Pebble founder says his new company is 'not a startup' | TechCrunch

"Pebble's founder, Eric Migicovsky, is doing things differently with his reboot of the Pebble smartwatch brand and an AI ring. The team is small, inventory isn't being manufactured before it's sold, and there's no outside funding. Most importantly, he says, the new company, Core Devices, is "not a startup." "We've structured this entire business around being a sustainable, profitable, and hopefully, long-running enterprise, but not a startup," Migicovsky told TechCrunch on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week."

""Startups are good for the world," he clarified. "You need to have money in order to build really new ideas and create something. But this is not a new idea," Migicovsky said, referring to the smartwatch reboot. "This is an old idea. We're just bringing it back." The Pebble founder said he's learned a lot from his earlier efforts at building a hardware device maker, including what not to do."

"Pebble, the original company that Migicovsky started, was sold to Fitbit in 2016 for around $40 million; Fitbit was later acquired by Google for $2.1 billion. Just before its exit, Migicovsky's team had been scrambling. Christmas 2015 had put Pebble into a tailspin, as the company had bought too much inventory. "Hardware is different from software. You have to predict ahead of time how much you're going to sell, because you need to build the hardware,""

Eric Migicovsky restarted the Pebble brand as Core Devices with a small team, no outside funding, and no pre-manufactured inventory before sales. The company is explicitly structured to be sustainable, profitable, and long-running rather than a venture-backed startup focused on rapid growth. Core Devices plans both a rebooted Pebble smartwatch and an AI ring. Migicovsky emphasized that hardware requires predicting demand because products must be built in advance. Pebble previously overbought inventory in 2015, forecasting $102 million but selling $82 million, which left discounted stock and upset retail partners. Pebble was sold to Fitbit in 2016 for around $40 million.

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