I'd like to know how this happened really. Pebbles were pretty decent and their successful campaigns definitely contributed to the rise of smart watches. But after having two hugely successful crowdfunding campaigns, how did they fail?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't know, that may be true, but I saw multiple people walk into target and ask for Pebble's. I was actually astonished when I first saw it, but I was like - "alright, pebble is going to be okay".
I think it was simply a kind of tradition. It wouldn't be Pebble without a Kickstarter for each new watch. Also I suppose this way they got better deal on preorders that they could do elsewhere, coupled with lots of free marketing.
I think it was simply a kind of tradition. It wouldn't be Pebble without a Kickstarter for each new watch.
It was the cute the first two times. By round #3, I was tired of the "we'll ship soon, after a slew of delays!" dance, and ready for Pebble to put on their big boy pants and let me know when they ship to a retailer from whom I can buy one that day.
And apparently those big boy pants were still fitting a bit loose.
There are dozens of people on the pictures on the linked pages. You have to sell a lot of $99 watches to pay them all. They say 2 million watches sold; gross margin of - what - $10? $20? Say $40mm margin over the 8 years they mention; staff costs of $5mm/year (50 people, 100k/year including everything - unrealistically low estimate). That doesn't even leave room for other development costs, visits to production factories, returns, everything else. Having done 'a successful crowdfunding campaign' is not an enviable position to be in, most of the time - although of course the vast majority of backers have no experience running a business whatsoever and think 'these guys are sitting on a mountain of money, what can go wrong'.
When such a large percentage of your sales as a company come from kickstarter, where you seemingly have to give a heavy discount to the real price. My guess is that it becomes hard to succeed in retail/other channels at a real price with margin that could sustain a company.
> Kickstarter backers who have not received their rewards will receive a full refund within 4-8 weeks as a chargeback to their credit cards. No further action is needed.
Retail price over the full sales run. Kickstarter was just the preorder phase of it and thus likely doesn't cover the full R&D, especially not if the estimates were off in some way.
As someone who quite likes their time steel and who was patiently waiting for their time 2 this is incredibly frustrating. No other watches do what I want so I guess my foray into smart watches is over. It's a shame too because I appreciate the convenience it offers but I probably won't miss it much after a couple of weeks
I have an OG pebble steel and it does everything I currently want in a smartwatch. I don't expect it will stop working for some time, and I plan on using it as long as possible.
EDIT: there's also this post on the tech specs on reddit[0]. This looks pretty re-implementable if you're a hardware engineer looking to do something fun. The right component mix seems to have been figured out already.
Firmware can be reversed, and as for the hardware, I suppose the teardowns iFixit did should be enough for a competent hardware engineer to replicate the design.
I agree with this being frustrating. I had to explain to so many people that even though my watch doesn't have a SIM card, integrated 4G, GPS or a memory card slot for music it is still exactly what I wanted. Pebble watches do what smart watches should do, without trying to be a tiny phone on your wrist.
I guess I can only dream, but I hope they some day open up parts of it so that the phone app can continue working even with changes to Android/IOS down the line (if Fitbit doesn't want to keep the old Pebbles alive).
But with that said, a smart watch makes me feel hyper-connected. Putting it in quiet mode (and/or taking it off my wrist) every now and then is liberating and definitely makes me more productive.
Wow this is so true with me, I just want a watch that is a small extension of my phone. Not a watch trying to be a phone. Now I got to figure out wtf to get next if anything. A watch I have to charge every night isn't going to happen.
> But with that said, a smart watch makes me feel hyper-connected. Putting it in quiet mode (and/or taking it off my wrist) every now and then is liberating and definitely makes me more productive.
I feel that you probably did not configure notifications. Each time I received a notification that is not important I went to Pebble, and disabled it, after a while pebble was no longer as annoying.
Hear hear. I wish I could get the simplistic-but-effective features of a Pebble elsewhere. Track my steps, send me the notifications I want, and let me customize the watchface. The heart rate monitoring was what I was looking forward to the most, it would have made it /perfect/ for my use case.
They may not have any Legal Liablity, but it going to be a PR problem for them
I know I will not buy any FitBit products either, if this acceptable to FitBit, to do nothing for these customers knowing this was going to happen then FiTBit does not deserve anyone's money either.
It would have been better for the company to just Die if they were that bad off (which I have my doubts unless they were Seriously mismanaged)
These Acquihires where a large company partially buys out another company for there personnel and/or IP shuttering the original product and fucking over customers need to come with at minimum a HUGE PR back lash for the company buying the assets to make them at least do right by the original customers offering things like Reasonable levels of support, Transition planning, etc
Depends exactly what they bought. Those liabilities might be owned by the remaining shell which is now in administation or a vapour-like "parent company" rather than having been transferred to fitbit.
Maybe not moral, but quite probably perfectly legal.
I was not involved in the structuring of this deal, but have been involved in deals like this one. The terms are very arduously worked through to make sure the asset acquirer isn't accidentally picking up a liability they don't want.
Regarding the morality question: consider the alternatives. The moral choice is in the hands of the seller. A buyer is an option among many.
Dick move, maybe. But when you have no money, you're limited in what you can do. As a separate cousin-post said, this is why Fitbit bought some assets, but ultimately they probably didn't get stuck with any liability (e.g. warranty issues and the like). Business-wise, that's probably the absolute right move to make.
I backed the Time 2 and the Core. I was way more excited about the Core. I have a 1st-gen Apple Watch and am perfectly happy with that. I was going to give the Time 2 to my father-in-law for Christmas. It's really disappointing. I'm really looking forward to someone explaining the what and whys of this. Based on Fitbit's stock price over the last year I can't imagine this acquisition will turn out good for either party, the developers going to Fitbit, or the wearable community in general.
So it looks like Fitbit acquihired the team from Pebble. Here's hoping Fitbit releases a product like the Pebbles, as it was much more safe and less attention-consuming to check a text message on my watch while driving than bringing out my phone, or asking a passenger to do this.
Are there any other things like it that we can migrate to, or will the world never see their like again?
Please don't do this. Traffic fatalities--particularly those involving vulnerable road users have spiked in the last couple years. There is nothing you can communicate that is worth the grave risk to others that you pose.
To be 100% clear, I totally agree with you that one shouldn't check their text messages while driving.
That being said, the statistics don't support your claim that traffic fatalities have spiked. Through 2014 (the last year the IIHS published statistics) fatalities had either leveled off or continued their historical decline.
> In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent, to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Having read the article you posted the raw increase is concerning. Unfortunately the article does the statistics no favors. It uses anecdotal evidence and an increase in overall fatalities to draw a correlation that (likely is) but may not be there. Phone calls and SMS have been in cars for a couple decades. Smart phones have been prevalent about a decade. Apps have been a thing for more than 5 years. Why the sudden jump over the last 6 months? The article says apps are certainly to blame but then provides very little supporting evidence.
Statistics are like bikinis: they show a lot but what they can hide is significant too.
