What happened to Pebble Watch?

this video was brought to you by us slight beam make beautiful slide presentations in no time get one free month by signing up at slab beam comm /youtube pebble was the next great smart watch and then it wasn't in 2012 it became the most successful Kickstarter campaign at the time ten million dollars pledged the wearable technology market was at the gates of booming and the product was promising hopes were high and the fever's seemed to catch on by the beginning of 2013 the product began shipping and by 2014 over 400,000 units were sold but 2016 the number was already 2 million units but it's 2019 and chances are most people don't know what a pebble watch is pebble was ready to take the world by storm with its line of smartwatches and for a very short period it did but production issues and most importantly wrong decisions meant that just four years after its launch the pebble watch and the company pebble sold all their assets and cease to exist what was once supposed to be a game changer is now a lump or forgotten technology and a lot of lessons learned [Music] pebbles CEO Eric Mayakovsky wasn't new to the world of wearable technology since 2008 he had tinkered with the idea of a watch that could dish out information like weather sports stocks and well time so he created the impulse for Blackberry phones but impulse faced a hurdle that was hard to overcome and eventually would also haunt the pebble it was Hardware not software and hardware needs a lot of money let's look into mega cough skis early experiences with investors in 2011 he was part of the Y Combinator business incubator program the conditions for Y Combinator are as follows $150,000 from investors and this platform that sets up links with other investors do take into consideration one thing out of the more than 30 participants in this class his was the only idea focused on hardware instead of software also the impulse was geared towards blackberry alone hence the idea didn't really catch on so much so that mega coffe Sookie only got one investor draper fisher jew Ritson with a total investment of around 375 K which he spent manufacturing the impulse which he wasn't able to sell because well blackberries weren't a thing anymore the birth of a promise after such disappointment mayakovsky decided that it was time for a major shake-up he ditched the BlackBerry operating system and opted for a new approach the new SmartWatch would be compatible with multiple operating systems plus it would be waterproof and to officially break ties with the past he would call it pebble launch but where would he get the money investors haven't shown interest before so perhaps potential buyers would that's exactly what Kickstarter works for so in April 2012 he took to Kickstarter with a goal of $100,000 and it worked beautifully within just two hours he reached the goal by the 18th of May he had raised ten point three million dollars it wasn't smooth sailing though production hit a bit of a snack the planned date of September 2012 had to be pushed back to 2013 because of issues with materials but they had the money so after coming to terms with the Taiwanese manufacturer phox link group production started at a rate of around 15,000 units a week just two years later they had sold 400,000 units the time is now for Eric makovski red at 2014 Financial Times headline the road seemed to open for pebble at least with customers because with investors not so much when pebble wanted to launch their new product the pebble time investors were once again not interested so they resorted to the crowdfunding strategy again and to great success as they managed to round up twenty million dollars but we'll get back to this later the pebble products though pebble watches were in the only smartwatches at the time they had a couple advantages over their competition pebbles spearhead was its battery life rated for seven days which meant users didn't have to charge them almost daily as with many other brands also it could be linked with iOS or Android with information such as location distance altitude and such users could enjoy more than 8,000 apps built natively for the watch from basics as stock email text messages and social networks to more complex s of remote control for phones and cameras as well as GPS directions the devices were waterproof and the e-ink display works well under most lighting conditions plus with prices starting at just $99 it was an all-in-one pretty decent package until you got to the nooks and crannies so the user needed multiple apps to link the Pebble watch with his or her phone this dependency hindered usability cumbersome plus connectivity dropped multiple times a day and that dreamed the phone's battery also several users and reviewers discovered that pebble worked much better with Android than iOS which was a downside since many of its users were in fact iPhone users and to top it off first versions didn't have a scratch resistant glass pebble attempted to fix this on the second generation the new product had a color screen Gorilla Glass a stainless steel frame and even kept its famous long lasting battery even with the up-and-coming Apple watch already creating noise confidence in pebble was high meuk offski himsel said that he wasn't scared of the Apple watch and that it would boost pebble sales as the latter was significantly cheaper and this for a brief period actually happened pebble had outsold Apple what a prod so investors should be interested by now right well no they weren't and one of the reasons for this was in fact their feel-good story those very successful crowdfunding campaigns the problems with investment for their first watch they had raised ten million dollars on Kickstarter for their second twenty million so even though people didn't rely entirely on crowdfunding they had to use it in their most crucial moments you see after their first Kickstarter campaign the investment firm Charles River ventures handed pebble 15 million bucks pebbles first venture capital investment since its inception CRV hoped to steer the company towards the health craze that was sweeping the wearable technology market and a crazed pebble hadn't jumped into from the start in an interview with Wired makovski recognized that venturing into health earlier would have been a good decision what he said was we did not get this in 2014 if we had come out then as the SmartWatch fitness wearable maybe it would have been different but even up until this moment things seemed alright cr-v reported that sales were booming mega Kowski stated that by 2014 pebble had sold 1 million units and was maintaining profits they stopped disclosing these numbers by the holiday of 2015 but still the company was growing rapidly perhaps too rapidly so by the end of 2013 the company had around 25 staff members by September 2015 it had ballooned into more than 160 employees effectively kintu pling its size morale was high changes were on the way such as a heart rate monitor more health apps the company was growing but even after they raised their ten million dollars in Kickstarter a fifteen million dollar investment from venture capital why did they have to resort to crowdfunding for their second product something wasn't adding up and that behavior through investors off but that's not to say people weren't interested around 2015 talks of a possible acquisition from watchmaker citizen started to echo in the market the offer seven hundred and forty million dollars that's how much citizen believed in pebble but mega coughs kick himself rebuffed the sale so the reason why he rejected that acquisition has never really been cleared up he just didn't want to sell the company and it happened by the release of second product that same year another possible buyer Intel came knocking a pebble store with another offer this time for 70 million that's 70 knots 700 history repeats itself what happened here is not clear but until apparently walked away so after turning down to possible company acquisitions the Akatsuki was adamant that the pebble brand would continue creating products they plan to launch the pebble core in 2016 think of it as a smart keychain for fitness and they needed money desperately that same year they had to let go 25% of the staff so if investors weren't interested at first they were completely poor off after the layoffs do you want to guess how they obtained tip to fund their third product well yeah crowdfunding and yet again pebble managed to get twelve million dollars these guys are really good at crowdfunding but it wasn't enough in an interview with Vice mega Karski tells of his desperation by mid-2016 he looked all over the world for investors suppliers buyers everything even with that effort by October it was clear that pebble was sinking and that the best thing they could do was to salvage as much as possible for their customers employees developers and investors the acquisition and demise once mega coughs keen knew he had to sell a possible buyer didn't take long to appear it was a wearable manufacturers some people might know called Fitbit and they came in with a very low offer of around 40 million dollars but me Bukowski had really no choice but to make a deal this time dad was piling up estimates say around 25 million dollars investors were demanding some returns and pledgers needed their cash back so in 2016 for around 35 to 40 million dollars estimates a pebble was sold to Fitbit no time was wasted Fitbit scavenged pebble for its most valuable assets talent and tech then they fired over 100 employees and that was it pebble was gone in an interesting turn of events mega Kowski ended up working for Y Combinator as a partner and pebble remained only in the memories of those who worked for the company bought the watched and believed in the idea an idea that wasn't necessarily wrong it just didn't have enough to be right once the Kickstarter fever died they were left to their own devices literally Harbor is expensive and it needs to constantly reinvent itself the company misread the on several occasions and with influx of other competitors Apple and Fitbit of course those errors in judgment caught up to them pebble was the fairytale start of a small company trying to fight the big guys and they can say they did manage to duke it out at least for a while but the wearable technology market is still very confusing at first it seemed that the spirit of pebble would survive with Fitbit after all by merging technology and lessons learned Fitbit aimed to take over wearables until it too fell victim to this complicated world of corporate giants and last news in this story Fitbit was just acquired by Google we'll have to see what happens

