It took the original Pebble smartwatch a little over 5 weeks to raise $10.27 million. It took Pebble Time just 48 hours to top that.
Officially unveiled Tuesday, the Pebble Time broke Kickstarter records, raising its first million in just 49 minutes. [UPDATE, March 3: The Pebble Time is now the most-funded Kickstarter project ever, surpassing the previous record of $13.3 million held by the Coolest Cooler.]
The Pebble Time is the next-generation Pebble smartwatch. It has a thinner design, a color, e-paper display and a microphone for voice replies and notes. Still, the Pebble Time remains waterproof and promises a battery life of up to 7 days.
The Pebble Time will retail online and in stores for $199 but Kickstarter backers can get the device early. The first 10,000 backers were able to get the Pebble Time for $159, the current price is $179.
The original Pebble is one of Kickstarter's most famous success stories. It was the most-funded Kickstarter of all time until the Coolest Cooler dethroned it in August 2014.
Kickstarter for marketing, not funding
When the original Pebble launched on Kickstarter, it truly was because the company needed a way to fund making the watches and continue to develop the project. Traditional investors had turned the startup down and Kickstarter seemed like the best way to reach the goal of bringing the product to the public.
It worked. Nearly three years after that campaign, Pebble is a fully-fledged company with investments from venture capital. It has also sold over 1 million Pebble smartwatches.
The Pebble Steel, Pebble's second smartwatch, did not launch on Kickstarter. It launched on Pebble's website and at online stores. Pebble has also expanded its physical retail presence across the globe.
In other words, Pebble Time didn't need to be launched on Kickstarter. So why bother with Kickstarter at all?
When I spoke with Pebble founder and CEO Eric Migicovsky on Monday, he told me that the decision to go back to Kickstarter with Pebble Time was about using the platform to "tell the Pebble Time story" and to give the early adopters from the first time around a chance to be part of the next chapter in Pebble's saga.
In other words, it would be a great marketing campaign. Migicovsky's bet has turned out to be right, with Pebble Time easily on-track to be the most-successful crowd-funded project ever.
Still, Migicovsky and Pebble are facing criticism from some parts of the Internet. The argument is basically that "Pebble already has money" and "rich people are ruining Kickstarter."
It's the same argument Rob Thomas, Zach Braff and Spike Lee faced when using Kickstarter to fund their own film projects.
It's easy to want to jump on the bandwagon to say that Kickstarter should only be used for indies and people who truly aren without other income sources, but if we're being honest, Kickstarter has never been about just that. It has always been an avenue, that in part, has allowed individuals or companies to get funding on their own terms.
Whenever I write about Kickstarter success stories, I'm reminded of one of the first "real" breakout hits, the TikTok and LunaTik iPod nano watch kit.
Back in 2010, this project became one of the first crowdfunded projects to really put Kickstarter on the map. I interviewed its creator, MINIMAL's Scott Wilson back then about the project and his decision to use Kickstarter.
Wilson came to Kickstarter with a pedigree and a client list a mile long. He didn't need Kickstarter to get his watch kit made. Instead, he chose the platform because it would allow him to fund things on his own terms. It was also a great story that could get the project more attention.
Wilson has since returned to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms for a myriad of projects.
More than four years later, I'm not sure why we're all supposed to be shocked that companies are using Kickstarter as much for marketing and publicity -- as for initial funding.
I would also argue that Pebble is an even more specialized case. For many of the original Pebble's backers, that product represented their first interaction with Kickstarter. As a result, it's understandable -- maybe even fitting -- for the company to return to its origin story for its next product.
What does this mean for Kickstarter
As my colleague Seth Fiegerman says, "Kickstarter is whatever its most successfully funded project is." And he's right. In that sense, having the Pebble Time reclaim the crown of most-funded project is probably good for the overall ethos of Kickstarter -- marketing message or not.
Still, I do wonder what happens when the number of >$10m projects becomes de rigueur on Kickstarter. That's going to happen. And although I'm not arguing that that in and of itself is a bad thing (it is what it is), I am curious about what it means for crowdfunding as a whole.