Fatalities overall have fallen and continue to fall, largely due to increased use of seatbelts, other safety features in cars improving and being more commonly available. Also in many areas the overcrowding of roads is making fatalities drop: if you can't get up to any sort of speed then and collisions you experience will be less likely to be fatal!
But accidents due to being distracted by technology (and therefor the number of fatalities as a proportion of that) are, according to a number of studies, on the increase.
Perhaps it is the pedant in me, but the parent didn't qualify by saying the number of fatalities due to distracted driving. There was only the blanket statement of an increase in the number of fatalities.
While I don't doubt you are correct that the proportion of fatalities due to distracted driving is increasing, I'd still like to see a link or two to the studies you cited.
> I'd still like to see a link or two to the studies you cited.
Unfortunately I don't have such handy, though if I remember when I next have time I'll try hunt out a reference.
If you want clues to try hunt them down yourself: they will be things I've read about in New Scientist (dead tree publication), probably in sidebars to recent articles on advances in automated vehicles.
I generally don't, but I do slip up on occasion. It's also useful and safer when checking directions, even more so than a GPS suction-cupped to the windshield. Glancing at my wrist is much less of a context switch than looking at a screen.
I don't think any of the Fitbits have any kind of integration like this.
Pebble is no longer promoting, manufacturing, or selling any devices.
From header of getpebble.com:
Buy Now $99
Also, the store promoting Pebble has no prominent announcement that they aren't promoting Pebble anymore (the one watch I checked did say out of stock, so they aren't selling it at the moment).
I guess their latest Pebble version didn't get the sales they expected.
Definitely surprising that they weren't able to sell the company - they had the brand and a loyal customer base. As an owner of a Pebble Time, I was impressed by the integrations, simplicity of design, and battery life.
I wonder went wrong - hopefully, there will be some type of post-mortem on these "various factors" over the next few weeks.
I am so sad about this. I had told myself that at least I'd get a Time 2 and a Core, and stave myself off before the sadness hits again that Pebble is gone.
Pebble's products were an excellent example of lateral technology. No need for high DPI on your watch, because they made something that looks good with few pixels. Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.
Even when the battery ran out you still got 24 hours of a watch that would at least tell the time!
I have no idea if it is possible to produce something like Pebbles at low quantities, but I would love to see an open design with similar specs. I think these watches are better than anything else out there, and it's sad the design is going to disappear.
>Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.
I literally wear my Time Steel for 23 hours and 45 minutes per day. The only time it's charging and not on my wrist is when I'm in the shower, and over the course of a regular day it never drops below 80%. If I'm going away for a weekend I don't even have to bother with the charger.
I charge my first gen Pebble literally once a week. Monday morning, I get to work, and put my pebble on charge. By the time stand-up happens a couple of hours later (my first meeting of the day) it's back on my wrist and good to go for the next week.
I was aiming to get a new Pebble after Christmas, as mine suffers from that screen corruption glitch that plagued the first gens.
I expect this is actually part of the problem, and likely affects many smartwatch producing companies: If it wasn't for the screen glitch, I wouldn't be replacing my watch. It works, does everything I need, and speed isn't an issue. A colour display would be nice, but it's far from important to me. I'm sure the same is true for many Joe Average consumers. There isn't the same impetus to frequently upgrade a watch.
I had the same screen glitch with my Kickstarter edition OG Pebble, then bounced around to other smart watches until I landed again on the Time Steel which has been nothing but perfect.
But you're right. Much like the cell phone market which appears to be slowing down, the minor improvements made in the tech for smart watches don't appear to actually be worth buying if you already have the current version that isn't broken. Unfortunately, the software Pebbles run is so straightforward that even planned obsolescence through required updates wouldn't have been a viable option like it is for cell phones. Y'know, the updates that correct dangerous security vulnerabilities while at the same time crippling old hardware by introducing new, unnecessary features in the software? No Pebble owner would've bought (for lack of a better word) that justification and upgraded.
I agree entirely. It's very rare that something fits a niche so nicely, while the competition misses it by miles.
I have the same feeling about my simple sigma bike computer (though at least there's more options in that niche).
I will use my pebble as long as it continues to work, then it'll get retired to my shelf of tech fails. Most of which failed FAR more spectacularly.
I have an Ouya, an OnLive, a cuecat, a SuperDisk LS-120, Commodore Plus 4, PS Vita (maybe a little early to call, but...), a DivX, a DreamCast, a Jornada, a Palm Tungsten, a GameBoy Advance e-card reader, probably some other stuff in there too.
Shelf is a euphemism, it's actually a small pile of boxes that I keep just to remind myself that even great ideas will die with poor implementation, planning, DRM, or bad support.
They didn't, as it isn't a "Crunchpad" _per se_. But Fusion Garage, the team actually developing the tablet in a branding deal had a falling out with Michael Arrington at the last minute and released the product under the rebrand of "JooJoo" :
They actually delivered on orders, although I don't know how many. I got an early review model for free. I've kept on to it because it is x86 with an NVIDIA ION board. I thought it'd be fun to put XBMC / Kodi on it, and maybe some retro game emulators. Never got around to it though and it's still running stock firmware and sitting in its original box.
A piece of history to be sure, although I doubt anyone who wasn't there at the time would remember it. The highly anticipated device that invented the tablet market was not the iPad...
Hmm - I doubt they compare, but then again, one is open-source and nearly infinitely customizable (depending on your budget, skills, and needs) - and one, well - doesn't exist any longer.
Sorry you did not get your Time 2. I got my Pebble 2 and I really like it. I am sad the core I ordered will not ship as my pebble is not connected to my Windows Phone and GPS would be nice when I run.
The pebble 2 does compete with the fit-bit. This story reminds me of a time when I worked at a small semiconductor equipment manufacture. We were a scrappy team and build a great small footprint tool. We won an order from a larger customer. Everyone was celebrating until our competitor quickly bought us out for cheap and shut us down. A few engineer went over to the new company but not enough to keep the product going.
> I think these watches are better than anything else out there
I'm not sure about that. I read some comments on a few other articles about the Pebble shutdown, and people are recommending the Vector Watch [1]. It's a smart watch with a monochromatic e-ink display, and it has a 30 day battery life.
I can't help but think that maybe this is the manufacturing niche the US could fill... High quality, low run manufacturing that people are willing to pay a premium for.
Wow this is even worse than expected from the previous news articles... If they're winding down all support and warranties, PLEASE release as much of the watch operating system code as possible! I know some of the IP was sold, but if Fitbit won't be continuing support please help those of us who love our current watches keep them going!
It might not be Fitbit's call depending on how the bankruptcy was structured. From reading between the lines of the post, it sounds like Fitbit is onboarding much of the staff but maybe didn't pay for (or was unable to pay for) some or all of the IP.
> Pebble devices will continue to work as normal. No immediate changes to the Pebble user experience will happen at this time.
> Pebble functionality or service quality may be reduced in the future.
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.
I recall them having quite a good SDK ( https://developer.pebble.com ) to write your own apps and run basically whatever you wanted on the thing. I hope you can use the SDK to load apps directly, but I'm not sure.