Channel: Slidebean

Views: 172,506

Keywords: caya, caya slidebean, caya 2019, slidebean, startup founder, startup forensics, startup mistakes, startup failure, startups 2019, pebble watch, smart watch, smart watch history, startups, how to start a business, startup company, pebble watch review, entrepreneur, starting a business, eric migicovsky pebble, eric migicovsky, apple watch, pebble smartwatch, fitbit vs pebble, pebble time, smart watch apple, startup pitch mistakes, startup stories, pebble watch 2019

Id: HOwPBc1huuM

Length: 10min 56sec (656 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sichroteph]

The market wanted fitness trackers, I still thing the best smartwatch is about notifications. Fitness tracking was just a novelty everybody wanted, having a proper interface to interact with notifications like we have with our pebbles is what makes a great smartwatch. Fitness is just something we check maybe twice a day.

[u/andytheape]

It was marketed so wrong, I lent my old one to my gf, then she wanted her own, then I lent it to my mother and she wanted her own. Both of them use in very different ways, neither would have been the target audience.

Instead people bought shitty Samsung gears that made them think smart watches shouldn't be a thing.

[u/Dragon_Reborn1209]

Still can't believe they failed. I bought one Fitbit after my pebble finally died. The Fitbit at twice the cost was a quarter of the watch the pebble was. I am now on a Garmin instinct, it's kinda like a beefier pebble but better on the sports side and less on the smart watch side.

[u/iamthekiller]

People were tricked into thinking buying a “fitness” watch would make them magically be fit. Pebble was too focused on being smart.

[u/meltboro]

Without good funding and promotion, even the best products fail. With good funding and promotion even a shit product will survive.

[u/AloeVeraSystems]

Dang that was an interesting watch. (No pun intended.) turning down 700 million from citizen of all companies must have hurt , heck I'm hurt thinking about it. I Ben the $70 million would seemed to have paid off the companies debt to the investors, the crowdfunding, and still have plenty left over for the staff if they weren't taken to the new company in the merge.

[u/Sichroteph]

Damn they declined 700 millions, that must hurt thinking about it now. They really believed in their product.

[u/Sekhen]

I've been wondering this since I got the news. I will definitely be watching this tonight.

[u/rjdverbeek]

After my Pebble Time I switched to a Garmin Vivoactive 3 and now a Garmin 245 Music. The 245 is the closest to the Pebble experience I ever had. Always on display, button control, watch apps, long battery life. In addition you get the health related benefits.