Shaquille O’Neal wanted better home security. A contractor quoted him $80,000. Another one said $65,000. Shaq said no. Instead, he went to Best Buy, bought a small doorbell camera brand nobody knew yet, and installed it himself. Later, while traveling in China, he checked the camera feed and realized he could see and talk to someone at his front door from across the world. That is when he went looking for the company behind it. At a conference in Las Vegas, he met founder Jamie Siminoff and made his pitch. He wanted to invest. He also wanted to do commercials. Siminoff agreed. Shaq put in $1 million for an equity stake and became one of the company’s biggest faces. In 2018, Amazon bought Ring for about $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion. What started as Shaq refusing to pay $80,000 became one of the smartest investments of his post-basketball career. #1official

Shaquille O’Neal wanted better home security. A contractor quoted him $80,000. Another one said $65,000. Shaq said no. Instead, he went to Best Buy, bought a small doorbell camera brand nobody knew yet, and installed it himself. Later, while traveling in China, he checked the camera feed and realized he could see and talk to someone at his front door from across the world. That is when he went looking for the company behind it. At a conference in Las Vegas, he met founder Jamie Siminoff and made his pitch. He wanted to invest. He also wanted to do commercials. Siminoff agreed. Shaq put in $1 million for an equity stake and became one of the company’s biggest faces. In 2018, Amazon bought Ring for about $1.2 billion to $1.8 billion. What started as Shaq refusing to pay $80,000 became one of the smartest investments of his post-basketball career. #1official