're all there for the customer. Do you get bombarded with emails? Not really. People are pretty respectful. I mean, like, I'd say, like, every once in a while,

there's always, like, these, like, edge things that happen where someone's just, like, kind of, like, sadly, like, just not respectful with it and stuff. I would say most people, again, but we mess things up. And so, like, I don't care if someone's unhappy, they can email me. If they're unhappy, we mess something up, we'll fix it. So overall, I'd say, like, I don't get a time. because we're pretty good overall. And by the way, the reason I don't get a ton is because our customer service knows

at a scale of over 100 million cameras in the field, our customer service knows, like, if they do something egregiously bad and someone emails me like, I'm on it, like, I'm going to call them. Like, they know it. They know it. And so that everybody, I'd say works at a level that they know that like, I'm here. And so it does keep everyone, like I'd say everyone on their toes a little more. I'm fascinated by that element.

I emailed you and I think you responded in less than an hour about doing this podcast. And I thought, wow, but it's funny. I'm being curious to get your take on this, but maybe it's different now that you're more powerful person. But I feel like some of the busiest people that have the craziest jobs and that you think are literally building the things that are changing the world respond so fast. And this has happened to me over the past 11 years. They're such fast responders. it blows my mind. It's a weird thing where I've found that the people that are the most successful,

you can almost tell who's successful by how fast they respond. Yes. And it was just so flip-flop of what it should be. A successful person should respond to you in, you know, a month. Yeah. Yeah, you're totally right. This is a commonality I've seen over the past 11 years that blows my mind. It's better for me now with a show that has, you know, shown to give others a good platform.

So I get it. It's more common now. But it's still, even over a decade, people who I would think, oh, no way. And then 15 minutes later, they're like, sure, dude, let's do it. How about tomorrow? I mean, it's wild to me how often that happens. When you're running at like the highest levels, you're actually very efficient. And there's something about it.

But it's 100% right. And I do, I even find it like when I look at investing in people, I'll get like a founder. I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm so busy. I didn't get back to you or something. And it doesn't mean that they won't be successful. but it is a like warning sign because yeah like when the most successful people get back to me in five seconds, it's like there's something wrong here. Yeah, I've been studying a lot, Jamie recently, great teams, specifically the DNA of great teams,

whether it's sports, business, any team. I would love to hear your frontline obsessed version of what are some of the attributes or the dynamics or the DNA of excellent teams. I think the DNA is that people know what they're doing on the field. But I think the best company runs the same as the best sports team. Seattle yesterday. Like that team ran freaking great. And they ran great because the quarterback didn't think he's a kicker. And the kicker didn't think he was a linebacker.

And so like, and he trusts, the kicker trusted the linebacker's going to do his job. He's not like when they're about to hike it off as the kicker and go back to the guy. Hey, listen, are you going to block that guy over there? I just want to make sure we should have a meeting about this. So I think like there is an autonomy that happens where everyone knows a play. Like the play is set so you know what that is. And so I think like people know it ring. The play is making neighbor safer.

We know kind of where we're going. But we don't have to all meet and talk about each other's jobs. Like Jason Matera who runs my technology, like Jason and I talk all the time, but we don't have meetings. I don't even have a standing meeting with the team in any cadence because we meet when we need to meet. We talk about what we need to talk about. But like, why do I need to? If these are the best people in the world, why do we need to get together every week? Do you not have a lot of meetings?

I have a lot of meetings on things that need to get done. Say more. What do you mean by that? The best day for me is like a product's having an issue that we're going into production and we need to fix something. Like that's a meeting. Like not standing meetings of we're doing the budget meeting and we're doing the this meeting. How many direct reports do you have?

I couldn't even tell you. I mean, not a ton. You don't have reoccurring one-on-ones or anything? No, no, zero. Man. But I talk to people like all the time. Responding, I talk to people that work with me. And I don't care if you're a skip level.

I don't even know what that shit means. I talk to people all day long, all night long, Sunday. Like we're talking about like things, but it's event-based. We have to get the sales up on this. We have to get like where there's issues, where there's whatever we work on it. And I trust that people, but like, if you're not doing your job, we fire you. Like, that's kind of how it works. Like, that's the reality.