Hopefully the community can run with this and set something up so people can distribute and install apps outside of the official services.
I understanding them selling a lot of IP to Fitbit to pay back their debts and settle bankruptcy, but I really feel all the source for their app/store-services should have been made open source instead, prior to this announcement.
That way at least their customers could try to hack together stuff or make mirrors of their app repos to keep their devices functional.
This could also be an issue on Fitbit's side. Open Sourcing all the IP makes the deal less enticing to them (that's the first order analysis, but there's arguments in the other direction too)
> Active Pebble watches will work normally for now. Functionality or service quality may be reduced down the road. We don’t expect to release regular software updates or new Pebble features.
I hope they open source Pebble OS, maybe even the assets that drive the Pebble store.
This is tragic; I was waiting on a Time 2, but looks like no longer.
What else is around in this niche now? Are there other relatively cheap, simple smart watches with good battery life that I should be looking at instead?
Yeah, I've been waiting on my pre-order Pebble 2 HR to arrive, but will certainly be cancelling, presuming there's anyone left in the building to accept the cancellation.
Would love to know what the alternatives are, as I've been tired of the low build-quality of my Fitbit and really want something much nicer and closer to a smart-watch.
I can't believe this, just got a Pebble 2 a week ago and now they are literally saying it may not work in the future.
If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform.
I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stuff you bought, it just won't work anymore.
We should look for ways to minimize the impact on backers. Sadly we'll see more of this in a future in which the products depend a lot on the company cloud services to operate.
It does, if one broadens "quality and suitability of goods" to include the manufacturer–originator, which seems like a reasonable thing to do for a tech gadget purchase that will involve a long/ish term relationship with the corporation that makes the gadget in question.
Could such a pledge provide enough assurance? If the company folds its IP is up for grubs, this might include their products source code. Right?
If that's the case I would prefer to purchase devices that are actually already running free software or there is free software available to flash on them.
Thanks hmm... that indeed sounds legit. Would definitely like to see that. If I have no open source alternative for a connected hardware device that seems to me like the next best thing.
Point me to an F/OSS and Open Hardware version and I'm there.
Seriously, I'm always backing those sorts of devices over proprietary ones every chance I get - though it's rare as heck.
Or at least treat any kind of cloud integration as a big negative. Without cloud dependence, the devices can always be hacked and made to work again until hardware dies.
One of the main reasons I went with the Pebble over other options was that I could use sleep tracking with it via a 3rd party app, without any need for their cloud. Sleep as Android has your back there. It's the only sleep tracking tool I like because it's able to keep your data locally on your phone or sync'd via a few mechanisms.
Your device will keep working yet, but what if you switch phones/tablets? Now you need to setup a new device with the watch and...oh wait... Pebble re-downloads and re-installs all the apps. If their app/servers go away, now we'll be looking up hack people wrote on github to get our devices working again.
Yeah, fortunately TiBu can backup both the Pebble app and the Bluetooth pairing. But that's basically next, modified firmwares already exist I believe, so I don't think it's unreasonable to think that if we need to use those and sideload apps we'll be able to.
I'm fairly sure that I could crack the pebble apk myself to remove the authentication stuff at the beginning if it's needed. Backing up all the apps and stuff before it's gone might be the bigger worry here.
Yeah, from what I saw with the customized firmwares it looked fairly open to tinkering.
I'll have to check out what's going on with the pebble community over there. Might be interesting to get as much reverse engineered as possible before everything goes belly up.
From what I remember, Fitbit has ~30M customers, and Pebble has ~1M. That's just 3% of Fitbit's userbase, so pretty much a rounding error. I don't believe they will care.
I mean, I won't really blame Fitbit for whatever happens now. It was Pebble's fuckup, and my anger (which I sadly expressed in the threads last week) is wearing off.
I do hope you guys do something great with all those new people and IP. In the meantime, I guess me and other Pebblers will be extra-careful about our watches. They are really something unique and there's hardly anything like it on the market now.
fogive my ignorance but what is pebble cloud service exactly?
same as cloudpebble?
i just can't figure out and can't find useful info.
i would be much appreciated for help. thanks.
I also have a Pebble 2, what cloud services? The android app checks for a firmware update when you pair but is otherwise standalone.
I enabled sync to google fit because I hoped it would backup sleep data but that does nothing sensible, it's all stored locally (and in fact if you reinstall the Pebble app you lose all your data).
ps: if anyone knows of some software to export these data from an android phone, I'd love to know because I could not find anything
I like how they announce it after Black Friday and Thanksgiving sales. I'm sure they knew of it during the acquisition as it would be all laid out, but they wanted to squeeze in more sales. Hopefully the average consumer gets wind of this and return their product.
I think it's likely their product will reduce in price for fire sale, like the HP Touchpad.
At least with HP Touchpad you could flash the ROM and change the OS.
It is a difficult sell to have someone pay full price for a product when the manufacturer openly states they won't support it anymore, and may even reduce functionality in the future.
You can keep yours till the end of the return period and see if the price drops. Or maybe pebble will change their own, or open source their software (but now you paid full price for a product with no hardware support). Depending on where you bought, some stores have extended returns for the holidays.
I was a Kickstarter backer in 2012 and still have my original Pebble. There was a weird screen issue and I wanted to try other things, so I switched to the Gear 2 Neo which was absolute garbage. Then I moved on to the Moto 360, which also left me very disappointed when somehow the rear glass (the part that rests on your wrist) shattered.
So I went back to Pebble and got the Time Steel about a year ago and it's been flawless. Worked with my Note 4 and later (currently) with my iPhone 6S Plus. It's a shame that they're not going to be around anymore for the next time I get an itch to try something new. When this watch quits I'll probably just go back to my Citizen.
I had both of my original KS Pebbles brick with the same screen issue.
Needless to say, you had a lot more faith in the company than I did after that. I just considered my original KS pledge a bad investment and moved on without looking back.
their business strategy was terrible. -though, their developer support was awesome-
I still wear my time steel and will get my time 2 refund, but I am surely frustrated by how they screwed all it up. They did not open source any core bits, left with crappy update which drains batteries and openly admitted quality will get worse by time.
Whenever this kind of things happens. It will make all the more difficult for startups to acquire users because this reiterates "Startups are either going to be acquired and killed or die prematurely".
I worked for a start-up that did a similar thing. We hired tons of people and the business was unsustainable. It was a push to get bought or go out of business. Lucky for us we got bought.
The smartwatch market pretty much tanked in 2016. Apple just sold a record number of Apple watches but even they were down for the most of year. There just wasn't enough runway for Pebble to keep running; they even laid off 25% of their staff earlier in the year.
I'm quite angry. This sucks so bad. I "ordered" a Time 2 via Kickstarter.
I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble?
Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successful? They overreached and now the customers suffer. There should be a place for "small" manufacturer selling a niche product ("small" with a certain understatement like German "Mittelstand" enterprizes - I mean Pebble sold millions of units). If they had to increase the price by 10% to be sustainable, they still would have smashed the Kickstarter.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
_All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises.
