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Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

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Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#71

Post by imjk »

nikanj wrote: post #58
pcsanwald wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honest question: why then did no one copy the iPod, and no one has copied the iPhone with any success? as soon as the iPod came out way back in the day, the criticism was that it would soon be copied. No one ever did, and I worked in the music business at the time and was familiar with everything on the market. nothing ever came close, apple made a ton of money. it's a common thing to say that it's not defensible/can…

I'm under the impression Google/Android had pretty good success in copying the iPhone.

Samsung too.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#72

Post by tommynicholas »

stingrae wrote: post #11

The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.

And I don't think is totally a bad thing! Huge rush of money the last 3 years seeking new opportunity as costs to starting up had dropped (but still high). I believe there will still be some winners that will shake out of that, and in a few years some funding will be back with many lessons learned. I suspect hardware as a way into selling recurring 100% margin software subscriptions will be the move, ala Ring, Simplisafe, Latch, etc. TBD!

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#73

Post by [deleted] »

ohazi wrote: post #30
foobaw wrote: post #27

A friend of mine quit this company after working there for 3 months. As a PM, she mentioned that it was impossible for her to do any meaningful work. Mind you, this was back in 2014, when they were doing fairly well. She even removed traces of working there from her LinkedIn. Speaks a lot about the company.

> She even removed traces of working there from her LinkedIn. Speaks a lot about the company. Or it tells you that people don't like explaining short employment stints to potential employers, probably out of fear that the potential employer will think they were fired.

[deleted]

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#74

Post by DenisM »

tokyoSurfer wrote: post #36

The problem with fitness trackers and smartwatches is that each and every brand keeps adding unnecessary features to the stack. They won't listen to users and keep building devices that have no market. Most of those companies created a product that was good and needed a good amount of work to make it better. But it seems that developers and management felt that simple = bad, and worked their asses off to add useless…

There you go, FitBit Charge HR (old model) for $60 on ebay: https://www.ebay.com/i/112385732954 (not affiliated)

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#75

Post by soganess »

The writing has been on the wall for a few months now!

They straight up stopped responding too support request, especially if you mentioned that you had a defective up3 or up4. Not exactly the kind of move a company that had hopes for the future would make.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#76

Post by tunetine »

ohazi wrote: post #30
foobaw wrote: post #27

A friend of mine quit this company after working there for 3 months. As a PM, she mentioned that it was impossible for her to do any meaningful work. Mind you, this was back in 2014, when they were doing fairly well. She even removed traces of working there from her LinkedIn. Speaks a lot about the company.

> She even removed traces of working there from her LinkedIn. Speaks a lot about the company. Or it tells you that people don't like explaining short employment stints to potential employers, probably out of fear that the potential employer will think they were fired.

You either explain why the startup wasn't a good fit or the three month gap of employment on the resume. I know which I would chose.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#77

Post by drewg123 »

tokyoSurfer wrote: post #36

The problem with fitness trackers and smartwatches is that each and every brand keeps adding unnecessary features to the stack. They won't listen to users and keep building devices that have no market. Most of those companies created a product that was good and needed a good amount of work to make it better. But it seems that developers and management felt that simple = bad, and worked their asses off to add useless…

Its funny, but I have the opposite reaction. I want a fitness band / smartwatch that can do everything:

o Ability to run w/o phone:

   - BT transmitter & music storage

   - GPS independant of phone
o Accurate HRM

   - background hear rate monitoring
o Smartwatch features

   - notifications

   - Android smart unlock device

   - useful for 2FA (eg, Google Authenticator, or Duo)
o 2+ days of battery life

o sleep tracking

I think only 4 of them have been made:

First was Moto 360 sport. The battery life was horrific, the HRM and GPS were inaccurate, and the BT transmitter was weak. Mine finally died.

I now have a Polar M600, which is nice, but lacks background HRM. Its also very bulky for the size of the screen, and the battery life, while better than the Moto 360, is only about 2 days.

The others are a TomTom Spark Cardio+Music, which I've never tried. And the Apple Watch 2, of course; which being an Android person, I have never tried.

I wish that Fitbit would make a device like this. Or that Garmin would add a BT transmitter and music storage to the Fenix.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#78

Post by jlarocco »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #33
quaunaut wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoPro is a failure?

GoPro closed today at 8 a share, a $1.1bn valuation [1]. They went public in 2014 at 24 (about a $3.3bn valuation) after raising a round in 2012 from Foxconn at a $2.25bn valuation. Their revenues are falling and their operations losing cash. They have $75 million of cash on their balance sheet, less than their Q1 2017 net loss. [1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AGPRO&ei=fNBeWcCjCc...

It's not fair to say GoPro has failed simply because investors and traders had unrealistic expectations. The "action camera" market was already saturated in 2014, and it's hard to imagine how they would continue growing at their previous rate when they're selling replacements and minor upgrades.

It's possible they're in the process of failing, but it wouldn't surprise me if trying to meet unrealistic expectations caused a large part of their problems.

I think at this point the worst case scenario is that they get bought out by a bigger electronics company because their name brand alone is worth quite a bit.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#79

Post by spiralpolitik »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #16
stingrae wrote: post #11

The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.

> The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. So I haven't worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even before these companies to raise funding versus a pure software play. I'm not necessarily convinced this makes it easier or harder. Is there a specific reason you think it will be harder now? Also, for what it's worth, Fitbit and GoPro are still going. I'm convince…

Fitbit lost me when they refused to support HealthKit. As it stands I'm not sure they can escape their demise as the market transitions from limited function devices to multi function devices like the Apple Watch. They strike me as getting rolled over the same way Diamond, Archos, and Creative got crushed by the iPod.

GoPro has a similar problem. Outside of special circumstances most smartphone cameras are now good enough for most consumer needs and will only get better. I think they could survive if they target the extreme sports type niche but otherwise I don't see them achieving escape velocity.

Both could be good acquisition targets a la Withings and Nokia. But the number of possible buyers is limited. Microsoft is possibly the only one that comes to mind that doesn't have anything in either space although given the failure of Windows Phone I'm not sure they have the desire to try something similar in a different market.

Re: Jawbone is being liquidated as its CEO launches a related health startup

#80

Post by EpicEng »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #16
stingrae wrote: post #11

The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. With so many high profile VC backed (Fitbit, GoPro, Hello, Juicero, Coin, Pearl, ect.) and kickstarted (Lily.ai, Pebble) failures, no one is willing to risk it.

> The days of consumer hardware company's access to startup capital is over. So I haven't worked at a hardware start-up but it seemed pretty difficult even before these companies to raise funding versus a pure software play. I'm not necessarily convinced this makes it easier or harder. Is there a specific reason you think it will be harder now? Also, for what it's worth, Fitbit and GoPro are still going. I'm convince…

I worked at a VC funded hardware start up for the first eight years of my career. You'll never read about it here though; we made digital pathology scanners. When I left we had sold the company for ~300M and were bringing in about ~30M / year in revenue.

I guess my point is that there is more going on in the VC space then you'll read about on HN.

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