Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky has joined Y Combinator as a partner

Pebble made a bet on more growth than that niche userbase could provide.

It turned out the only functionality a significantly larger userbase than Pebble's early adopters found interesting in a wearable device was fitness tracking related. They pivoted too late to accommodate that.

Niche does not scale to worldwide ambitions. Plus competition, such as Amazfit Bip for $59 with 45 days battery life.

honestly, i don't they they were aesthetic enough. everyone I saw was incredibly ugly. I think most smart watch companies had this problem and by the time some had solved it, the novelty had worn off.

I bought a second hand moto 360 and got tired of having to charge it and my phone for what was practically the same return.

The Fitbit Ionic looked like it could be a spiritual successor [I'd presumed - without evidence - that that was where the Pebble team ended up].

It doesn't yet look open enough (or quite cute enough) to persuade me, but I'll be keeping an eye on OS/ecosystem updates and hardware revisions.

I loved my Pebble because it helped disconnect me from my phone. My phone's ringer got turned off, and I could rely on wrist vibrations and read alarms and text messages from my wrist. This lead to me getting 1/2 hour of my day back, because I would stop accidentally reading the news, opening Reddit, or playing a mobile game.

But it's much easier to monetize a product that forces more screen time on you, and keeps you more distracted. Does the Apple Watch get subsidized by Apple because of the App Store? Pebble could have gone that route, but it didn't feel like the customer they were targeting.

The main problem was that they ran out of runway while waiting for manufacturers and suppliers to line up and meet their demand. The software was solid, but for hardware products, that's less than half the picture. You need to worry about coordinating with suppliers, factories, and all these other logistical issues to produce a product a scale. If a supplier is unwilling to meet your demand, you're basically screwed and are left waiting indefinitely, unless you immediately pivot on your hardware design.

What baffles me is that someone who basically flopped is made a partner in a YC.

[Edit:] Oh, I see. In the SV land driving a company into the ground is a win!

This is the type of product that really needs a lightweight company to produce it. Sure, the initial sales can probably recover money used to pay a development and design staff, but that doesn't keep their paycheck going indefinitely. In order to employee a decent development team you need to constantly churn out new products, or have a larger product portfolio (which is why Samsung, for example, can still sell smartwatches, because those devs can get assigned to other projects between product revisions).

What Pebble needed to be successful was to have the product design teams completely outsourced from the beginning, so that initial development (and each revision costs) could be budgeted against expected sales, but once that is done, the development team (outsourcer) would then continue work for other customers. Instead of being on Pebble's payroll.

IMO one reason Pebble failed was that the writing was on the wall once the Apple Watch launched: if you're not in the ecosystem, you're going to be weak by comparison. Case in point, a Pebble watch can receive notifications on an iOS device, but can't act on them. It has a microphone, but can't use Siri. As Apple expands the watch platform and doesn't let Pebble in, they become less and less competitive. The picture is much better on Android given its open nature - even after the death of Pebble you can use Gadgetbridge to keep going. But you can see how Pebble became something that investors looked at warily - they weren't in control of their destiny.

It's a huge shame. IMO, the Pebble Time Round[1] is still the best looking smartwatch created by anyone so far. And it has a longer battery life than the Apple Watch and (most?) Android watches.

[1] https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gt5yu-N_VKNyf4pzH1f_NqbhrMU=...

Probably drowned in trying to support so many SKUs. Trying to segment their product beyond the ability of startup capital in a new and small market. Supply chain complexities, inventory burden, and too many subtly different models for a new (mainstream) customer to easily understand.

See here for a summary of all the models and options they were supporting: http://gadgetsandwearables.com/2017/10/23/best-pebble-watch/

Consumer hardware seems to be the Everest of startup endeavors. Congrats to the founder for moving forward in his career!

Shame it'll die in 4 months :(

Fitbit are finally shutting down the servers, and who knows what effect that'll have.

I dearly miss my Pebble Steel, but arguably the dial + buttons + touch screen combination on the Samsung Gear Sport I got as a replacement provides a better interface.

It really was. I still have my Pebble classic on my wrist, and patiently wait for a similarly priced and spec'd (B&W eInk screen, HR sensor, simple look) watch to the Pebble 2 so I can retire it. I was genuinely bummed when they announced they aren't going ahead with Pebble 2 shipments because of their closure.

I bought a Pebble 2 and it was delivered just before the sale to Fitbit. It's great value for money, and I love the battery life. It's too bad they couldn't figure out a way to become more independent.

The buttons on my original Pebble fell off in the first 5 minutes I owned it.

