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Comment by sen | Hacker News Reader

ALL they had to do was continue with the original idea and not get greedy.

I was a high(ish)-tier backer of the original, still got my 2 sitting in a drawer, and wore them until they wore out. I absolutely loved the idea of a MINIMAL e-paper watch with easily customisable faces and basic notifications. I’m still a fan of the idea, and would love to see more use of e-ink in smart watches. All the fans wanted was that, iterated and improved upon. Better development tools for faces, some other styles of physical watch, etc. Instead the entire brand got hand-grenaded and now we get nothing but some unsupported old e-waste.

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Meh, I know that we did not get greedy. Greedy implies we were driven by a selfish goal of making more money for ourselves. As the founder, I can truly state that it was not our intention.

We honestly thought that smartwatches were about to be a big thing for a lot of people and started scaling up. As I outlined in the post, we (poorly) tried to target a larger market segment and also scaled up our team. We were mostly right - smartwatches are objectively a major industry right now, but our strategy to do so was pretty bad. I don't think I would have changed anything, but looking back of course I see what would have been a more successful (but smaller) path.

If it makes you feel any better amazfit carry’s the torch now for long battery e-ink smartwatches, I still think the pebble did it better but at least there’s something out there.

> We honestly thought that smartwatches were about to be a big thing for a lot of people

I think you were right.

I remember when my Time2 Kickstarter refund came, I was seriously considering using that money to buy an Apple Watch. But I didn't like the plasticy look/feel of the base models, and wasn't prepared to spend twice as much to get one with the nice metal mesh strap. I then spent about half that money on three 2nd hand Russian mechanical watches on eBay, and that was the start of a small but very enjoyable collection and hobby.

Now I'd guess 70% of my friends have a modern smart watch on their wrist, while I'm usually rocking my (poorly faked) Yuri Gagarin Sturmanskie replica, or my Raketa Big Zero, or my Amphibia. And I've got half a dozen eBay alerts waiting for a few interesting mechanical watches I want to add to my collection...

Are you working on them, too? I had some trouble finding good work on clocks in the past kinda sour me on the idea.

I’m gearing up to do so. I have bought a (cheap) watch repair toolkit and a degausser. I have an Amphibia that’s losing about 8 or 9 mins a day that I’m prepared to risk damaging by futzing with it myself, and a second Big Zero where the second hand has fallen off. There’s a local ish guy here who will service just about any old Russian watch, and most,y charges a flat $150 for pretty mush anything (I assume that wouldn’t hold if difficult t9 get it expensive parts are needed) But I’ve rarely spent as much as $150 for one of these, so having a shit at opening/repairing one myself doesn’t seem too much of a risk. I have a list of YouTube videos and blog posts queued up first though…

> looking back of course I see what would have been a more successful (but smaller) path.

Thanks for the valuable retrospective!

Could you expand a bit on the pros and cons of going smaller -vs- going bigger in that situation, and what motivated you to choose the way you did?

Also, do you feel the ambient culture/advice on that decision tried to push you in either direction?

Honestly it never even crossed our minds at the time of picking a 'smaller' path. The natural path was to continue scaling. It's only obvious with hindsight that there was another path.

Can you explain what you mean by "the entire brand got hand-grenaded" and "not get greedy"? Is this in reference to them selling to Fitbit? Or something before that?

I purchased a Pebble Time Steel fairly late in the company's lifetime, so I was surprised and kind of confused about the whole situation.

> now we get nothing but some unsupported old e-waste

That's way too harsh. While Timeline is gone, rebble still works. This is waaaay better than your typical device that stopped being made !

Timeline is a (mostly) supported feature on Rebble!

Ah, it's just that "back in time" now shows walk then sleep data instead ? (What was it before the Fitbit update ?)

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