Right, but I meant a gamble on their side, not the buyers'. Like when MtGox lost their bitcoins and ran as a fractional reserve trying to cover what happened. Or an actual addicted gambler trying to cut their losses by playing more. I wonder when they learned they were going out of business, and if the last Kickstarter was just a Hail Mary...
"What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times."
It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung type companies who have much deeper pockets, don't have to wait out bad times, have the ability to lean on vendors, have contracts in place with manufacturing and the supply chain to efficiently deliver the product, it might not be realistic to do that. On top that, as others here have said, once you take VC money, there isn't really an option to go slowly and let the community grow.
> there isn't really an option to go slowly and let the community grow.
Sure there is. Just not while also being the dominant, or one of the dominant players in the industry when there is competition form a bit name. Pebble didn't have to be a dominant player, they could have positioned themselves differently if they wanted. Both paths are a gamble, but if it comes to a small company I own trying to compete with Apple/Samsung/Google and it's obvious their resources give them an edge (which they almost always do), then I think I would try to position myself to net necessarily compete with them directly (e.g. be the more hacker friendly device, don't shoot for the luxury market, find some cool thing they aren't offering, etc).
> It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung type companies who have much deeper pockets
They did not really have to go against Apple/Samsung, their product was unique enough that Apple and Samsung don't have anything that's similar to it, and people like me would prefer pebble over their products. I mean now that pebble is gone, I'll most likely go back to regular watches.
There are Kickstarter projects that a year or two after the fact, haven't shipped. (for example, the Hydradock, which was to have shipped in June 2015)
Even though Kickstarter explicitly says it's not a store, it doesn't mean people don't think it is. Perception = reality. This news will most likely have the largest effect on Kickstarter, specifically in the tech category, more than anything else. There have been many failures of promises on Kickstarter, but when your top 4 most funded projects are all now dead, people are going to start thinking twice about backing companies.
I think this is an example of an issue that some companies that do kickstarter/preorder campaigns have.
They try to do a Hardware project that pushes boundaries and try to collect money to early during the development process at a time when it is really impossible to set a ship date. (Also a factor is company inexperience with manufacturing) This is why so many projects have to delay shipments and sometimes eventually run out of money without getting to a shippable product.
Companies that are successful typically do their preorders at a point where they have already completed multiple production runs at a cm in china and are ready to ramp for mass production. the order count helps justify the costs of ordering mass production parts. The issue of course is that it means investors had to be willing to fund seed/series A without seeing any traction.
This is not really an issue with what some companies are doing. This is the main point of kickstarter.
It's for people to support funding projects still in development and helping them get from that stage to get into production. In exchange for a "reward". It's not meant to be for products already having done multiple production runs ready to ramp up and customers are just pre-paying a long delivery time.
I would agree it appears there needs to be better communication about the risks and uncertainties. But they have said quite clearly kickstarter is not a store:
Kickstarter for hardware products is very much its own insane, dysfunctional, extraordinarily risky world.
Most money spent on Kickstarter goes to projects which are far far more likely to be completed in some form: videogames, books, board games. I'd say that hardware projects should be banned entirely except for companies that have already shipped similar products but, well, that would've included Pebble.
I don't mind the risk. I think it's great there's a way to support cool product ideas that still need time and money to figure out if it will work.
It's not for everyone, but I'd be happy to back a hardware project knowing there's a solid chance it might not succeed, especially on the more niche products. Someone has to.
But I do think risky product creators can compensate their backers better for the risks and for taking a chance on them. For example I think it would be great to see something like a behind the scenes component with more sharing of the process as they go. Maybe like a weekly vlog about them building this new product from scratch, with successes and failures and what they are learning. The company doesn't have to show anything proprietary. It's like behind the scene DVD but for a product not a movie. I'd watch it. Plus all the backers would know that the creators tried and if they are failing, the reasons why. It could be interesting and entertaining. And if doesn't work they would at least have shared what they learned which others can learn from too. Anywho I don't see this happening.
I hear what you're saying but I have this perspective that includes Kickstarter in these issues. Why doesn't Kickstarter take a more active role in supporting it's campaigners after they raise funds?
I think the point is that Kickstarter is not a sustainable way to build a hardware business. Despite kickstarter's own statement that it isn't a store, it really is. Would the majority of people on the site really back projects if they didn't expect the rewards?
A while back GPG announced their Kickstarter campaign for a game to be named Human Resources. It was later announced that they actually didn't have enough funds to survive if the Kickstarter didn't go through[1]. The campaign stalled and the entire company went under.
People were understandably angry. And it wasn't so much the risk (because none of the backers lost their money), it's that the company wasn't upfront about risks. GPG's leadership knew going in that the company would go under if the campaign didn't become a miraculous success, but backers didn't find that out until after the campaign had stalled.
Presumably, backers wouldn't have been informed at all if the campaign had succeeded.
This situation with Pebble is even more strange because apparently their campaign succeeded (in raising money beyond their target goal)....
VC/exponential growth increase risk of exploding the whole company.
In alternative reality:
1. They could hire way less aggressive and stay lean. Product development will be much slower, but they can operate cash flow positive.
2. With Kickstarter/pre-orders they could avoid taking any serious VC funding.
3. They probably need to move less expensive region than SF Bay Area. SF is great for go big or go home, but not an ideal place for long-term sustainable business.
4. Probably the price of watches would be higher and they will be niche, but still there are tons of watch manufactures that survived decades.
I agree, and it's such a shame to see this company/product's demise due to overreach.
Per their site, Pebble's current product line has three different case designs, each available in at least three different finishes, and one with an additional heart rate monitor. That seems like an awful lot of SKUs for a small hardware startup to develop, manufacture, stock, fulfill and support. Their latest kickstarter added even more models.
From my armchair, it looks like they tried to expand and segment their market too quickly, for the sake of both growth and the optics of their product line in comparison to Apple.
I'm in the early stages of creating the world's tiniest "hardware startup" (the product consists of a single piece of metal), and it's a constant discipline to not get caught up in offering variations on the base design. Every product design choice ripples through the supply chain, increasing complexity and overhead at your peril.
Good luck to all the folks at Pebble in their new endeavors.
Totally this. I'd gladly pay double for Time 2 if it meant the platform will grow sustainably.
> Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
I feel that all the time. Of course it's not a secret cabal, just the free market promoting get-rich-quick schemes and making it harder for sustainable businesses and actually useful products to survive.
Yep, everything in the past year has indicated that they were underpricing their offerings. I'm not even talking about turning a large margin, but that they were offering more services than they could sustain, regardless of market penetration.
Unfortunately companies can't make a sustainable business around people like you. If they were to double the price, then they are going toe to toe with the features and infrastructure behind the Apple Watch, and that's an area they just can't compete in at their size.
Did they aim for total market dominance? I haven't followed it to closely, but to me it didn't seem like they did any totally crazy expansions. Seems like they should have developed further models in smaller steps, but would people have bought enough of those then?
