"Ring" Just Sold To Amazon for 1 Billion Dollars. Shark Tank Passed On It In 2013 For A $7 Million Valuation

Ummmmmm, what? Come again?

NYP - Sometimes a shark doesn’t know a good thing.

Ring, the video-doorbell company that Amazon.com Inc. bought Tuesday for more than $1 billion, was rejected by a panel of investors on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2013.

Jamie Siminoff, the founder and chief executive of Ring — then called DoorBot — went on the show seeking investors for his nascent business. Pitching it as “caller ID for your door,” Siminoff was seeking $700,000 for a 10% stake in the company — a $7 million valuation.

No one bit, except for investor Kevin O’Leary, who offered a $700,000 loan, 10% of all sales until the loan was paid off, 7% royalties on all future sales and a 5% stake in the company.

Those terms didn’t work for Siminoff, who walked away from the offer.

“I remember after that ‘Shark Tank’ episode literally being in tears,” Siminoff told CNBC last year. “I needed the money, we were out of money at the time.”

But sales picked up after the show aired, and four years and a new name later, Ring had 1,300 employees, was sold in 16,000 stores and had a billion-dollar valuation.

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Haha, suck it, Shark Tank! This is the type of story I love to read. When the common man pulls one over on the big bad Sharks. This story is for all the times Cuban has been a snarky dick for no reason. All the times Mr. Wonderful offered some weird equity deal. All the times Robert…well he’s a delight, but all the times he passed over a deal for a vague reason.

Here is the original pitch from 2013:

I’ll say this- in 2013, I can understand being skeptical of an idea that requires a Smart Phone to be useful. But the Sharks are supposed to be geniuses. They are supposed to foresee a world where everything revolves around a phone. And they didn’t. So they passed. And now? Well the guy who invented Ring was spotted out this weekend having brunch with Cuban: