Shaquille O’Neal is known for his dominance on the basketball court, but his business moves off the court are just as impressive. One of the most surprising stories about Shaq isn’t about a slam dunk or a championship win — it’s about how he turned a simple home security issue into a multimillion-dollar investment.
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Shaq has three homes in Atlanta, where he’s lived for years, and he needed a new security system for one of them. When he contacted a security company, they offered him $80,000. Even though he’s worth millions, Shaq knew that was way too much. So he did what many of us would do and looked for a cheaper solution. While shopping at Best Buy, he saw a bunch of Ring cameras and decided to buy one.
“The crazy thing is, I wired it up myself,” Shaq said, clearly proud of his DIY skills. He set up the camera, and then, while traveling in China, he realized how powerful the system was. He could see someone at his front door and talk to them from halfway around the world. That’s when it clicked for Shaq — this wasn’t just a good product, it was a game-changer.
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Excited by what he had discovered, Shaq decided to take things a step further. He tracked down the company’s booth at a tech conference and made the CEO a bold offer. “I said, ‘Hey, my name is Shaquille O’Neal. I want to invest in your company, and you’re going to pay me to do commercials, and whatever happens,’” Shaq recalled. The CEO agreed, and Shaq became an early investor in Ring.
A few years later, Jeff Bezos bought Ring for $1 billion. Shaq’s decision to invest in this relatively unknown company saved him money on his home security and made him a lot of money in return. How much exactly? He never disclosed it.
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But this wasn’t Shaq’s first smart investment. In 1999, while he was still in his NBA prime, Shaq’s agent introduced him to Ron Conway, a top venture capitalist. Over lunch at the Four Seasons, Conway suggested he invest in a little-known company called Google. Shaq invested $250,000, which grew significantly as Google became a tech giant.
He said, “We had a meeting with them and it looked good. I put some money into it and then forgot about it.”
Shaq’s portfolio doesn’t stop there. He’s also invested in companies like Lyft, Apple, and Vitaminwater. With Lyft, he jumped in just a year after its founding, and when the company went public in 2019, it was valued at $22 billion.
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This article Shaq refused to pay $80,000 for security and made a surprising choice. He invested in a company that Bezos later bought for $1 billion originally appeared on Benzinga.com
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