Hacker News Reader

TLDR: Because it was either that or shutting down (either completely, or with such a massive downsize that it would have been effectively the same thing).

I'd be interested to know what he did get out of the deal. Sold for "south of $40M" and with the statement, "He’s not leaving Pebble as a wealthy man."

View on HN

Wealthy relative to startups, or relative to the real world?

relative to how much debt he had to pay off?

$40MM wouldn't be much buffer for a product that was about to go into manufacturing and distribution I would have thought?

I.e. all the costs of design, development and planning are sunk. And they didn't get to the stage of selling them to recoup any of that.

My guess is most/all of that money went into paying off suppliers and debt.

But he isn't personally responsible for that debt. As CEO, he could have drawn enough salary to build a decent sized nest egg, where he isn't immediately looking for a job.

Also mentioned in the article is that Pebble is still responsible for their own debts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com