If they have 20 millions in debt, just increasing the price on their kickstarters slightly wouldn't have done it, so they obviously overdid something.
No. Chinese manufacturers are building whatever you pay them for. It's literally a human-powered API converting designs to hardware. It's the western companies that don't want to build nice things.
They genuinely believed they were going to change the world, drank too much of their own kool-aid and eventually ran out of money.
Pretty sure they feel terrible right now and I don't think they slept well for the past 6 months.
Could someone reasonable see this coming before KS? Most likely yes. Would they get this far without taking big risks? Most likely no.
You feel angry you didn't get your pebbles, I feel angry I didn't get my two pebbles and a core.
Imagine how they feel - reportedly turned down $750 mil and less than a year later had to apply for a job at another struggling wearables manufacturer.
You can take the "going to change the world" too far. They are bankrupt and still believe they're "Making Awesome Happen". Investors lost their money. Suppliers will not get paid. Employees are losing their jobs just before Christmas. Customers will not get their orders. Current customers are left without support and - in the near future - a limited functioning device. How is that "Making Awesome Happen"? A more humble attitude would be more appropriate.
I have to totally agree. Kickstarters fail, but this[1] is a gold standard of how not to write your "sorry, we failed" post. Ditch the marketing speak and the PR photos and just be honest with your customers.
> I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill?
The probably made some, but it takes money to turn any component inventory they may have into shippable products. They probably burned all of the money on mechanical tooling and part procurement already, and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc). All of that inventory either is returned (if possible) or ends up liquidated on the secondary electronics component market for pennies on the dollar, to pay back the creditors. Custom parts, tools, etc have less of a resale market, but I'm sure a company in China will be happy to pick them up cheap to make smartwatches for the local market.
> and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc)
There were some stories circulating that their provider of screens for Time 2 is in financial troubles, so presumably may have not been able to fulfill the order.
This last kickstarter raised $12million while only requiring $1million to fund. I'm really unsure how they managed to get 12x the "required" funding but still fail to deliver.
It's pretty common for Kickstarter projects to ask for a lot less than they actually need. Hence the reason for all the stretch goals and such. Companies like the story to be that they blew their goal out of the water, not just barely creeped over the funded line.
Which is super shady in my opinion. I've seen video game Kickstarters cancel their KS when they have a bit over 100% funding and a few days left. Clearly they are short of their real goal. Another common warning sign is when it fails to fund the first time and relaunches a few months later with a lower goal.
According to one of the developers, they produced a very tiny number of Time 2's for testing. She has said those ones all worked perfectly but even she didn't even get one.
Kickstarter, the company and the 'creators', depend on this expectation mismatch. If everyone who kickstarter 'wasn't for' didn't use it, there'd be no kickstarter.
Kickstarter is like the blind men talking about the elephant, its just too big. Cutting edge hardware? Gonna be risky, it almost always fails. On the other hand the board game and RPG scene on KS is reliable as the worlds slowest amazon-like fulfillment store, it always arrives in ten short months (after having been promised six). I swear board game developers are as bad as software devs at estimating delivery dates.
Of course that's kind of a mis-use of the kickstarter site... you've been in the euro/war/rpg board gaming business for over 25 years and you've had 8 completely successful kickstarters and now you're starting your 9th... I'm not naming names, but come on, you're not "kickstarting" anything, this is just your online store.
I don't want to hit a person while they're down (in the dumps about their "purchase"), but going to Kickstarter for version 3 was my sign to give it a rest on buying Pebbles. Maybe it was just marketing, but it caused me to wonder "have you not made enough profit to support rolling out your third version without outside backing?" If it finally hit retail, great, I might get one then. But in the meantime I bought a Garmin Fenix instead of financing someone else's manufacturing interest-free.
Pebble wasn't aiming for market dominance, they were aiming for market traction. How many Pebbles do you see in the wild? Now, how many Apple Watches do you see? How many Garmins? FitBits? "Notifications" is the baseline these days. It's just a given if I buy a fancy electronic watch. So where does that put Pebble? Having the same notification functionality as other devices, only not as slick and more cheap looking. Oh, Pebble has fitness stuff now? Have fun going up against Garmin and FitBit. As more and more devices gain the functionality that defined Pebble, Pebble went from the leader in this segment to playing catch-up.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-).
Of course you know better. :-) Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem. All the fitness add-ons in the world won't make a difference if there isn't some form of analysis and data storage behind it. I can go back to stuff my Garmins have recorded over a decade ago. FitBit's got something similar, Nike (back when they made hardware), and others I've missed. Apple and Android watches tie into their respective systems for more functionality than just notifications on your wrist. Nope, no cabal, the market just moved on and Pebble got left behind. We do have nice things, they just don't have "Pebble" silkscreened on them now.
> have you not made enough profit to support rolling out your third version without outside backing
I interpreted it more as a way to build hype around pre-orders for something that wouldn't come out for a while. In light of them going under, your explanation seems to gain some support, but I still wonder if they were also using Kickstarter as a hype builder and pre-order managment system.
>How many Pebbles do you see in the wild? Now, how many Apple Watches do you see?
Almost the same number for me. That said I barely see any Apple watches and most people I know who bought them have left them in the bedside drawer long ago
Because sometimes an up vote isn't enough: I have nothing more to add other than complimenting you on a very insightful comment that said in one sentence what has taken me paragraphs.
Totally this. Kickstarter is for, well, kick-starting things. It's not meant to be a business model. If you're already a million-dollar company, and you can't bring a new revision of your product to market without crowdsourced funding, maybe you're not doing it right.
> Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem.
Pebble actually had the full ecosystem going, app store, online integration, accessories, the whole hog. So much so that (for me at least) it was actually a /bad/ thing. I don't want my smartwatch to be a portal into web services and a means of datamining my life. I don't want a subscription to a watch service. I just want it to be a watch that I can program and that can talk to my phone.
You'll get a refund. What's the problem? I've lost money backing stuff where the money just disappeared. Not even that has angered me. Kickstarter is not a store.
Having done a hardware Kickstarter, I can tell you it's not as easy as just "increase the price". Hardware is hard. We did two crowdfunding campaigns: almost broke even on the first one, and are still in massive debt from the second one. Although I'm glad we came through for our backers, I wish we had just refunded everyone. The aftermath has been incredibly stressful both mentally and fiscally.
Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.
It's clear to me that Fitbit bought Pebble to kill it. It was the only smart watch that had good functionality, good battery life, good pricing, and easy user programmability. So of course it had to die. The founders no doubt got a nice payout and the customers, as usual, got forcibly sodomized.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 239 ms ] threadhttp://www.proofofclaims.com/PebbleTech/documents/
I'd say that was a failure for Pebble investors as they raised $58.81M according to crunchbase.
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.
FitBit did not acquire their $24 million in debt or any physical asserts. They offered jobs to 40% of the staff.
ouch, i can only imagine how the founders feel
But in hindsight he's probably kicking himself.
