
Pebble E-Paper Watch Raises $1M In 28 Hours  - yurisagalov
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts/206626
======
aresant
The #1 "low-hanging-fruit" place to find additional revenue is from existing
customers - getting people to trust your brand, enter their CC once, etc is
much harder than getting them to do it a second time.

Kickstarter feels like a social-network of BUYING enthusiasts - it's a
brilliant ecommerce model - get the product nodes to do your marketing for
you, then enjoy the network effect of retaining those buyers as your own
customers.

------
qq66
What's the general-case solution to technical failure of a Kickstarter
project? For example, what happens if the organizers spend the money they
raised to build the product, but it turns out that they underestimated the
costs, and now can't deliver what they promised to give you if you pledge $x?

I ask because usually when you buy a product, it's already been made -- if a
Kickstarter investment is purely a donation that's one thing, but a lot of
Kickstarters seem to be a way of pre-buying something that hasn't actually
been implemented yet.

~~~
thetron
I had contributed to a Kickstarter project (a piece of software) that failed
to finish. Recently, the author wrote an update offering refunds (plus 5%
interest) to all backers.

Personally, I consider all Kickstarter donations to be be just that, even if
the reward includes some sort of 'preorder' - although saying that, I would be
super disappointed if I invested $100+ in a project that then fell on its
face.

I guess that the risk of investment, right?

~~~
FaceKicker
So if this team just decided to run off with the $1.6M right now for
essentially writing a page worth of text and making a couple concept videos,
would there be any legal recourse for the donors? Not that I have any
suspicion at all that that's what this team is doing, but Kickstarter projects
in general seem like a relatively easy way for someone to make a good chunk of
money for the cost of a couple hours' worth of work.

Is there really nothing more to it - donors just have to cross their fingers
that the team is legit and isn't just going to run away with the money?

~~~
ajuc
I thought they won't get the money until they finish the product?

~~~
thetron
As I understand it, Kickstarter projects get the money as soon as the 40 day
countdown is up, but only if they get 100% funded.

------
savrajsingh
Congrats to the Pebble team! It's great to see a hardware / software startup
like this one succeed. All the standard criticisms of "hey, they'll knock that
off in China tomorrow" don't apply at all as integrated hardware and software
isn't as easy as it seems. It's also interesting that a lot of HN users are
saying "ah, I don't want another device" while the market is saying that there
are a lot of people out there that want a cool iPhone integrated watch.

------
webjprgm
I'd love the idea, except that I don't want to recharge my watch like a cell
phone. I'm used to my watch lasting years without changing the battery.

But if I can program my own custom watch face with a button that turns off the
Bluetooth, thus extending the battery life ...

~~~
marknutter
Just plug it in when you take it off at night. That step can't be that
inconvenient, can it?

~~~
adestefan
Yes it is. If you could put it on an inductive charging pad that would be
fine, but I'm not going to fish around for a micro USB plug that probably has
fallen behind my nightstand for the 500th time every few days.

~~~
officemonkey
There has been a big uptick in the last 12 years on rechargeable gadgets. We
used to put double AA batteries in everything. The only thing that needed a
charger was the gigantic Motorola MicroTAC cell phone. Nowadays, it's the
opposite. I count seven of them in my house alone. The only thing I need a
battery for is my television remote.

Inductive charging pads are a great idea, but you need a big vendor to make a
standard one. Apple is probably the only company with large enough
marketshare. If they came up with an inductive charger for their
iPhones/iPads, their product would quickly become _the_ standard. Eventually
Amazon would install the technology in the Kindle, Android handset makers
would do it just to keep in the game. 3rd-Parties would make inductive power
stations for cars, bedside tables, dressers, desks, you name it.

And I would buy at least three.

~~~
adestefan
I already know where I would instantly put 2 of them and probably a third if
this ever came to fruition.

------
motti_s
As a gadget freak and a hacker, I love this product. But I wonder how many
people use a watch these days. Of course this is no ordinary watch, but when
you have a supercomputer (in the shape of a phone) in your pocket, is it
really needed? I suppose it's great for sports, but I'm not sure whether it
has mass market potential (selling ~10K in a few hours is amazing, but isn't
mass market yet). I'm actually on the fence with this one...

In general I think that watches will make a comeback only if they _become_ the
phone. Maybe Pebble will be well positioned to do that in the future (remember
iPod -> iPhone?).

BTW It's nice to see a hardware company coming out of YC. Also nice to know
that Eric is from Vancouver. Good luck Pebble! I'll buy one as soon as I stop
being a starving bootstrapper.

~~~
phlyingpenguin
I find the use of cell phones as pocket watches tacky. As a grad student, I've
seen many speakers come in and open a cell phone in the middle of a talk to
check their time usage, which I find utterly unacceptable.

Depending on your situation, look around a bit and see who's wearing a watch.
It may not be the norm anymore, but it's still not an unusual thing to do at
all. If nothing else, they are a good fashion accessory.

