@shobeir@gregbarbosa Haven't you seen the buzz yet? 2 million in 1 hour and crowdfunding as marketing campaign. The product is kind of ready and they have funding enough to launch without the Kickstarter campaign!
@shobeir@gregbarbosa Getting our latest and greatest in the hands of our most fervent supporters is a big deal to us. Nurturing and growing the deep connection we have with our community is the only way we want to move forward as we grow and learn in this space.
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@shobeir@gregbarbosa@jisforjoe That's a great attitude. However, I would have thought doing that directly on your own site (where you can control all aspects of the experience) would have been better than in the confines of the KickStarter platform.
@shobeir@gregbarbosa We decided that launching Pebble Time on Kickstarter was the most efficient way to get the word out. We're a small company, up against the largest company. We wanted to communicated directly with our core community, the people who use Pebble every single day and our original backers. KS is the right platform on which to do that.
Sticking to its roots, Pebble goes to kickstarter to fund its latest watch. It released 10 minutes ago and already raised $150k. 😮
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@rrhoover Would be curious to hear why they went back to Kickstarter for this. Wonder if they got some special deal to make this more worthwhile for them :)
@rrhoover@mubashariqbal Probably a lot to do with marketing. You get production costs paid for and now this is going to be all over social media and news sites so it essentially becomes free and better marketing than they could get on their own site.
Really crazy start. They reached their 500k goal in under 20 minutes. In the last 20 minutes they've raised:
$37,142 per minute
which translates to
$2,228,571 per hour
$53,485,725 per day
and it's been increasing...
I made this little site to track it: https://pebbletimetracker.heroku...
I've been wondering whether to replace my original Kickstarter Pebble with an Android Wear-powered device for the last few months. Battery life, and worries with some of the designs created by Motorola, Sony and LG, have kept me at bay.
Then, Pebble bring the Time to market. Couldn't throw my money at the screen fast enough. Looking forward to May...
"In before $1M" is the new "first" on comments. Congrats to Eric and the Pebble team on a thunderous launch. I was lucky enough to back the original, currently wear a Steel, and now I'll have this one to play with. Good luck with production, this thing exploded, $1M in under 35 minutes...insanity.
@shobeir@ericmigi - congrats on the launch! The new watch looks great but imho, its success or failure will primarily be driven by the platform and your community of makers building apps for Pebble. Agree/disagree? How are building community and encouraging people to create awesome stuff?
@shobeir@ericmigi@rrhoover Agreed. The first step is reigniting that spark and deep connection with our users by going on Kickstarter in the first place. The next step will be to show developers how awesome it's going to be to develop for the Pebble platform and for timeline specifically.
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Can't decide how I feel about this trend of launch-every-new-product-on-kickstarter.
I like the marketing angle but at what point does it become unsustainable on the community side? Are we going to see higher market prices for products down the road because everything is taking a hit to launch on KS?
Or does the increased reach of KS warrant the lower margin due to lower overall marketing costs and higher penetration?
At any rate, even as someone who appreciates a mechanical watch and refuses to wear a smart whatch kudos to the team at Pebble for striking gold, again.
@braden_kemp I think the other thing to consider too is the early adopter market. When you launch on Kickstarter you're giving the community a chance to get one before anyone else. That has value, I think.
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@rossdcurrie I would have agreed two years ago when Kickstarter still had the "community" feel. When we start talking about moving 30,000-50,000+ units it doesn't feel so exclusive anymore.
I'm likely being unfair due to my hate of smart watches, though.
@braden_kemp I don't actually wear a watch, but we feature a lot of the KS watches on CrowdLoot because I can recognise quality and also a succesful campaign. I backed Pebble Time mainly for review purposes (will probably use it as a give-away).
I personally like the idea of a company keeping to its roots - they ran their first product on Kickstarter and now they're back to do it again. It's certainly not an uncommon thing to do.
I'd find it a bit odd if they didn't launch products on there, to be honest - although I think we did see them launch another product without KS?
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@rossdcurrie Absolutely, don't get me wrong there is a whole lot of genius going on over at Pebble.
To me, the secondary launch on Kickstarter almost feels like an insult to the platform's initial intention - BUT - if I was in their position and knew I could secure $10+ million in a few hours I would do the exact same thing.
Love to see small companies making a big splash using whatever means they can. Pebble is a winner, no doubt.
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