I just think reoccurring meetings should be absolutely eliminated from the world. I hate them. I don't have any. If I can get rid of the button that allows for them, I would nuke it. Yes, man. Like, it's not first principle thinking. Like, there's no way every single Monday at 9 a.m. You have something important to talk about.

It just doesn't, like, the world can't exist like that. There are times where you should meet, but like it should be based on like when you need to do something. not some cadence. And they do. They just become like, and they just stack and stack and stack. And like I don't. Yeah.

Have the best quarterback. Have the best kicker. Have the best coach. Let them work together. Let them practice together. Have the plays. But you don't need to get together every day to talk about how we're feeling. Yeah.

Jamie, one more question. This is a little bit maybe adjacent to what we've been talking about. And maybe it's personal. Maybe it's professional. Maybe it's both. So let's say we're meeting or I'm seeing what's happening with you one year from today, exactly a year from day. And this is called the champagne

question. And you've got a bottle of champagne. I don't know if you drink that or not with your wife, your son, he's 17, 18 at that point. You guys are celebrating. What are you celebrating? Probably something, probably something on the charitable side of things. Like what? You know, we do a lot of work in South Central LA, probably something more on that. We do a lot of work with the police, the LAPD. We also do a lot of stuff. We have a house in Missouri at this farm, and we do a lot of stuff out there with people.

So probably celebrating something, like, again, I think the best thing you can do is kind of service to others. And so it's probably something where we somehow help someone do something. And it wouldn't be like the champagne thing is like, we wouldn't be like clicking it. You know, we're not that sort of family. We're like, oh, we did it again. Like, you know, we sold the business.

Like, yeah, you know, like, like cigars and stuff, but it would be celebrating that like we were able to sort of do something good, you know, with our brains and minds and whatever that like help someone. More service oriented. Yeah, I read 75 acre farm in Missouri. Like, are you there a lot? What do you do there? I love it. I'm there all the time. It's, uh, you know, it became like a passion project. I invested in a business out there called Moink. Actually, when I was on Shark Tank, I went there, fell in love with the place. It came like a, I'm like sort of part of the town now. I love the people. The town had definitely been certainly impacted by opioids and by industrial farming

and all the things by the that are impacting these towns. These towns are all over the U.S., small little town. And so we started to kind of work there with the townspeople and fix the streets and the sidewalks and put a little coffee shop and everyone's kind of come together. And it's a really cool place. And I love going there and bringing people there and it's been fun. Love it, man. Well, I really appreciate you. being here and all the work you do. You're making my home safer, my neighborhood safer. So thank you so much for that, man.

I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Absolutely. Thanks, Ryan. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know where you learn from this great conversation with Jamie Seminoff. A few takeaways from my notes, frontline obsession.

I love that Jamie still has this email address. on every ring doorbell. Also, by the way, he's a very fast responder, which we found to be a commonality among leaders who sustain excellence over time. Back to frontline obsession. The moment you stop touching the actual work is when you lose the feel

for what's really happening. Distance from the front line is distance from the truth. I think CEOs and senior leaders should be obsessed with being on the front lines. And then the next one got me kind of tuned up during the conversation. No recurring meetings in the calendar. No standing Monday morning meetings. That doesn't mean you shouldn't meet with people, but only meet when you need to get something done, when you need to actually have a meeting. Other than that, there should be no standing meetings

on your calendar. If you disagree, please email me. I'd be happy to talk about it. And then the next part of that was pretty cool, why Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie, quote, a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied. with the status quo. What a cool part. It was neat to have that part of the conversation with Jamie. You could tell it meant a lot to him. And then I liked his hiring filter.

He calls it looking for marathon runners. And also he hires fast, but then fires fast if he realizes he makes a mistake. And I think that's something we all could get better at. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message, telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Jamie Seminoff. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that.

And you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, rated five stars, hopefully write a thoughtful review. By doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talking to you soon, can't wait.