There’s a lot of buzz around the upcoming Apple Watch, expected this spring, but Apple isn’t the only company in the wearables game.
Pebble has returned to Kickstarter with an upgraded product, Pebble Time, a smart watch that may give Apple a run for its money. Pebble Time launched its Kickstarter project on Tuesday, February 24 and raised its first million in just 49 minutes. Since then, the company has raised over $10 million in two days, breaking Kickstarter’s record.
Pebble has funding from venture capitalists and did very well the first time they created a Kickstarter project, but the benefits of using Kickstarter go beyond simply raising funds.
“It’s a great source of marketing, but I think it’s also a massive opportunity for us to engage with our customers. Engage with the people who want to see us succeed,” says founder Eric Migicovsky.
Migicovsky is not worried about competition. He says, “We’re a company that doesn’t have any distractions. We don’t have an existing user base. We don’t have any other sources of capital. This is what we do, and having another company like Apple is pretty good validation that what we do matters.”
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