Draft:Jamie Siminoff

Biography

James (Jamie) Siminoff, currently 47 years old, was born on October 18th, 1976. Before launching "Ring", Siminoff founded several other businesses. One was a company called "PhoneTag", a voicemail-to-text company, and another was "Unsubscribe.com" which gave people a service to help manage their email subscriptions. "Ring" came to light in 2011 but was originally called "DoorBot" which was designed to enhance home security. Siminoff first appeared on "Shark Tank" as an entrepreneur pitching his idea called "DoorBot" which is now known as "Ring". He was turned down by the Shark Kevin O'Leary and left without a deal. In 2013, Siminoff rebranded and named his product "Ring". This in turn led to his product gaining traction and soon started to become popular. This company that was once called "DoorBot" that nobody wanted, turned into "Ring" and became a huge success. In February 2018, "Ring" was bought by Amazon for over $1 Billion. Siminoff stayed as CEO, trying to integrate and grow this product within Amazon. He is a very prominent guy within the tech industry especially in home security. This led to "Shark Tank" inviting Siminoff as a guest shark for an episode, to not only show him gratitude for what he's accomplished but to show off the skills he's learned in the industry. To this day, Jamie Siminoff is known as one of the most famous people to appear on Shark Tank. His net worth today is $300 million.

Career

After attending Babson College, Siminoff headed back home to work in his garage and pursue his dreams of being an entrepreneur. Siminoff would work day in and day out, building different products and drawing up different ideas, until one day while he was working, he got so annoyed with the fact he had to keep getting up to answer his doorbell when people would come by that he had the idea of the Doorbot. The Doorbot was the prototype for the Ring camera and was a clunky-looking camera on a plastic piece. Siminoff knew that this could be his breakthrough so he worked to perfect this product he had come up with and decided to apply to Shark Tank and pitch his idea. Siminoff pitched his company which at the time was "Doorbot," and he was seeking a $700,000 investment for a 10% stake in his business. Siminoff demonstrated the product, a smart doorbell that allows homeowners to see and communicate with visitors through their smartphones, even when they're not at home. Siminoff's product seemed promising to the Sharks, but they were skeptical. They raised concerns about the market potential and the product's scalability. Unfortunately for Siminoff, none of the Sharks made an offer, and he left the Tank without a deal. Despite this unfortunate situation, Siminoff wasn't going to give up on his product. From all his time spent in school and at home working for hours on new products and entrepreneurship, Siminoff knew that his product would sell on the market. He spent the time developing his company and rebranding it "Ring," and people soon found out that Siminoff got rejected on Shark Tank while his product was doing so well on the market. This publicity skyrocketed and "Ring" cameras were flying off shelves. Ultimately, Ring became a huge success, leading to its acquisition by Amazon for over $1 billion. In recent times, Siminoff has recently shifted his focus to a new venture and a leadership role at Latch, which is a company specializing in smart access systems. After selling Ring to Amazon in 2018, Siminoff founded Honest Day's Work, a company aimed at enhancing profitability and service quality for residential service providers. He merged this company with Latch and is set to become the CEO of Latch, where he aims to build an integrated residential ecosystem.

Early Life and Education

Jamie Siminoff was born on October 18th, 1976. Siminoff grew up in Chester, New Jersey, and attended West Morris Mendham High School. In school, he was known as the "class clown". Usually after school, he was in his garage building things. Siminoff struggled in school until his dad told him he'd buy him the Land Rover Defender 90 if he got straight A's. This incentive turned a switch in Siminoff's head and he went from a C student to getting straight A's. This is an example he used for his college application essays, showing that if he put his mind towards something, he can and will accomplish it. He went to Babson College School of Business where he studied entrepreneurship which is located in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He found his classes much more interesting than when he was in high school which in turn he achieved honor roll. Siminoff was a hustler, he loved to sell, he was around campus selling electronics and won a business planning competition. He then earned cash by writing business plans for others. He said, "Someone offered me $10,000 to create a business plan, which at the time for me was like $100 million. They were happy with it and I did another one. One thing kept leading to another and then another". Siminoff was a very intelligent guy even though he may not have always believed it. After graduation from Babson, he returned to the place where it all started, his garage, he hired a couple of assistants, and the three of them "just started building stuff" with different degrees of success.

Early Business Ventures

Throughout his career, Siminoff has been involved in a variety of different business ventures: Siminoff was the founder of Edison Junior in 2012, which served as the incubator for Siminoff's inventions. In 2010 and 2011, Siminoff became the founder and president of NobelBiz, a contact center software company. SimulScribe was a voicemail-to-text company, that Siminoff founded in 2005 and was sold to DiTech for $17 million in 2009. After selling his company Simulscribe, Siminoff became the chief strategy advisor for Ditech, being in the company from September 2009 until September 2011. Siminoff founded Body Mint (which was an unsuccessful venture), a chlorophyll dietary supplement designed to eliminate body odor. Siminoff then founded and was the CEO of Unsubscribe, a technology platform designed to stop unwanted emails. In 2011, Unsubscribe.com was sold to TrustedID.

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