JAMIE SIMINOFF CAN’T CONTAIN himself. The 47-year-old founder of doorbell-cum-home-security company Ring leans over the edge of the caramel leather sofa on his chartered private jet, like an excited child in the window seat. “There’s the river,” he says, craning his neck to spot a prize piece of land he owns 20,000 feet below. “The farm is going to be right over there now!”
We’re flying over the patchwork fields of northeastern Missouri, far from his homes in Los Angeles, Nantucket, and Aspen, Colorado. Siminoff ’s 75-acre spread lies just outside La Belle, Missouri, a farm town of around 650 people whose population, like its primary indus try, has been slowly dwindling for 100 years.
Siminoff, who sold Ring to Amazon in 2018 but didn’t leave the tech behemoth until this past summer, first visited La Belle about four years ago to follow up on an investment he made as a guest Shark on Shark Tank. Since then his interest in the town has morphed from curiosity to a passion that has led him to make La Belle his part-time home as he’s tried to inject new social and economic life into the area.
He knows what this looks like— the uncomfortable image of a wealthy California tech mogul jetting in to reinvent a slice of the heartland. But his earnest affection for La Belle, “this little farm town that I love,” can be contagious. Whether Siminoff ultimately succeeds in reversing the town’s fortunes remains a big question, but the experience has already unlocked surprising lessons for him, the residents of La Belle, and an ever-widening circle of America’s business elite. What began as a lark might one day turn out to be Siminoff’s most impactful act of entrepreneurship to date.
“It’s my happy place,” he says, turning away from the plane window and back to the business of being a high-profile CEO. “I wish I could spend all my time there.”
SIMINOFF HAS NEVER BEEN ONE TO shrink from steep odds. “Jamie doesn’t do anything halfway,” says his wife, Erin. Born and raised in rural Chester, New Jersey, Siminoff kicked off his career as a serial entrepreneur in college. While attend ing the private business school Babson, outside Boston, he sold discount TVs on campus and tackled any errand or menial task for $15 an hour. After graduating in 1999, he created a Skype-like service in Bulgaria. His next company, PhoneTag, offered voicemail transcription. Then came Unsubscribe.com, which did exactly what its name implies. Siminoff eventually sold each company for enough money to pay back investors, but he wasn’t exactly changing the world.
In 2011, Siminoff was tinkering in his L.A. garage when he hit on the idea for a Wi-Fi doorbell. It was the early days of what was referred to as the internet of things, when companies would add an internet connection to everything from toasters to thermostats in pursuit of a so-called smart home. Siminoff was convinced a connected doorbell was far from a novelty item: It could send an alert to its owner no matter where they were—and even better, a video camera could act as a kind of remote peephole.
The reception by his peers was hardly enthusiastic. “People were like, in 2013. After every other Shark passed on Siminoff’s ask of $700,000 for 10 percent equity, Kevin O’Leary made an offer that included 10 percent royalties. No, thanks, said Siminoff, who figured that setup would destroy his margins. The show was a PR bonanza, though, and the product caught the public’s imagination. Sales surged, and in time Siminoff won investments from the likes of Richard Branson, Shaquille O’Neal, and the venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins. Five years after the Sharks passed on the company—since rebranded as Ring—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos offered Siminoff a reported $1.1 billion in February 2018.
