Some Day My Watch Will Come

Pebble watch watchfaces

Back in April 2012 an interesting project was announced on Kickstarter.com. It was the Pebble watch. I’ll let Pebble describe it.

Pebble is the first watch built for the 21st century. It’s infinitely customizable, with beautiful downloadable watchfaces and useful internet-connected apps. Pebble connects to iPhone and Android smartphones using Bluetooth, alerting you with a silent vibration to incoming calls, emails and messages. While designing Pebble, we strove to create a minimalist yet fashionable product that seamlessly blends into everyday life.

In other words, it’s geek-o-riffic.

If you’re not up on Kickstarter, it’s a website that allows projects to be funded through crowdsourcing. Sometimes there’s a little tschotske for the financial backers, sometimes not.

Pebble was different. For $115 you got a watch… when they were made…

ESTIMATED DELIVERY Sep 2012

Yeah — good one there.

Pebble’s logistics problem wasn’t producing the watch as much as it was producing the watch in quantity! The developers were looking to raise $100,000. Instead they collected $10,266,845 from nearly 69,000 backers.

Overfunded is just as big a problem as underfunded, or so I’m led to believe. Production turned into mass production.

Today at CES in Las Vegas Pebble announced they were ready to deliver! The first watches hit the mail within two weeks. Mine won’t be in the very first shipment, but it shouldn’t take long. I’m very excited.

Pebble is just one in a growing number of wrist worn computers on-the-way. The future just keeps on coming.

11 thoughts on “Some Day My Watch Will Come”

  1. I’ve been looking into Kickstarter and I’m feeling it’s very viable, letting us ordinary folk dabble at venture capitalism. But how does overfunding become a problem? I’m missing something here. Have they had a problem managing the funding? I haven’t seen this happen before and I wonder if it plants a huge question mark on the whole crowdsourcing ideal. I’m hoping not.

    1. There’s a difference between baking a batch of cookies and starting a bakery! The size just creates many more logistical problems. They were thinking they’d produce hundreds of watches, not tens of thousands.

  2. Geoff: I too am an early supporter of the Pebble and so I anxiously await mine. Ill be interested to follow as you explore and “tweak” yours. Hopefully turning the bluetooth on doesnt drain the phone battery too severely. I know they say it wont, we shall see.

  3. I saw this blog post and went running to look at this watch for myself. I have a techie fiance….who will never allow me to buy him a piece of jewelry….I just put my name in for one….Thanks for making me aware of this great item 🙂 I showed it to him also (to make sure he would actually use it) and he’s in love with it, and can’t wait for it.

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