One could argue having to go continuously go back to that well meant they never gained the market traction they were hoping for.
This was like six months ago, but it was in SF.
It was the cute the first two times. By round #3, I was tired of the "we'll ship soon, after a slew of delays!" dance, and ready for Pebble to put on their big boy pants and let me know when they ship to a retailer from whom I can buy one that day.
And apparently those big boy pants were still fitting a bit loose.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Pebble+Time+Teardown/42382
EDIT: there's also this post on the tech specs on reddit[0]. This looks pretty re-implementable if you're a hardware engineer looking to do something fun. The right component mix seems to have been figured out already.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/wiki/tech_specs
I guess I can only dream, but I hope they some day open up parts of it so that the phone app can continue working even with changes to Android/IOS down the line (if Fitbit doesn't want to keep the old Pebbles alive).
But with that said, a smart watch makes me feel hyper-connected. Putting it in quiet mode (and/or taking it off my wrist) every now and then is liberating and definitely makes me more productive.
I feel that you probably did not configure notifications. Each time I received a notification that is not important I went to Pebble, and disabled it, after a while pebble was no longer as annoying.
They no longer appear to be sending anything at all out.
That's not very nice.
I know I will not buy any FitBit products either, if this acceptable to FitBit, to do nothing for these customers knowing this was going to happen then FiTBit does not deserve anyone's money either.
It would have been better for the company to just Die if they were that bad off (which I have my doubts unless they were Seriously mismanaged)
These Acquihires where a large company partially buys out another company for there personnel and/or IP shuttering the original product and fucking over customers need to come with at minimum a HUGE PR back lash for the company buying the assets to make them at least do right by the original customers offering things like Reasonable levels of support, Transition planning, etc
Maybe not moral, but quite probably perfectly legal.
Regarding the morality question: consider the alternatives. The moral choice is in the hands of the seller. A buyer is an option among many.
They could've said "reach out to Fitbit instead".
Which would be even more of a dick move because Fitbit will tell you to go pound sand because they aren't responsible.
Are there any other things like it that we can migrate to, or will the world never see their like again?
Please don't do this. Traffic fatalities--particularly those involving vulnerable road users have spiked in the last couple years. There is nothing you can communicate that is worth the grave risk to others that you pose.
That being said, the statistics don't support your claim that traffic fatalities have spiked. Through 2014 (the last year the IIHS published statistics) fatalities had either leveled off or continued their historical decline.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/business/tech-distractions...
Fatalities overall have fallen and continue to fall, largely due to increased use of seatbelts, other safety features in cars improving and being more commonly available. Also in many areas the overcrowding of roads is making fatalities drop: if you can't get up to any sort of speed then and collisions you experience will be less likely to be fatal!
But accidents due to being distracted by technology (and therefor the number of fatalities as a proportion of that) are, according to a number of studies, on the increase.
While I don't doubt you are correct that the proportion of fatalities due to distracted driving is increasing, I'd still like to see a link or two to the studies you cited.
Unfortunately I don't have such handy, though if I remember when I next have time I'll try hunt out a reference.
If you want clues to try hunt them down yourself: they will be things I've read about in New Scientist (dead tree publication), probably in sidebars to recent articles on advances in automated vehicles.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/traffic-deaths-up-more-...
I don't think any of the Fitbits have any kind of integration like this.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-2-time...
From text of announcement:
Pebble is no longer promoting, manufacturing, or selling any devices.
From header of getpebble.com:
Buy Now $99
Also, the store promoting Pebble has no prominent announcement that they aren't promoting Pebble anymore (the one watch I checked did say out of stock, so they aren't selling it at the moment).
Definitely surprising that they weren't able to sell the company - they had the brand and a loyal customer base. As an owner of a Pebble Time, I was impressed by the integrations, simplicity of design, and battery life.
I wonder went wrong - hopefully, there will be some type of post-mortem on these "various factors" over the next few weeks.
They sold their liabilities to Fitbit . Wasn't Pebble valuated billions of dollars a few years ago? Something went terribly wrong.
Pebble's products were an excellent example of lateral technology. No need for high DPI on your watch, because they made something that looks good with few pixels. Making battery life a priority in a world of WiFi-enabled pressure cookers.
Even when the battery ran out you still got 24 hours of a watch that would at least tell the time!
I have no idea if it is possible to produce something like Pebbles at low quantities, but I would love to see an open design with similar specs. I think these watches are better than anything else out there, and it's sad the design is going to disappear.
I literally wear my Time Steel for 23 hours and 45 minutes per day. The only time it's charging and not on my wrist is when I'm in the shower, and over the course of a regular day it never drops below 80%. If I'm going away for a weekend I don't even have to bother with the charger.
I was aiming to get a new Pebble after Christmas, as mine suffers from that screen corruption glitch that plagued the first gens.
I expect this is actually part of the problem, and likely affects many smartwatch producing companies: If it wasn't for the screen glitch, I wouldn't be replacing my watch. It works, does everything I need, and speed isn't an issue. A colour display would be nice, but it's far from important to me. I'm sure the same is true for many Joe Average consumers. There isn't the same impetus to frequently upgrade a watch.
But you're right. Much like the cell phone market which appears to be slowing down, the minor improvements made in the tech for smart watches don't appear to actually be worth buying if you already have the current version that isn't broken. Unfortunately, the software Pebbles run is so straightforward that even planned obsolescence through required updates wouldn't have been a viable option like it is for cell phones. Y'know, the updates that correct dangerous security vulnerabilities while at the same time crippling old hardware by introducing new, unnecessary features in the software? No Pebble owner would've bought (for lack of a better word) that justification and upgraded.
I will use my pebble as long as it continues to work, then it'll get retired to my shelf of tech fails. Most of which failed FAR more spectacularly.
Shelf is a euphemism, it's actually a small pile of boxes that I keep just to remind myself that even great ideas will die with poor implementation, planning, DRM, or bad support.
No thanks, my stack is big enough, but I betcha someone collects those!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo
They actually delivered on orders, although I don't know how many. I got an early review model for free. I've kept on to it because it is x86 with an NVIDIA ION board. I thought it'd be fun to put XBMC / Kodi on it, and maybe some retro game emulators. Never got around to it though and it's still running stock firmware and sitting in its original box.
A piece of history to be sure, although I doubt anyone who wasn't there at the time would remember it. The highly anticipated device that invented the tablet market was not the iPad...
Well - there's always this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-your-own-smart-watch/
> ...with similar specs
Hmm - I doubt they compare, but then again, one is open-source and nearly infinitely customizable (depending on your budget, skills, and needs) - and one, well - doesn't exist any longer.
The pebble 2 does compete with the fit-bit. This story reminds me of a time when I worked at a small semiconductor equipment manufacture. We were a scrappy team and build a great small footprint tool. We won an order from a larger customer. Everyone was celebrating until our competitor quickly bought us out for cheap and shut us down. A few engineer went over to the new company but not enough to keep the product going.
