6 hours ago
- Pebble succeeded in inventing the smartwatch category, selling 2 million watches and generating $230M in sales, but ultimately failed as a sustainable business.
- Key failures included poor sales forecasting, oversupply inventory, a misguided shift from a hacker-friendly product to a productivity device, and a too-large bezel on the Pebble Time.
- The company doubled operating expenses in 2015 anticipating growth, but revenue grew only 35% with lower margins, leading to a $15M inventory cash crunch.
- The underlying problem was a lack of a strong long-term vision; the CEO avoided discussing a brain-computer interface goal, which demoralized the team and prevented strategic direction.
- Lessons learned include the importance of customer feedback, smaller inventory risks, not scaling OPEX prematurely, and defining a clear, communicated vision to guide the company through hard times.