~~~
johnmw
Don't you think 'utterly unacceptable' is a just little harsh, remembering
that technology, fashion, and language are not fixed things and are always
changing. I think it is quite acceptable that mobile phones have replaced
wrist watches. Or maybe we should go back to giving lectures in a top hat and
monocle, and checking our time usage with a fob watch? ;)

~~~
phlyingpenguin
It's not the change in fashion that I'm taking issue with. Standing in front
of a group of people with your attention fixed on a communication device is
not good presentation. If it were glancing down at a clock sitting on a podium
or table, that would be fine. This is not how it happens in practice. The
biggest difference between a cell phone and a watch or other timepiece on a
surface is that a cell phone requires interaction to extract the time. The
extent of that interaction really doesn't matter. It goes from a momentary
action of pulling a phone out and pressing a wake button to a nervous speaker
confounded by a single button press and a screen too dim to see without making
a spectacle of the action. This is the more common of the cell phone users I
witness. The trouble is that every minute thing a speaker does is on display
and just as a speaker expects (or hopes for) respect from the audience, I as
an audience member expect the speaker to be attentive and professional.

So can it be done gracefully without my ire? Probably. I have yet to be
pleasantly surprised.

~~~
adiM
I normally wear a watch, but still use my phone's stopwatch to keep time
during a talk. I find that looking at a stopwatch during a presentation
requires less mental distraction than: (i) keeping track of the time at which
my talk started (I am talking about conference talks where the talks usually
start a few minutes later than the scheduled time), (ii) looking at the
current time and calculating how much time is remaining (it usually takes less
than a second, but it is more time consuming that a tap on my phone).

The trick is to disable your phone's auto lock, open the stop watch and run
it. That way, you can just tap the screen (I am assuming iphone like smart
phone) to see the current time. I think this can be done as discreetly as
checking my watch.

The biggest advantage of using a stopwatch is that it provides evidence of how
long you have been speaking for. I have had cases where the previous speaker
overshot his/her time and a session chair tried to get back on time by cutting
time from my talk. In such cases, I have had to point to my stopwatch to say
that I still have more than five minutes left. (Usually the talks are twenty
minutes, so having five less minutes is a big deal). This (a session chair
punishing me for the previous speaker's tardiness) has happened twice to me in
the last year.

~~~
ableal
I recently used a pointer/controller with stopwatch that seemed to be this
one: [http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-2-4-Cordless-Presenter-
Black/...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-2-4-Cordless-Presenter-
Black/dp/B0007KVK8E)

It was loaned, I had no idea it was so expensive. Good design, though. The
stopwatch can be 'pumped up' in 5 minute increments to the time for one's
talk. All there, nothing else to fiddle with.

------
wildmXranat
Neat toy, but it looks like it needs a phone to use data, install applications
and so on. Personally, I'm not the type of person that wants to wear another
accessory. I used to need a watch. I don't need a watch that needs a phone.
Just saying.

I see this as a sample of what's to come from mobile technology. I prefer that
phones evolve instead of adding a new accessory.

~~~
reginaldo
Sci-fi-like rant below:

I agree in that I also don't need a watch, much less a watch that needs a
phone. But I imagine I will wear a watch-like device again in the future. Have
you ever heard about the expression "the internet of things"? Well, it is
going to happen, but we're not quite there yet [1]. And when it happens, I bet
we're going to navigate trough it using watch-like devices at first [2]. It's
more natural because the watch in one's wrist is much more accessible and
therefore has a much lower latency then the phone in one's pocket.

Today, the precursor of the internet of things is the internet of smartphones.
So Pebble uses a watch to navigate the internet of smartphones. When the
internet of things finally comes, they'll be in a very nice position with
experience and brand recognition.

[1] The signs are here though: arduino, raspberry pi... How long until we have
a low power 5 dollars board that we can put anywhere? How about a 1 dollar
board?

[2] then we'll use augmented reality glasses and finally we'll just implant
chips and be ourselves part of this internet of things.

------
lucaspiller
How does this compare to the Sony Ericsson Liveview? Other than this being
more expensive and only having a monochrome display?

[http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Ericsson-Liveview-display-
Android...](http://www.amazon.com/Sony-Ericsson-Liveview-display-
Android/dp/B004E2V4NM)

~~~
vitno
this one has an e-ink display. which is readable outside. also as a result, it
has a nice battery life. It also looks NICE.

~~~
aiscott
Note that it does not appear to have an e-ink display. They called it e-paper
which doesn't necessarily mean the same thing.

The display appears to be this one: <http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/1-26-inch-
memory-lcd.html> or something like it.

It's transflective so you can read it outside, and inside you can use a
backlight (which they list on the tech specs). It's very low power, so you can
leave it on all the time. Those two things combined are why they call it
e-paper.

