In this episode, you’ll hear a short, dense analysis on the rise and demise of a well-known company, Pebble, which produced the first smartwatch. I chose to talk about this topic as the latest news from them was a shock. The goal with telling you their story, their shocking ending, as always, is that you get to learn from others, in this case from a company’s story that had its highs and in December its low moment. So hopefully, you’ll get some actionable insights.

Highlights can be seen below.

• The goal for this episode - [0:25]
• How can a company that broke records two times on Kickstarter end up being sold and having to stop producing? - [1:40]
• Pebble’s beginnings - [2:00]
• The single most important reason for the not so happy end - [3:17]
• Other reasons leading to insolvency - [6:15]
• Two ways out of this problem of margin vs scale  - [8:18]
• The third, often not considered way out of the margin vs scale problem- [9:35]
• Marketing styles necessary for consumer brands - [10:30]
• Job To Be Done concept applied on hardware - [12:16]
• Summary - [14:07]