How a $200 Doorbell Became a $4B Business

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
Jamie created Ring Doorbell.

**Sam Parr** (0:01)
You sold it for like a billion dollars, right?

**Jamie Siminoff** (0:03)
1.15.

**Shaan Puri** (0:04)
The part after his decimal point is worth more than our entire career so far. I want to brainstorm business ideas with you. I want to see how you think.

**Jamie Siminoff** (0:12)
Is there a five or $10 billion company hiding in the bug space? Probably they're it.

**Sam Parr** (0:17)
You said, I just don't know how to stop. And sometimes it's not smart and it costs me.

**Jamie Siminoff** (0:21)
Yeah, you're going to make me cry, Sam? You're going to do this?

**Sam Parr** (0:34)
So, Shaan, listen, if you're like me, you woke up this morning, you rolled out of bed, you checked businessinsider.com, and you read this amazing article about Jamie. And it just says, I'm Jamie and I'm the CEO of Ring, and I have the world's worst morning routine. And it's a whole article about how he rolls out of bed, he scrolls his phone for about four hours.

**Jamie Siminoff** (0:55)
Everything he says he shouldn't do, like immediately like all the wrong shit, like everything.

**Sam Parr** (1:00)
That was the whole article about how Jamie has the world's worst routine.

**Shaan Puri** (1:04)
Good PR strategy, right? Like they sit down with you and they're like, hey, we need to get some cool like tech billionaire weirdo stuff. What do you got? And you're like, nope, don't have anything. So they're like, okay, we're going to use that.

**Jamie Siminoff** (1:14)
Yeah, I'm like the average guy from Missouri.

**Sam Parr** (1:17)
Are you from Missouri?

**Jamie Siminoff** (1:19)
I'm from New Jersey, but I tell people I'm from Missouri now. Because I have this farm in Missouri, and I've decided that there's no reason why you can't just be from Missouri.

**Sam Parr** (1:29)
Guess where I'm from, Jamie. Just look at me and guess.

**Jamie Siminoff** (1:31)
Missouri.

**Sam Parr** (1:32)
I'm from Missouri.

**Shaan Puri** (1:33)
Where?

**Sam Parr** (1:34)
St. Louis.

**Jamie Siminoff** (1:35)
So my farm is in LaBelle, Missouri. So I'm from Missouri. You're from Missouri. You're more like a city folk, but we are two and a half hours north of St. Louis.

**Shaan Puri** (1:46)
Dude, I love how he just out Missouri'd you, even though you were actually born and raised there. And he just actually was like, you're a city slicker, not a real true Missourian.

**Jamie Siminoff** (1:55)
We don't like you folk.

**Sam Parr** (1:56)
This is like, you go into like Tony Soprano and be like, actually, Tony, it's brisketa.

**Shaan Puri** (2:03)
So let me tee this up. All right. So I did a call with Jamie and it was super fun. Jamie created, if you've ever seen a doorbell that has a camera on it, this is the inventor. This is the man who did it. He created Ring Doorbell, grew it, sold it to Amazon for tons of money and I was like, hey, I want to have you on the podcast and brainstorm business ideas with you. I want to see how you think, how do you approach businesses and he's like, I believe, I don't know the exact quote, but it was something like ideas are like my drug of choice. He's like, I have this list on my phone of thousands of videos. Which one do you want? Yeah, exactly. So I want to do that. Sam, you saw the doc that he sent over, which gives us bullet point ideas. We don't know what he's going to say, but bullet point idea is where do you want to start?

**Sam Parr** (2:49)
Wait, can I ask a question before we get in? How much you sold it for like a billion dollars, right?

**Jamie Siminoff** (2:54)
1.15. But I mean, if you want to, you can round down if you want to.

**Sam Parr** (2:58)
Okay. So we're talking to a guy who, you have a billion dollar company.

**Shaan Puri** (3:02)
The part after his decimal point is worth more than our entire career so far.

**Jamie Siminoff** (3:06)
I think you do have to point out, I did sell it for a billion when a billion was a lot of money.

**Shaan Puri** (3:10)
Just back when a billion was cool?

**Jamie Siminoff** (3:11)
Back when a billion was actually like, you could buy more than a cup of coffee with it.

**Shaan Puri** (3:14)
Well, can we actually go to that story? Do you remember kind of where you were? I guess I'm always curious about two things. One, was there a good negotiation story or like a throw out a number story of like, how do you arrive at that 1.15 billion? And then like, how did that come about?