The Pebble is one of the top wearables on the market today -- but the initial prototype of the device didn't start out as a watch. In fact, it didn't even tell time.
The idea that sparked Pebble in 2008 was a bike computer that showed text messages, says Eric Migicovsky, the company's founder and CEO. "I quickly realized that, while bike computers are pretty cool, more people use watches," he explains.
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Migicovsky's vision was famously funded on Kickstarter, raising $10.2 million over the course of the 30-day campaign -- more than ten times the initial goal of $100,000. The people had spoken -- 69,000 backers in 150 countries, to be exact: This smartwatch idea was on to something.
"We had just come from this period of trying to raise money where we'd been rejected, rejected, rejected. And we moved into this phase where consumers -- the people who really, truly matter -- were actually super excited about the project," Migicovsky recalls.
Perhaps maintaining the company's crowdfunded roots, Pebble's design has evolved over the past two years largely based on feedback and data by consumers. And though the competition is ramping up -- the Apple Watch will arrive in 2015 -- Migicovsky maintains that Pebble is truly something special.
"You see all these competitors in the market coming out with a different angle. Google is trying to take a smartphone, and kind of cram it down and put it on your wrist. Apple is saying, well we're going to build a high-fashion, super luxury smartwatch. And then Pebble, which is saying, it's a watch, but it's a really useful watch," says Migicovsky. "We believe that technology is moving from mainframes to desktops to laptops to smartphones and onto the body. We didn't start out as a wearables company, but we definitely are."
"In reality, it's just a damn good watch," he says.