Kevin O'Leary Says Ring Founder Rejecting His 'Shark Tank' Deal Cost Him $800 Million

Kevin O'Leary says Ring founder Jamie Siminoff's decision to turn down his Shark Tank offer in 2013 cost him around $800 million (£608 million). The investor known as Mr Wonderful set out the figure on Logan Paul's Impaulsive podcast, and the clip has begun circulating again on X.

At the time, the product was not even called Ring. Siminoff pitched a smartphone-connected doorbell called DoorBot, asking the sharks for $700,000 (about £530,000) in return for 10 per cent of the business, a valuation of $7 million (£5.3 million).

One by one, the investors dropped out until O'Leary was the only one left with an offer.

The Offer Siminoff Walked Away From

O'Leary's proposal was not a straightforward equity deal. He offered the $700,000 as a loan, repaid through a 10 per cent royalty on sales. Once he recovered his money, the royalty would fall to 7 per cent and continue after that. He also wanted a 5 per cent stake in the company. Royalty deals of this kind are a hallmark of his approach on the show.

Siminoff balked, and it was the royalty rather than the equity that he could not accept. 'You can't make the product if you have a royalty,' he later told an audience at Babson College, his former university. 'There's no way a small company could make it.' When he turned the offer down, O'Leary delivered his trademark line: 'You're dead to me.' Siminoff left the studio without a deal and, by his own account, in tears.

Why O'Leary Puts the Figure at $800 Million

O'Leary has not published the workings behind the estimate. What is on the record is the shape of the offer: a royalty on every sale rather than on profit, carrying no fixed end date, alongside the 5 per cent equity stake. Ring's value climbed sharply after the broadcast, and its products are now fitted in more than 10 million homes.

The figure also predates the dilution that followed. Ring raised more than $200 million from investors across several funding rounds, which reduced early stakes. By the time Amazon stepped in, Siminoff himself held about 10 per cent of the company.

The Miss That O'Leary Still Talks About

Siminoff renamed DoorBot as Ring in 2014 and brought in backers including Sir Richard Branson and Shaquille O'Neal.

In February 2018, Amazon bought the company for a reported $1 billion (£760 million), with some estimates putting the price as high as $1.8 billion (£1.37 billion).

The exposure from the show drove a sharp rise in orders. Siminoff has estimated the appearance generated around $5 million (£3.8 million) in extra sales, and Mark Cuban, who passed on the pitch, had valued DoorBot at just $40 million (£30 million) at the time.

When the Amazon deal closed, O'Leary called Ring 'probably the biggest miss' in the show's history. He had never hidden his view of the original numbers. 'It wasn't worth $7 million,' he told CNBC at the time, arguing that the loan structure was the only way the deal made financial sense. The televised pitch, he has noted, ran more than an hour before being cut to about eight minutes.

There was no lasting friction between the two men. Siminoff returned to Shark Tank as a guest shark in 2018 and was seated beside the only shark who had made him an offer. He stayed on as Ring's chief executive after the Amazon takeover and led the company until 2023.

O'Leary's message to founders has not changed: take the money when it is on the table. Siminoff has said he doubts Ring would exist today had he accepted the royalty terms.