Personally I think it is a bit confusing on their part, but I understand them
wanting to get across that it's always on and visible outside. However, it
does get confused with e-ink.

~~~
grannyg00se
Their other watch (inPulse) uses an OLED display that looks similar.

------
eblume
Very intriguing but I personally can't stand watches that 'get in the way',
and looking at the prototype it sure looks like this thing would get in the
way a lot.

I haven't worn a watch for years, so this may be just a personal gripe.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
Some would say the same thing about cars.

Or, laptops.

------
abyssknight
I just picked up the TI EZ430 dev kit, and then this hits the web. I tried for
days not to back it, and then it hits HN. Oops. There goes the money, and my
pride. ;) Hopefully its as awesome as it looks!

------
doe88
I'm wondering if their iPhone application needs to remain in foreground/active
in order to receive notifications? I doubt it because it would be a quite big
shortcoming but on other hand given the state of third-party 'multitasking' on
iOS I'm not sure it is technically possible without it. Anybody wants to chime
in?

------
goronbjorn
$1M/28 hours = $850k/day

$1b/2 years = $1.4m/day

Still less than Instagram.

~~~
ajays
May be.... but most of the money in Instagram went to the VCs; here, all of it
is going to the company.

~~~
goronbjorn
Not necessarily most… The two founders owned 50% of the company so at most
half.

------
lucian1900
Interesting. I'd buy a watch with e-ink display, front light on demand,
independence of phone for basic functions and at least several weeks battery
life.

------
nextparadigms
I wonder how it compares to Sony's smartwatch:

<http://youtu.be/d7C-XuSEBPA>

~~~
nacs
I've been researching both lately..

The Pebble is an E-ink display so its monochrome but lasts longer ("7+ days")
while the Smartwatch is an OLED display which lasts around 5 days according to
Sony.

Also, the Pebble uses buttons for navigation while the Smartwatch is
"multitouch" (9 points in a 128x128 display).

The biggest difference IMO is that the Pebble supports both iPhone and Android
while the Smartwatch only supports Android.

Also the Smartwatch is a bit bulkier and it sticks out more as its really
thick.

------
EricR23
If I hadn't just got a Nike Fuel band, I'd probably get one of those! Don't
think I could pull off wearing both.

------
nextparadigms
Do people really care more about a watch that may not even be all that
practical, to give it $1 million in 1 day, than an ISP that vows to protect
your privacy, or is it just because he didn't use Kickstarter (he couldn't):

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57413511-281/privacy-
prote...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57413511-281/privacy-protective-
isp-raises-over-$43000-in-donations-in-one-day/)

------
smackfu
I wonder how many of their Blackberry watch they sold. More than this 10,000
preorders?

------
jiakeliu
Inspiring. I wonder how helpful YC was to them for being largely a hardware
company. Mass production and distribution must be some of the biggest
challenges... maybe they can be the next Apple :)

------
guynamedloren
Okay, I hate to be _that_ guy, but I can't hold it in. These Kickstarter
campaigns for iPhone accessories bother the shit out of me. See the following:

> iPhone dock: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hop/elevation-dock-
> the-b...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hop/elevation-dock-the-best-
> dock-for-iphone?ref=most-funded)

> iPod watch: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-
> lunati...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-lunatik-
> multi-touch-watch-kits?ref=most-funded)

> iPod speaker: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2107726947/hidden-
> radio-...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2107726947/hidden-radio-and-
> bluetooth-speaker?ref=most-funded)

> iPhone tripod: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jj1/cineskates-camera-
> sl...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jj1/cineskates-camera-
> sliders?ref=category)

All of these projects have received hundreds of thousands or millions of
dollars. Notice a trend here? iProduct + Kickstarter + Aluminum(optional) =
$$$. A formula for successful/massive funding. I probably have a naive view of
what Kickstarter is supposed to be, but I envision it as a platform for
launching innovative ideas. Sure, you can argue that these products are a few
steps ahead of the incumbents, but let's be honest - they are virtually
useless. They products don't leave the world in a better place. They aren't
pushing any bounds. They aren't amazing. And the crazy thing is that I have
never seen _any_ of them in the wild, _ever_ , despite being surrounded by
tech savvy people, Apple fanboys, and iOS fanatics. What's up with that?

I fear that Kickstarter will become a platform to launch new iPhone
accessories. But I guess that's what the world craves.

~~~
mmahemoff
And YouTube is full of cat videos. They're what people want, they're not doing
anyone any harm, and they're building scale to support the 1% of truly
meaningful content.

In any event, have you seen the state of watches in 2012? Digital watches are
basically the same as 20 years ago, and are sufficiently un-useful that most
people wear analogue if anything at all. Everyone's carrying around a computer
in their pocket/handbag that the watch could piggy-back off, it's time to make
use of that.

"these products are a few steps ahead of the incumbents" That's how most
progress actually happens. The inventors who are immortalised are usually
standing on the shoulders of giants and completing the last mile.

