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Comment by imaginenore | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think they failed? Didn't FitBit just buy them?

FitBit bought just their software assets for under $40 million. In 2015, Citizen offered to buy the whole company for $740 million.

FitBit did not acquire their $24 million in debt or any physical asserts. They offered jobs to 40% of the staff.

> In 2015, Citizen offered to buy the whole company for $740 million

ouch, i can only imagine how the founders feel

It depends on the terms of the offer. He might have thought he was working in his employee's best interests by not taking the offer. Alternatively he could have negotiated support contracts for existing customers and provided stock options to employees then cashed out.

But in hindsight he's probably kicking himself.

Pebble have entered insolvency:

http://www.proofofclaims.com/PebbleTech/documents/

A bankruptcy judge is going to have to approve all this. You can't sell all the valuable assets of a company the same day you declare bankruptcy - that could be considered fraud. If I had just fulfilled a big order of theirs yesterday on net 60 terms we had been operating under for the past 5 years I would be pretty upset.

No, Pebble is bankrupt and winding down operations. FitBit is buying some parts and offering jobs to the software people. This is not an acquihire. The designers and hardware people are not joining FitBit. The owners get nothing. Some of Pebble's creditors will likely also get nothing since the software/IP sale doesn't cover Pebble's debts.

What is success?

The product they named their company after is never going to be manufactured again. People who paid them for that product but haven't received it yet never will. Their company is dead.

Or do you mean the fact that their founders and owners probably got some cash back for selling the whole thing? Well, how much do you get back for an acquihire? Fitbit didn't buy them for their tech, or they'd still be selling it.

They may have bought them for patents though. E-ink display on a watch could be pretty important for fitbit going forward.

Pebble never used an E-Ink display. They used Sharp memory LCD displays (which Nike funded the development of in the watch formfactor) and called them E-Paper because they promised E-Ink in one of their kickstarters.

Bought because they likely could not survive on their own, cancelling their product lines & support for them, and for ~ 5 % of the highest buyout offer they received before. There are worse ways to fail, but it's not really success.

No, Fitbit are buying the assets of Pebble, the company is closing.

Well, it was a acquihire, which is kind of sad. Not a failure for investors, perhaps, but certainly for their customers.

> FitBit bought just their software assets for under $40 million. In 2015, Citizen offered to buy the whole company for $740 million.

I'd say that was a failure for Pebble investors as they raised $58.81M according to crunchbase.

And of that $40 million, they still owe their creditors something like $27 million. So for investors/founders, they're all looking at <1/4 of their investment cash value.

FitBit bought them for the equivalent of pennies because they were, it seems, deep in debt.

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