Pebble's E-Paper Watch Exceeds $10 Million Raised On Kickstarter | Hacker News Reader

Pebble's E-Paper Watch Exceeds $10 Million Raised On Kickstarter

kickstarter.com

85 pointsUnfalseDesign42 comments

Just to make it clear for everyone, it's not e-ink display. It's a transflective LCD display, which isn't the same thing and it's not nearly as efficient as e-ink either (although I have no idea if e-ink would even work properly on a watch). My guess is it's around 2x more energy efficient than a color LCD watch. This is what they're using for Pebble:

http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/1-26-inch-memory-lcd.html

With e-ink, how would one at a glance know wether the battery is dead or not?

E-ink Kindles write a "Your battery is empty" message to the screen shortly before the battery becomes completely discharged.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickbilton/3636447946/

The same as an analog watch - when time stops.

They are now available from Mouser; http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Sharp-Microelectronics/L...

I'm pretty sure that they were only added very recently. I searched a few weeks ago and they weren't listed.

They were listed when pebble went on kickstarter--someone posted it on HN. I am looking forward to experimenting with one myself.

That may be a good thing - some people were asking how soon the e-ink would wear out.

I’ve been trying to correct this for weeks too.

E-ink watches do exist though: http://www.phosphorwatches.com/v/site_pages/mens-watches.asp

I got one of these. The display is really good and the watch is surprisingly robust. Updates on the screen happen really slowly, so I guess it's a real E-Ink display.

Well, they keep calling it e-paper which I always understood to be a synonim for e-ink displays. If it's an LCD I think theyre trying to deliberately mislead.

Alternate title: Kickstarter raises $500K in Pebble funding round

Maybe what we're in isn't a funding bubble, but a trust bubble?

Edit: I don't mean to say that Pebble will not deliver, and in fact I think they will, but at some point one of these high-profile kickstarters is going to fail to deliver (possibly at no fault of their own) and that is going to be unfortunate for everyone involved, and will probably cause a big stir. Hopefully Kickstarter handles it well.

Here are two projects which are having trouble delivering. [oh, the pens have shipped, and people are very happy with them.]

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cwandt/pen-type-a-a-mini...)

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-o...)

I'm just learning that they're renting a billboard along 101 in San Francisco: http://www.businessinsider.com/pebble-buys-san-francisco-bil...

According to some comments on Business Insider, such a billboard is… well, pricey, and they would get the KickStarter money only after May 18th. (I haven't confirmed that part)

Could one speculate from there that they have been raising money from yet-to-be-announced traditional investors? Considering their new position (i.e. demonstrated demand), it wouldn't be that surprising.

Sure, I can speculate:

They could very well be Factoring[1].

Since the Kickstarter payout is pretty much guaranteed at such-and-such date, they could quite easily "unlock" (factor) some of their future Accounts Receivable for a small percentage discount.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)

One thing I hate about finance is how every little trick is named by borrowing the name from an existing concept in mathematics which only barely relates to the financial trickery.

That Wikipedia page says the practice originated before 1400, so it could be that mathematics stole the word from finance.

Are you saying Mathematicians did not know how to factor before 1400? hmmm ;)

No, but I bet they used a different word.

A factor, from the Latin "he who does" (from Latin facit, to do, parallel to agent, from Latin agens), is a person who professionally acts as the representative of another individual -- also from Wikipaedia.

Looks like it was (English-speaking) mathematicians that borrowed the term.

Pebble is not their first watch. They've already sold a first generation of watches (http://www.getinpulse.com/) and I would speculate they are likely using the proceeds from these sales.

That comment is inaccurate. A billboard on 101 costs something like $10k-20k/month. If it was remnant inventory, it could be even less than $10k for that month.

Not to mention the million dollar check they wrote for components...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...

This site lets you track the funding progress of Kickstarter projects:

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-wa...

There are apparently less than 400 Pebbles left[1] before they sell out at 85,000 watches[2]. If you wanted one and haven't ordered it yet, your opportunity is almost gone!

EDIT: (30 minutes later) There are only about 150 left.

EDIT: (60 minutes later) They're past 85,000, but the announcement they made said "around 85,000 Pebbles"[2] and not exactly 85,000. They could disable the preorders at any time, but there's no way to predict exactly when they're officially sold out.

EDIT: (70 minutes later) They've just created a $1 tier that provides 0 watches, and they set all the other tiers to eventually run out.

[1] http://computingeureka.com/pebble/

[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...

Is there a name for this kind of behavior? I've known about the project since day one and didn't feel like buying one, but now that there's only a few watches left, I bit the bullet and gave them my credit card.

Marketing types call it the "Bandwagon Effect".

http://www.marketing91.com/bandwagon-effect/

84,600 customers all can't be wrong, right? The project is a guaranteed success (or so you would believe) and if you don't buy now, you will literally miss the wagon...

Sorry to be pedantic but you made a common mistake that always bothers me. Don't say "literally miss the wagon" when you mean a figurative wagon.

Not attacking you or anything. Just trying to help.

Yes, It is a mix of "Scarcity", "Limited-duration" and "social Proof".

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/scarcity

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/Limited-duration

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/social-proof

I'd actually say this is an example of the "scarcity effect."

http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/scarcity-...

WORCHEL, LEE, AND ADEWOLE (1975) asked people to rate chocolate chip cookies. They put 10 cookies in one jar and two of the same cookies in another jar. The cookies from the two-cookie jar received higher ratings—even though the cookies were exactly the same! Not only that, but if there were a lot of cookies in the jar, and then a short time later most of the cookies were gone, the cookies that were left received an even higher rating than cookies that were in a jar where the number of cookies didn’t change. [From Neuro Web Design by Susan Weinschenck.]

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addict...

UPDATE: (140 minutes later) They are now officially sold out on Kickstarter. Other reports of them selling out were premature.

This means that they sold out at 6:37 PM eastern time, 3:37 PM pacific, with 85,420 watches total. The last one sold was in the $125 tier.

Assuming that the Pebble will cost $150 once (if) it becomes available for retail, and factoring in the fact that some of these watches might never actually ship, I'd rather invest an extra $40 once the watch comes out and I know the quality rather than risk $115 now to save $40.

In my mind this shows that crowdsourced funding + low cost prototyping (eg arduino) and manufacturing (eg 3d printing) could really disrupt consumer electronics. It'd be really cool to see the next must have smartphone/tablet built by a few guys in their basement and sold to millions of consumers.

Is this funding or working capital? Most watches come at cost through KS. They would need to seriously ramp up the supply chain to fulfill the orders in the promised timescale. And that would need expensive resources - some of which cannot be met via the $10mm (as most of it might get consumed in manufacturing). Though further traditional funding should be the least of their problems - bet the VCs are clamoring for a piece now.

Hope they can find a Foxconn to manufacture everything in time and they can ramp up their operations team. My best wishes to them - really hope they nail it. I bet next few months would see war scale efforts from them.

Wow and I had expected it to take a while to break the $3.3 million record that doublefine set on the site. It's honestly amazing what some of these are doing financially.

My question is, will they actually be able to meet anyones expectations?

That will be very interesting to see. Statistically, it's likely that there will be disappointed people— but what if the product just plain sucks? It's unlikely, but very much possible.

The expectations are much higher now.

Just published another story here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3950628

Pebble has now been closed on KickStarter. You cannot pick up any from the KickStarter project.

If you wanted to "pre order" you will have to go through GetPebble.com when they get made available.

insane

The end result better come out good.

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