Pebble founder says his new company is ‘not a startup’

founder of pebble, Eric Migicowskidoes things differently with its reboot of pebble Smart watch Brand and Artificial intelligence episode. The team is small, inventory is not manufactured before being sold, and there is no outside financing.

More importantly, he says, the new company, Basic hardware“Not a startup company.”

“We’ve structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully long-term enterprise, but not a startup,” Migicowski told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

“Startups are good for the world,” he explained. “You need money to really build new ideas and create something. But this is not a new idea,” Migicovsky said, referring to the smartwatch reboot. “This is an old idea. We’re just bringing it back.”

The Pebble founder said he learned a lot from his previous efforts building a device maker, including what not to do.

Pebble, the original company founded by Migicowski, It was sold to Fitbit in 2016 About $40 million; Google later acquired Fitbit For $2.1 billion.

Just before he exited, Migicowski’s team was scrambling. Christmas 2015 had thrown Pebble into a tailspin, as the company had bought up too much inventory.

“Hardware is different from software. You have to predict in advance how much you’re going to sell, because you need to build the hardware,” Migicowski explained, recalling a time when things went wrong.

The Pebble team then estimated that they would achieve $102 million in sales that year, but they made “only” $82 million. While that’s an impressive number for a smartwatch brand (especially one that’s not Apple, Google, or Samsung), the company was left with unsold inventory that had to be sold at a discount.

Retail partners were also upset because reduced sales meant lower margins. At the same time, Pebble did not have enough money to finish developing its new products. To make ends meet, the company had to quickly lay off workers and reorganize. Ultimately, he had to find a way out.

“I think I lost sight of why I was building Pebble,” Migicowski admitted. “At first, it was very straightforward. We had a Kickstarter. We posted on the web: This is exactly what Pebble does, here are what the features are, here’s who should be interested in it. And then, we stumbled a little bit. We tried to do health tracking. We tried to do things that didn’t work for us.”

This time, Migicovsky aims to take a different path. He says the new Pebble smartwatches aren’t meant to be for everyone. It’s meant to be for people like him: a self-described “nerd” who just loves hacking, building, and creating things. It’s also not for fitness junkies or those who want a smartphone on their wrist.

“I want a companion to my phone, rather than a replacement. I want it to be more like a Swatch than a Rolex. I want it to be more fun, casual, fun, and playful.” Additionally, he added that with the Pebble reboot, he’s now okay with a watch that doesn’t try to do everything.

“I’m OK with the limited vision and limited scope of what we’re trying to achieve,” Migicowski said.

Under the new company Core Devices, the team announced Pebble Time 2 Smart Watchround face Round 2 pebbleand A A $75 AI smart ring, called the Pointer 01.

It is worth noting that the company today will not be a large team of 180 employees as it was before, or a team working with distributors. Instead, there are just five people, and it sells directly to consumers on its website.

However, the foundation remains PebbleOS, the smartwatch operating system, which has thankfully been open sourced by Google.

Migicowski recalls meeting a Google employee, Matteo Genzon, at a child’s birthday party, where he got contact information for someone who might be able to make a call about the open source smartwatch operating system. He sent an email asking Google to make the operating system open source, and a year later, he followed through.

“I’m really grateful to Google, because what other big company in the world can do that?” Migicowski said. “I think they did it in honor of the Pebble community.”

Without PebbleOS, the rebooted Pebble smartwatch would have been impossible, as it took a team of 30 to 40 people working for years to build it originally. Recreating that from scratch was not an option.

So far, the new company structure is working. The company has sold 25,000 pre-orders for its smartwatches, and about 5,000 for the AI ​​Ring, which is the latest.

Pebble pre-orders currently ship for about six months, but Migicowski said the team will tighten that up by two weeks. Additionally, the Pebble App Store features 15,000 watch faces and apps. In a few weeks, the team will also re-release the SDK for developers.

Migicowski says the team is in a “comfortable place,” where their expenses are paid, and they are able to fund new projects.

That’s right, the team isn’t finished yet. Migicovsky won’t provide details on what kind of devices might ship next, but he says they’ll be the kind of things he personally wants to get.

“There are a lot of products already on the market. Nothing we make is similar to something that already exists,” Migicowski points out. “(The next products will be) fun, casual, simple devices, things that will make my life a little better, one piece at a time. They will work together.”