I'm not sure about that. I read some comments on a few other articles about the Pebble shutdown, and people are recommending the Vector Watch [1]. It's a smart watch with a monochromatic e-ink display, and it has a 30 day battery life.
[1] http://vectorwatch.com/
They've bought the parts that are worth something. They haven't bought the liabilities. It seems like a pretty obvious move, in that cold light.
That's very unfortunate. How much of Pebble relies on some online service? Is it still possible to install apps/updates without their infrastructure?
For companies that don't open source their stuff by default, it would be so nice if there was some kind of escrow service where upon dissolution of the company (sale, bankruptcy, etc) the required software to keep their hardware going would be released. I suspect the problem is while it's a win for consumers, not enough would care: the mass market is not going to only buy products that have this escrow service, and at the same time, it's handcuffs for the business, likely complicating a sale or liquidation of the company, and possibly turning investors off.
I hope the Pebble doesn't become a complete wristbrick, but it's always a shame to see perfectly good hardware crippled because there's no longer a piece of software running entirely outside the consumer's control.
Hopefully the community can run with this and set something up so people can distribute and install apps outside of the official services.
"Further down the road, we’ll be working to phase out cloud services, providing the ability for the community to take over, where possible."
That way at least their customers could try to hack together stuff or make mirrors of their app repos to keep their devices functional.
I hope they open source Pebble OS, maybe even the assets that drive the Pebble store.
What else is around in this niche now? Are there other relatively cheap, simple smart watches with good battery life that I should be looking at instead?
Would love to know what the alternatives are, as I've been tired of the low build-quality of my Fitbit and really want something much nicer and closer to a smart-watch.
If we rely on their cloud services for activity tracking and app downloads then it will be useless if FitBit doesn't maintain the platform.
I have to say I'm really disappointed and this is a huge blow to people that invest in startups offering hardware. If the company fails forget about the smart stuff you bought, it just won't work anymore.
We should look for ways to minimize the impact on backers. Sadly we'll see more of this in a future in which the products depend a lot on the company cloud services to operate.
If that's the case I would prefer to purchase devices that are actually already running free software or there is free software available to flash on them.
Person
Buyers need to start demanding Open Source Software and Open Hardware...
With out that, you will always be screwed
Exactly
There's also the FOSS smart watch OS Asteroid OS: http://asteroidos.org/
Appreciate the tip!
As for the step tracking... yeah, not sure.
I'm fairly sure that I could crack the pebble apk myself to remove the authentication stuff at the beginning if it's needed. Backing up all the apps and stuff before it's gone might be the bigger worry here.
I don't think PBW format has any magic in it that could enforce cloud dependency.
I'll have to check out what's going on with the pebble community over there. Might be interesting to get as much reverse engineered as possible before everything goes belly up.
[1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4751
[2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
[3] http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-p...
source: I do infrastructure stuff at fitbit. Also they explicitly said this in the developer.pebble.com blog post.
I mean, I won't really blame Fitbit for whatever happens now. It was Pebble's fuckup, and my anger (which I sadly expressed in the threads last week) is wearing off.
I do hope you guys do something great with all those new people and IP. In the meantime, I guess me and other Pebblers will be extra-careful about our watches. They are really something unique and there's hardly anything like it on the market now.
I enabled sync to google fit because I hoped it would backup sleep data but that does nothing sensible, it's all stored locally (and in fact if you reinstall the Pebble app you lose all your data).
ps: if anyone knows of some software to export these data from an android phone, I'd love to know because I could not find anything
At least with HP Touchpad you could flash the ROM and change the OS.
It is a difficult sell to have someone pay full price for a product when the manufacturer openly states they won't support it anymore, and may even reduce functionality in the future.
You can keep yours till the end of the return period and see if the price drops. Or maybe pebble will change their own, or open source their software (but now you paid full price for a product with no hardware support). Depending on where you bought, some stores have extended returns for the holidays.
So I went back to Pebble and got the Time Steel about a year ago and it's been flawless. Worked with my Note 4 and later (currently) with my iPhone 6S Plus. It's a shame that they're not going to be around anymore for the next time I get an itch to try something new. When this watch quits I'll probably just go back to my Citizen.
Needless to say, you had a lot more faith in the company than I did after that. I just considered my original KS pledge a bad investment and moved on without looking back.
I still wear my time steel and will get my time 2 refund, but I am surely frustrated by how they screwed all it up. They did not open source any core bits, left with crappy update which drains batteries and openly admitted quality will get worse by time.
note-for-future : don't get into hype trains.
I worked for a start-up that did a similar thing. We hired tons of people and the business was unsustainable. It was a push to get bought or go out of business. Lucky for us we got bought.
I'm glad they are refunding me, but that makes me think... WTF, did they not produce any Time 2's? Or are they all going to the landfill? How long have they been knowing that they are going to be insolvent? This doesn't happen overnight! Was the last Kickstarter a gamble?
Why does everybody have to aim for total market dominance to be successful? They overreached and now the customers suffer. There should be a place for "small" manufacturer selling a niche product ("small" with a certain understatement like German "Mittelstand" enterprizes - I mean Pebble sold millions of units). If they had to increase the price by 10% to be sustainable, they still would have smashed the Kickstarter.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
_All_ Kickstarters are gambles. Their messaging[1] is pretty clear in the fact that you aren't buying a product, you're contributing money with the hope that the maker will deliver on their promises.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store
What they should have done is cut costs and develop 10x fewer features, let the community grow slowly but organically and wait out the bad times.
It's easy to say that, but when you are up against the Apple/Samsung type companies who have much deeper pockets, don't have to wait out bad times, have the ability to lean on vendors, have contracts in place with manufacturing and the supply chain to efficiently deliver the product, it might not be realistic to do that. On top that, as others here have said, once you take VC money, there isn't really an option to go slowly and let the community grow.
their goals become your goals and their goals are almost always "Make more money now"
Sure there is. Just not while also being the dominant, or one of the dominant players in the industry when there is competition form a bit name. Pebble didn't have to be a dominant player, they could have positioned themselves differently if they wanted. Both paths are a gamble, but if it comes to a small company I own trying to compete with Apple/Samsung/Google and it's obvious their resources give them an edge (which they almost always do), then I think I would try to position myself to net necessarily compete with them directly (e.g. be the more hacker friendly device, don't shoot for the luxury market, find some cool thing they aren't offering, etc).
They did not really have to go against Apple/Samsung, their product was unique enough that Apple and Samsung don't have anything that's similar to it, and people like me would prefer pebble over their products. I mean now that pebble is gone, I'll most likely go back to regular watches.
It arrived as a useless brick that I, and most other recipients, never even got to show the time.
Free Market at its finest
They try to do a Hardware project that pushes boundaries and try to collect money to early during the development process at a time when it is really impossible to set a ship date. (Also a factor is company inexperience with manufacturing) This is why so many projects have to delay shipments and sometimes eventually run out of money without getting to a shippable product.
