When Jamie Siminoff went on ABC's "Shark Tank" to pitch his company Doorbot in 2013, he believed the then-financially struggling operation's future hinged on getting an investment.

After Siminoff pitched his idea — a WiFi-enabled doorbell that allows you to see video of and talk to people as they arrive at your front door — the judges weren't convinced. All but Kevin O'Leary passed, and he made what Siminoff considered an unacceptable offer. Doorbot didn't make a deal.

"I remember after that 'Shark Tank' episode literally being in tears," he tells CNBC Make It. "I needed the money, we were out of money at the time."

He'd sunk $10,000 into building props for the pitch, and the company's staff of eight had spent a month preparing for the show, according to his blog. After leaving without an investor, it seemed the efforts all may have been a waste they couldn't afford.

But Siminoff wasn't just upset about the money. The critiques from investors like Mark Cuban and Lori Greiner about the product's ability to sell were fresh objections mirroring others' doubts about his idea.

"I can't count the number of people who didn't invest in this, who said 'no,' the number of people who said it was going to fail," Siminoff says. "I don't think [Microsoft] Excel could hold the number of records for it."

Those people may wish they had paid more attention. The business, now re-branded as Ring and offering a suite of connective home security products, has seen immense growth since Siminoff appeared on Season 5 of "Shark Tank."

"It has now been four years since 'Shark Tank,' and the business is now valued at $1 billion," Siminoff, 41, says on an update for the show that aired Nov. 12, 2017. "Today we're over 1,300 people, 10 core products, [sold in] 16,000 stores." Ring even counts Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson, who became interested after seeing one of its products, among its investors.

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Before his doorbell idea, Siminoff built and sold a handful of other companies, one for a price tag as high as $17 million in 2009, according to the Los Angeles Times. (The profits were split between Siminoff and his partners, and Siminoff invested his share in new businesses.)

He's a constant inventor who has been tinkering since he was 7 years old. Siminoff remembers projects like a blanket through which he could pump icy water from an aquarium to cool down on hot summer days as a kid. And despite early success with other businesses, like SimulScribe, offering voicemail transcription services, or Unsubscribe, which promised to declutter email inboxes, he wasn't fulfilled. None of his ventures had captured his whole imagination.

So in late 2010, Siminoff set up shop in his garage and put all his focus into dreaming up new products. There was just one problem: He couldn't hear the doorbell ring from his work space. He looked for a product that could buzz his phone with a notification when someone rang and couldn't find one.

"I literally built myself a WiFi doorbell," he says, not seeing it as a future business but a solution to an annoying problem. He remembers thinking, "I need this damn thing so I can be in my garage inventing."

Then his wife remarked how much safer she felt with a device that could tell you who was knocking before you let them inside. When he began to envision a bigger mission around home security, he realized he'd found his idea.