Mr. Wonderful Lost Out On $400 Million. Here's the second chance smart money is watching now.

Kevin O'Leary and the Sharks passed on Ring before Amazon bought it for over $1 billion — a 67,765% return, gone. Now a patented smart-home startup with $15M+ in revenue and shelf space at Best Buy, Home Depot, and Lowe's is offering pre-IPO shares at $2.50 before its next round.

When Kevin O'Leary lists the deals that got away, the smart-home names keep coming up — Ring, Nest, Vivint. Each solved an obvious, physical problem in the home and turned early believers into big winners once Amazon, Google, and Wall Street caught on. Today one company is checking every one of those boxes: RYSE, an AI-powered smart-home company revolutionizing shades with patented retrofit technology that installs in minutes and is controlled by phone or voice.

Those earlier windows have closed — but a remarkably similar one may have just opened, and the entry price moved again this morning.

The 92% problem nobody else is solving

Here's a statistic that should stop every smart-home investor: 92% of the world's window shades are still operated by hand. AI already controls our lights, thermostats, locks, and cameras — but the single largest surface area in most buildings, the windows, remains stubbornly analog.

That's no small blind spot. The global smart-home industry is a $158 billion market growing roughly 23% a year, and the smart-shade segment alone is projected to grow from $350M in 2024 to $2.8B by 2033. RYSE has built the only patented retrofit system that motorizes existing window shades, curtains, and blinds — no replacement, no electrician, no tools.

Not a concept. A real business.

This isn't a pitch deck with projections. RYSE has $15M+ in lifetime revenue, over 80,000 devices sold, and distribution with North America's biggest retailers — launched at The Home Depot (Q4 2024) and Lowe's (Q1 2025), alongside Best Buy (100+ stores), Amazon, and Linen Chest. The technology is protected by 10 issued patents (plus 4 pending) across the US, Canada, EU, and China, has won the Red Dot Design Award and the CES Mark of Excellence, integrates with Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit, and uses AI to cut energy costs by up to 24%.

The product line — $49 to $199, 67–75% gross margins

All four are sold at retailers nationwide — roughly $30 in cost of goods against $120+ retail — and the Gen 2 SmartShade is faster, stronger, and quieter at half Gen 1's production cost.

Four verticals, one retrofit platform

This isn't just a consumer play. RYSE is already deployed in the Fairmont hotel in Québec City, The Avery — a 56-story Related Companies tower in San Francisco — and coworking spaces across Toronto. The same patented system unlocks four distinct verticals, each with its own multi-billion-dollar tailwind:

Where RYSE sits against the smart-home exits

Early investors in Nest, Ring, and Vivint saw life-changing returns by spotting the same pattern — a patented product solving a massive, obvious problem, with real revenue and retail distribution — before the market caught on. The comparable set:

These comparables are provided for context only. They do not guarantee RYSE will achieve a similar outcome.

Who's already invested

RYSE has drawn notable backers. Shark Tank's Daymond John and Dragons' Den's Michelle Romanow are on-air judges turned investors, alongside Anthony Lacavera, who sold Wind Mobile for $1.16 billion, and Shawn Dougherty, co-founder of mophie ($100M+ exit).

Founder & CEO Trung Pham is a CFA charterholder and Dragons' Den entrepreneur who built RYSE after finding no retrofit option for his own apartment shades in 2015. CTO Marc Bishara led machine-vision systems at Kiwi Wearables and ATS Automation, and manufacturing lead Charleston Cheng ran QC and procurement for Apple, Dell, Cisco, and Intel at Foxconn.

The AI trend driving billions into smart homes

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Tesla have poured tens of billions into the connected home, all racing for a single AI layer that runs every surface in the modern building. RYSE sits at the intersection of the decade's two most powerful trends — artificial intelligence and smart-home infrastructure. Its system learns from time of day, weather, sunlight, and behavior, getting smarter the longer you own it — and with window coverings the last unautomated surface in the home, it owns a category with almost no direct competition.

Bonus shares: lower your entry price

Get in before the next increase and RYSE offers bonus shares at higher tiers, lowering the effective entry valuation from $117M to as low as $78M:

Higher tiers include free RYSE product bundles. Start with about $1,000; 7-day cancellation; ACH, credit card, or wire.

The bottom line

RYSE checks every box early Nest and Ring investors looked for: a $158 billion market, real revenue, granted patents, retail partnerships in place, celebrity and institutional backing on the cap table, and a reserved Nasdaq ticker. The only question now is whether you get in at $2.50 — or watch the next round price you out too.