This founder sold his company to Amazon for $1 billion after being rejected on 'Shark Tank.' Here's the one thing he said every startup needs to succeed.

• Ring founder and inventor Jamie Siminoff says the most successful businesses are the ones that tackle long-term problems.
• Dealing with rejection is also important; Siminoff left Shark Tank without a deal when he appeared on the show in 2013 before selling his company to Amazon.
• Siminoff says the key to success is to focus on a long-term problem rather than a booming technology or industry.
• Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.

Jamie Siminoff's entire career has been about rejection.

That might sound surprising coming from someone like Siminoff, who sold the video doorbell and home security company he founded to Amazon for $1 billion last year and recently served as a guest Shark on the ABC reality show "Shark Tank." 

But back in 2013, long before those achievements, Siminoff walked away from "Shark Tank" with no deal after pitching his company, then called DoorBot, to the panel of "Shark Tank" investors.

"If you want to be in the business of having your own company and being able to succeed in this way, welcome to the failure game," Siminoff told Business Insider in a recent interview. "You're going to get hit with a lot of things. You've got to be able to just move on and do it."

Nearly 67% of startups fail to raise additional funding or make an exit, according to research firm CB Insights, which tracked more than 1,100 tech companies that raised seed rounds in the United States between 2008 and 2010. Of those companies, only 15% made it to the Series C funding stage. 

So how do you make sure your company doesn't end up in that 67%? Siminoff says the key to success is to focus on a long-term problem rather than a booming technology or industry.

"The reason that Amazon bought Ring is because it wasn't built to be a company to sell," Siminoff said. "I think what people sometimes miss when they're doing a startup is that they're so focused on a technology but it's very short term. I always try to tell anyone that I talk to: Find that long-term thing that you're solving."

Developments and changes in the technology industry may impact how you tackle the problem your business is solving. But that technology shouldn't be the basis for your business, Siminoff says. He points to Ring as an example, saying that his company's mission is founded on making neighborhoods safer, which serves as the guiding principle for Ring's products.

"No matter how technology changes, you'll just keep working on that problem," he said. "And that's how you build a long-term business." 

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