It also contradicts PG's advice that startups should hill climb.

> If you are asking your customers to [pre-fund] your manufacturing runs after 6 years then something has gone wrong.

From what I understand, their later crowdfunding campaigns were more about building hype than actually raising funds. They could have made the watches without them, but since they were known for making such a splash on KickStarter, they went back again for later rounds. Was that the right thing to do? Did it project the right image for their company? That's up for debate, I suppose.

Pebble was the best watch I've owned. I moved away to a mechanical watch since, but that experience is still what I want when I occasionally think of buying a new smart watch.

Congrats, Eric! Big win for every hardware company going through YC that will undoubtedly learn an immense amount from your experience.

I'm sad the Pebble story had tonend like this, but I'm proud to have participated to both Kickstarter (own the OG Pebble, Pebble Steel, Pebble Time Steel) and I'm still wearing the PTS today!

The Timeline concept is unparalleled in the smartwatch ecosystem and the interface really put the "time" concept on the spotlight which I feel that current smartwatch makers forget to often about (to the benefit of fitness stuff, which is "trendy" amongst customers). I'll be sad when the thing will die. :(

A 1x liquidation preference is a pretty standard term for VCs.

$0.

Officially, founders typically only hold common shares (often with further restrictions). Common shareholders should get $0 when selling for less than money raised because of liquidation preferences.

However, the acquiring company usually wants to retain some of the team. The founders often receive an employment offer, and that offer can contain anything negotiated, including signing or performance bonuses.

There can be some conflict of interest and negotiation ugliness if the investors view the employment offers as too generous at the expense of shareholders. In practice, most decent investors would prefer to spend their energy on their big winners rather than optimize a small loss into break-even.

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html#f12n

No need to drag your phone out of your pocket every time it vibrates.

Get directions directly to your wrist while walking/etc.

"What value was added by a Pebble watch?"

Unlike the vast majority of other smartwatches, I could look at the screen in bright daylight, and actually see it.

Never have your ringer on, ever. My phone hasn't made a sound in 4 years.

My phone is always on silent now. It's much better to see notifications on my watch than have to dig out my phone to check. Like most people, most of my notifications aren't immediately actionable. A lot of them are just emails about things I'm already aware of but will be useful later. It's very useful to cut down the degree of interruption (and noise) from notifications day to day.

In certain situations it also greatly helps when there's a high rate of notifications due to some activity (sometimes I work events, for example), and there it can be helpful if you are part of a group of folks who are using messaging to coordinate in real-time to be able to not have to dig out your phone constantly to stay caught up. Typically you'll read many more messages than you'll write, so optimizing for reading without breaking your workflow (such as if you're working with your hands, walking, or doing something else) is practically a game changer.

Also, for me, I spent many years without a watch because it seemed superfluous during the cell phone era. And for a while when I owned a smartwatch I had only used it during events when I really needed it to keep up with a near continuous communication stream. But I spent a while experimenting with just wearing it everyday, partly to help with maintaining a more consistent schedule, especially with sleep. I have alarms (which just vibrate) on my watch to remind me when it's time to go home from work and when it's near bed time. That may seem like overkill but they are very unobtrusive and they've made it much much easier to avoid staying very late at work or staying up too late for no good reason. Also, I switched to using a cloth (NATO) watch band which makes wearing a watch much more comfortable than with a plastic or even leather band, in my experience.

Overall I've been wearing a smartwatch essentially every day for about two years now and I wouldn't go back easily. It's nice to just have a watch when you need it, it's nice to get notifications less intrusively, it's nice being able to leave your phone on silent forever, it's nice having a step counter without having to worry about it, it's nice having a way to control fitness apps like STRAVA so that I can go on a bike ride and see how many miles I've ridden, my average pace, etc. (although they dropped support for pebble unfortunately).

The thing I like particularly about pebble, and the reason I haven't upgraded since then even though I could easily afford it (I've even resorted to running an old version of STRAVA on my phone that still works with pebble) is that it's always on (it has a transflective LCD display), has weeklong battery life, and in general it doesn't try to be a 2nd smartphone just a complement to my existing smartphone. Unfortunately, so many other smartwatches seem to fall into the trap of being blingy high-status toys that are expensive and flashy but have super short battery life and displays that are only on sometimes. I wear my pebble when I go hiking or camping, starting from a full charge it works just fine as a regular watch even with my smartphone off.

Hellishly expensive in comparison to a product that wasn't sustainable. It's probably priced right where Pebble should have been.

- start up

- cash in

- sell out

- bro down