Pebble's E-Paper Watch Exceeds $10 Million Raised On Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/backers

by UnfalseDesign • 14 years ago

85 42 14 years ago

Aethaeryn2• 14 years ago

There are apparently less than 400 Pebbles left[1] before they sell out at 85,000 watches[2]. If you wanted one and haven't ordered it yet, your opportunity is almost gone!

EDIT: (30 minutes later) There are only about 150 left.

EDIT: (60 minutes later) They're past 85,000, but the announcement they made said "around 85,000 Pebbles"[2] and not exactly 85,000. They could disable the preorders at any time, but there's no way to predict exactly when they're officially sold out.

EDIT: (70 minutes later) They've just created a $1 tier that provides 0 watches, and they set all the other tiers to eventually run out.

[1] http://computingeureka.com/pebble/

[2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...

xmmx• 14 years ago

Is there a name for this kind of behavior? I've known about the project since day one and didn't feel like buying one, but now that there's only a few watches left, I bit the bullet and gave them my credit card.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

Marketing types call it the "Bandwagon Effect".

http://www.marketing91.com/bandwagon-effect/

84,600 customers all can't be wrong, right? The project is a guaranteed success (or so you would believe) and if you don't buy now, you will literally miss the wagon...

csmeder• 14 years ago

Yes, It is a mix of "Scarcity", "Limited-duration" and "social Proof".

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/scarcity

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/Limited-duration

http://persuasive-patterns.com/patterns/social-proof

jaysonelliot• 14 years ago

I'd actually say this is an example of the "scarcity effect."

http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/scarcity-...

WORCHEL, LEE, AND ADEWOLE (1975) asked people to rate chocolate chip cookies. They put 10 cookies in one jar and two of the same cookies in another jar. The cookies from the two-cookie jar received higher ratings—even though the cookies were exactly the same! Not only that, but if there were a lot of cookies in the jar, and then a short time later most of the cookies were gone, the cookies that were left received an even higher rating than cookies that were in a jar where the number of cookies didn’t change. [From Neuro Web Design by Susan Weinschenck.]

toomuchtodo• 14 years ago

FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addict...

Aethaeryn2• 14 years ago

UPDATE: (140 minutes later) They are now officially sold out on Kickstarter. Other reports of them selling out were premature.

This means that they sold out at 6:37 PM eastern time, 3:37 PM pacific, with 85,420 watches total. The last one sold was in the $125 tier.

simcop2387• 14 years ago

Wow and I had expected it to take a while to break the $3.3 million record that doublefine set on the site. It's honestly amazing what some of these are doing financially.

veb• 14 years ago

My question is, will they actually be able to meet anyones expectations?

GuiA• 14 years ago

That will be very interesting to see. Statistically, it's likely that there will be disappointed people— but what if the product just plain sucks? It's unlikely, but very much possible.

melling• 14 years ago

This site lets you track the funding progress of Kickstarter projects:

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-wa...

devinmontgomery• 14 years ago

Alternate title: Kickstarter raises $500K in Pebble funding round

debacle• 14 years ago

Maybe what we're in isn't a funding bubble, but a trust bubble?

Edit: I don't mean to say that Pebble will not deliver, and in fact I think they will, but at some point one of these high-profile kickstarters is going to fail to deliver (possibly at no fault of their own) and that is going to be unfortunate for everyone involved, and will probably cause a big stir. Hopefully Kickstarter handles it well.

DanBC• 14 years ago

Here are two projects which are having trouble delivering. [oh, the pens have shipped, and people are very happy with them.]

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cwandt/pen-type-a-a-mini...)

(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/527051507/hexbright-an-o...)

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

Just to make it clear for everyone, it's not e-ink display. It's a transflective LCD display, which isn't the same thing and it's not nearly as efficient as e-ink either (although I have no idea if e-ink would even work properly on a watch). My guess is it's around 2x more energy efficient than a color LCD watch. This is what they're using for Pebble:

http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/1-26-inch-memory-lcd.html

toemetoch• 14 years ago

With e-ink, how would one at a glance know wether the battery is dead or not?

zumbojo• 14 years ago

E-ink Kindles write a "Your battery is empty" message to the screen shortly before the battery becomes completely discharged.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nickbilton/3636447946/

jomohke• 14 years ago

The same as an analog watch - when time stops.

neurotech1• 14 years ago

They are now available from Mouser; http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Sharp-Microelectronics/L...

