The Tech Founder Who Wants to Fix Small-Town America

Jamie Siminoff sold home-security company Ring to Amazon for a billion dollars, invested in an unlikely entrepreneur in rural Missouriand ended up falling in love with the place and buying a farm. Then things got interesting.

- By Tom Foster. Photography by Evan Jenkins

JAMIE SIMINOFF CAN'T CONTAIN himself. The 47-year-old founder of doorbell-cum-home-security company Ring leans over the edge of the caramel leather sofa on his chartered private jet, like an excited child in the window seat. "There's the river," he says, craning his neck to spot a prize piece of land he owns 20,000 feet below. "The farm is going to be right over there now!" We're flying over the patchwork fields of northeastern Missouri, far from his homes in Los Angeles, Nantucket, and Aspen, Colorado. Siminoff's 75-acre spread lies just outside La Belle, Missouri, a farm town of around 650 people whose population, like its primary industry, has been slowly dwindling for 100 years.

Siminoff, who sold Ring to Amazon in 2018 but didn't leave the tech behemoth until this past summer, first visited La Belle about four years ago to follow up on an investment he made as a guest Shark on Shark Tank. Since then his interest in the town has morphed from curiosity to a passion that has led him to make La Belle his part-time home as he's tried to inject new social and economic life into the area.

He knows what this looks likethe uncomfortable image of a wealthy California tech mogul jetting in to reinvent a slice of the heartland. But his earnest affection for La Belle, "this little farm town that I love," can be contagious. Whether Siminoff ultimately succeeds in reversing the town's fortunes remains a big question, but the experience has already unlocked surprising lessons for him, the residents of La Belle, and an ever-widening circle of America's business elite. What began as a lark might one day turn out to be Siminoff's most impactful act of entrepreneurship to date.

"It's my happy place," he says, turning away from the plane window and back to the business of being a high-profile CEO. "I wish I could spend all my time there."