Companies that are successful typically do their preorders at a point where they have already completed multiple production runs at a cm in china and are ready to ramp for mass production. the order count helps justify the costs of ordering mass production parts. The issue of course is that it means investors had to be willing to fund seed/series A without seeing any traction.
It's for people to support funding projects still in development and helping them get from that stage to get into production. In exchange for a "reward". It's not meant to be for products already having done multiple production runs ready to ramp up and customers are just pre-paying a long delivery time.
I would agree it appears there needs to be better communication about the risks and uncertainties. But they have said quite clearly kickstarter is not a store:
https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store
Most money spent on Kickstarter goes to projects which are far far more likely to be completed in some form: videogames, books, board games. I'd say that hardware projects should be banned entirely except for companies that have already shipped similar products but, well, that would've included Pebble.
It's not for everyone, but I'd be happy to back a hardware project knowing there's a solid chance it might not succeed, especially on the more niche products. Someone has to.
But I do think risky product creators can compensate their backers better for the risks and for taking a chance on them. For example I think it would be great to see something like a behind the scenes component with more sharing of the process as they go. Maybe like a weekly vlog about them building this new product from scratch, with successes and failures and what they are learning. The company doesn't have to show anything proprietary. It's like behind the scene DVD but for a product not a movie. I'd watch it. Plus all the backers would know that the creators tried and if they are failing, the reasons why. It could be interesting and entertaining. And if doesn't work they would at least have shared what they learned which others can learn from too. Anywho I don't see this happening.
People were understandably angry. And it wasn't so much the risk (because none of the backers lost their money), it's that the company wasn't upfront about risks. GPG's leadership knew going in that the company would go under if the campaign didn't become a miraculous success, but backers didn't find that out until after the campaign had stalled.
Presumably, backers wouldn't have been informed at all if the campaign had succeeded.
This situation with Pebble is even more strange because apparently their campaign succeeded (in raising money beyond their target goal)....
[1]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/human-resourc...
In alternative reality:
1. They could hire way less aggressive and stay lean. Product development will be much slower, but they can operate cash flow positive.
2. With Kickstarter/pre-orders they could avoid taking any serious VC funding.
3. They probably need to move less expensive region than SF Bay Area. SF is great for go big or go home, but not an ideal place for long-term sustainable business.
4. Probably the price of watches would be higher and they will be niche, but still there are tons of watch manufactures that survived decades.
Per their site, Pebble's current product line has three different case designs, each available in at least three different finishes, and one with an additional heart rate monitor. That seems like an awful lot of SKUs for a small hardware startup to develop, manufacture, stock, fulfill and support. Their latest kickstarter added even more models.
From my armchair, it looks like they tried to expand and segment their market too quickly, for the sake of both growth and the optics of their product line in comparison to Apple.
I'm in the early stages of creating the world's tiniest "hardware startup" (the product consists of a single piece of metal), and it's a constant discipline to not get caught up in offering variations on the base design. Every product design choice ripples through the supply chain, increasing complexity and overhead at your peril.
Good luck to all the folks at Pebble in their new endeavors.
> Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-). The same one that decided that cell phone batteries have to be non-removable, touchscreens glossy, and wearables either mini-smartphones or bluetooth-step-counters.
I feel that all the time. Of course it's not a secret cabal, just the free market promoting get-rich-quick schemes and making it harder for sustainable businesses and actually useful products to survive.
If they have 20 millions in debt, just increasing the price on their kickstarters slightly wouldn't have done it, so they obviously overdid something.
There is, it's called "Chinese OEM manufacturers".
(Yes, I know that an 'OEM manufacturer' is like an 'ATM machine'.)
OEM means "Original Equipment Manufacturer".
"OEM manufacturer" would mean "original equipment manufacturer manufacturer".
ATM Machine would mean Automatic Teller Machine Machine.
So did we.
Edit: removed judgemental statement.
Pretty sure they feel terrible right now and I don't think they slept well for the past 6 months. Could someone reasonable see this coming before KS? Most likely yes. Would they get this far without taking big risks? Most likely no.
You feel angry you didn't get your pebbles, I feel angry I didn't get my two pebbles and a core.
Imagine how they feel - reportedly turned down $750 mil and less than a year later had to apply for a job at another struggling wearables manufacturer.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-2-time...
The probably made some, but it takes money to turn any component inventory they may have into shippable products. They probably burned all of the money on mechanical tooling and part procurement already, and maybe hit a major issue in doing so (critical component is suddenly a very different price, etc). All of that inventory either is returned (if possible) or ends up liquidated on the secondary electronics component market for pennies on the dollar, to pay back the creditors. Custom parts, tools, etc have less of a resale market, but I'm sure a company in China will be happy to pick them up cheap to make smartwatches for the local market.
There were some stories circulating that their provider of screens for Time 2 is in financial troubles, so presumably may have not been able to fulfill the order.
Low goal is just good for PR and means you actually get some money rather than none if you fall short of your secret real goal
Of course that's kind of a mis-use of the kickstarter site... you've been in the euro/war/rpg board gaming business for over 25 years and you've had 8 completely successful kickstarters and now you're starting your 9th... I'm not naming names, but come on, you're not "kickstarting" anything, this is just your online store.
Pebble wasn't aiming for market dominance, they were aiming for market traction. How many Pebbles do you see in the wild? Now, how many Apple Watches do you see? How many Garmins? FitBits? "Notifications" is the baseline these days. It's just a given if I buy a fancy electronic watch. So where does that put Pebble? Having the same notification functionality as other devices, only not as slick and more cheap looking. Oh, Pebble has fitness stuff now? Have fun going up against Garmin and FitBit. As more and more devices gain the functionality that defined Pebble, Pebble went from the leader in this segment to playing catch-up.
Sometimes I think there is a secret cabal conspiring so we can't have nice things ;-).
Of course you know better. :-) Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem. All the fitness add-ons in the world won't make a difference if there isn't some form of analysis and data storage behind it. I can go back to stuff my Garmins have recorded over a decade ago. FitBit's got something similar, Nike (back when they made hardware), and others I've missed. Apple and Android watches tie into their respective systems for more functionality than just notifications on your wrist. Nope, no cabal, the market just moved on and Pebble got left behind. We do have nice things, they just don't have "Pebble" silkscreened on them now.
I interpreted it more as a way to build hype around pre-orders for something that wouldn't come out for a while. In light of them going under, your explanation seems to gain some support, but I still wonder if they were also using Kickstarter as a hype builder and pre-order managment system.
Almost the same number for me. That said I barely see any Apple watches and most people I know who bought them have left them in the bedside drawer long ago
> Pebble sold you a device, everyone else sells you an ecosystem.
Pebble actually had the full ecosystem going, app store, online integration, accessories, the whole hog. So much so that (for me at least) it was actually a /bad/ thing. I don't want my smartwatch to be a portal into web services and a means of datamining my life. I don't want a subscription to a watch service. I just want it to be a watch that I can program and that can talk to my phone.
Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.
Because they want money, and it's very hard to be sustainably profitable when it comes to hardware without major scale.
If you can do different/better, then go do it. Be the change you want to see.