I'm pretty sure that they were only added very recently. I searched a few weeks ago and they weren't listed.

stbtrax• 14 years ago

They were listed when pebble went on kickstarter--someone posted it on HN. I am looking forward to experimenting with one myself.

xsmasher• 14 years ago

That may be a good thing - some people were asking how soon the e-ink would wear out.

falling• 14 years ago

I’ve been trying to correct this for weeks too.

E-ink watches do exist though: http://www.phosphorwatches.com/v/site_pages/mens-watches.asp

ch0wn• 14 years ago

I got one of these. The display is really good and the watch is surprisingly robust. Updates on the screen happen really slowly, so I guess it's a real E-Ink display.

guelo• 14 years ago

Well, they keep calling it e-paper which I always understood to be a synonim for e-ink displays. If it's an LCD I think theyre trying to deliberately mislead.

Timothee• 14 years ago

I'm just learning that they're renting a billboard along 101 in San Francisco: http://www.businessinsider.com/pebble-buys-san-francisco-bil...

According to some comments on Business Insider, such a billboard is… well, pricey, and they would get the KickStarter money only after May 18th. (I haven't confirmed that part)

Could one speculate from there that they have been raising money from yet-to-be-announced traditional investors? Considering their new position (i.e. demonstrated demand), it wouldn't be that surprising.

OzzyB• 14 years ago

Sure, I can speculate:

They could very well be Factoring[1].

Since the Kickstarter payout is pretty much guaranteed at such-and-such date, they could quite easily "unlock" (factor) some of their future Accounts Receivable for a small percentage discount.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factoring_(finance)

joejohnson• 14 years ago

One thing I hate about finance is how every little trick is named by borrowing the name from an existing concept in mathematics which only barely relates to the financial trickery.

yurisagalov• 14 years ago

Pebble is not their first watch. They've already sold a first generation of watches (http://www.getinpulse.com/) and I would speculate they are likely using the proceeds from these sales.

drusenko• 14 years ago

That comment is inaccurate. A billboard on 101 costs something like $10k-20k/month. If it was remnant inventory, it could be even less than $10k for that month.

tlrobinson• 14 years ago

Not to mention the million dollar check they wrote for components...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...

smackfu• 14 years ago

The end result better come out good.

ZanderEarth32• 14 years ago

Assuming that the Pebble will cost $150 once (if) it becomes available for retail, and factoring in the fact that some of these watches might never actually ship, I'd rather invest an extra $40 once the watch comes out and I know the quality rather than risk $115 now to save $40.

chrisacky• 14 years ago

Just published another story here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3950628

Pebble has now been closed on KickStarter. You cannot pick up any from the KickStarter project.

If you wanted to "pre order" you will have to go through GetPebble.com when they get made available.

goatcurious• 14 years ago

Is this funding or working capital? Most watches come at cost through KS. They would need to seriously ramp up the supply chain to fulfill the orders in the promised timescale. And that would need expensive resources - some of which cannot be met via the $10mm (as most of it might get consumed in manufacturing). Though further traditional funding should be the least of their problems - bet the VCs are clamoring for a piece now.

Hope they can find a Foxconn to manufacture everything in time and they can ramp up their operations team. My best wishes to them - really hope they nail it. I bet next few months would see war scale efforts from them.

bwm• 14 years ago

In my mind this shows that crowdsourced funding + low cost prototyping (eg arduino) and manufacturing (eg 3d printing) could really disrupt consumer electronics. It'd be really cool to see the next must have smartphone/tablet built by a few guys in their basement and sold to millions of consumers.

allbombs• 14 years ago

insane

Pebble's E-Paper Watch Exceeds $10 Million Raised On Kickstarter

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