What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble • Hacker News Board

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#31

Post by mkesper » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #18

gcatalfamo wrote: post #2

Everybody is claiming that the focus on fitness is what drives smartwatches purchases, and pebble was just too late to it. Is it just me that stopped looking into smartwatches because they became too fitness oriented? I loved the focus on productivity and having a watch becoming slower because it had to track an increasing number of health metrics I couldn't care less of actually killed it for me.

Fitness is an early-adopter market too. It's worked better because fitness nuts are incredibly passionate early adopters - build something that appeals to them and you get rapid uptake. But they're still quite limited in number, and that's eventually going to prove problematic for hardware startups that target them, at least if they're funded and burn cash as if they're a mainstream product. We saw Go-Pro hit the wal…

Please let people work where they're good at: Communicating with people. No need for smart-anything here.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#32

Post by econnors » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

kensai wrote: post #23

I think Pebble's CEO simply screwed the moment of selling. He should have sold to Citizen for almost 10x the value a year before. He did not. He burned his cash in the process of making another product. It was a textbook CEO mistake.

Hindsight is 20/20

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#33

Post by Fnoord » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

neumann wrote: post #29

Fnoord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Pebble Classic v1 did not ship with a lot of functionality for notifications, music and alarm (I remember needing Music Boss for a while), but later on I got all three working (it was permission related). The notifications can be customised. Firmware also did extend such features at the price of less uptime (mine went from 7 to about 3 days). The lack of a to-do app is a huge one for me. Why? Because the use case…

There is a keep for pebble that was developed for a while [0]. The developer released the source code, so perhaps it can be modified to work with a custom note API. It still works for me on the original pebble with latest firmware and shopping is the primary reason I still use it. There is also WatchNote [1] (no longer developed) and Infinite Notes [2]. [0] https://forums.pebble.com/t/android-root-keep-for-pebble-dis…

Thanks for thinking along, FWIW I hope it may inspire other readers as well. I was aware of option #0 and #1. #0 made me give up -eventually, after retrying- since it requires root because Google Keep has no public API. This is also why I was puzzled #1 claimed it did work (it didn't).

0) Keep for Pebble requires root (root is area 51 for me) 1) WatchNote never worked for me (only sortof, via Evernote, very buggy) 2) Infinite Notes doesn't use Google Keep (offline is nice though since I regularly lose internet access in the grocery store). 3) PowerNoter doesn't use Google Keep (voice command is interesting, but my shopping list isn't saved in English)

Perhaps I should ditch Google Keep as requirement, but the missus is very accustomed to that and doesn't tolerate yet another piece of software for grocery shopping.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#34

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

mkesper wrote: post #31

nostrademons wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fitness is an early-adopter market too. It's worked better because fitness nuts are incredibly passionate early adopters - build something that appeals to them and you get rapid uptake. But they're still quite limited in number, and that's eventually going to prove problematic for hardware startups that target them, at least if they're funded and burn cash as if they're a mainstream product. We saw Go-Pro hit the wal…

Please let people work where they're good at: Communicating with people. No need for smart-anything here.

Most people are terrible at communicating with other people. Hell, I suspect that pretty much all of the appeal of the gig economy (from the worker side) is that you don't need to deal with a boss.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#35

Post by kensai » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 7:59 PM UTC

econnors wrote: post #32

kensai wrote: post #23

I think Pebble's CEO simply screwed the moment of selling. He should have sold to Citizen for almost 10x the value a year before. He did not. He burned his cash in the process of making another product. It was a textbook CEO mistake.

Hindsight is 20/20

He thought he could create more value from his product which he did not. You either can or cannot. A counter-example is that of Mark Zuckerberg. He stuck to his product.

A good CEO has to know the limits of his product/service and stick or sell at the right moment.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#36

Post by mahyarm » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 8:07 PM UTC

sfifs wrote: post #27

I really wonder if fitness is a big market. The size of Soda and fast food giants vs. "fitness food" indicates it's a niche industry. Seems to me that the real issueay be the technology is not good enough/fast enough to provide a seamless substitute to watch/phone functions and the fitness people are really the early adopters who are willing to trade off quirky tech for their niche needs being met

A fitness/diet food that is as cheap as fast food would be amazing! Often my issue is getting sick of a small selection.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#37

Post by r00fus » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 8:17 PM UTC

There's focus and there are killer apps.

For the Apple Watch, I use it for 3 main things: 1) fitness - it's a great motivator in addition to Strava (I don't record all my activity like walks in Strava). 2) Wunderground complication + timetravel is fantastic 3) Duologin for 2nd factor is much easier than the iPhone.

Pebble failed because Apple made the watch into a iPhone accessory and Apple Watch was better integrated than the Pebble.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#38

Post by utopcell » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 8:29 PM UTC

People might not remember that pebble didn't try to pivot from a smart watch to a fitness tracker but rather the opposite. They pivoted to a smart watch from a sort-of fitness tracking device (bicycling tracker.)

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#39

Post by SpikeDad » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 9:55 PM UTC

What can regular people learn from Pebble? Don't put your money into crowd sourced products from companies that don't listen to the contributors.

Re: What Hardware startups can learn from Pebble

#40

Post by SpikeDad » Sat, Dec 17, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

pluma wrote: post #26

gcatalfamo wrote: post #2

Everybody is claiming that the focus on fitness is what drives smartwatches purchases, and pebble was just too late to it. Is it just me that stopped looking into smartwatches because they became too fitness oriented? I loved the focus on productivity and having a watch becoming slower because it had to track an increasing number of health metrics I couldn't care less of actually killed it for me.

I'd go one step further: the pivot to fitness is what killed Pebble. Pebble's first KS campaign resulted in $10MM in pledges. The second campaign resulted in $20MM. The third campaign resulted in $10MM. The second campaign revamped the interface and added capabilities for voice input and other "productivity" features. The third campaign added a heartrate monitor, more fitness features and the Core, a separate device…

Don't you think the fact that their product didn't live up to their own hype was the reason their subsequent campaigns didn't product sufficient funding?

Even before they slinked out of the industry their product won't connect properly to iOS.

I think your glowing characterization that their users "loved them" was overblown.