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Pebble was one of those brands.
With that hurdle cleared, he’s now free to build hardware on which the software will run.
How long were you trying to persuade Google to release the Pebble code?
It’s a big company, you gotta check a lot of boxes.
but I’m really thankful that they carried it across the finish line.
And you saw in the reaction how many people are appreciative of Google for having done this, right?
Like most most times this isn’t a story that comes true, and they made it happen.
Was this always in the back of your mind to try and revive Pebble?
I really don’t want that much out of a smart watch.
Are you looking at bigger and brighter displays?
I don’t want a big and bright screen.
A big and bright screen is like wearing a phone on your wrist.
I don’t want to wear a phone on my wrist.
I want to wear a watch.
Like, why would you have this glowing phone on your wrist?
It just seems weird to me.
And again, this is not for everyone.
This is for people who want those functionalities, those features.
And that’s absolutely not everyone.
If you don’t want that, go and buy an Apple Watch, you know?
This is for the people who don’t want that.
How long can you just keep the same hardware going in perpetuity?
I mean, I’m still wearing a Pebble from 2015.
It’s ten years ago.
We didn’t realize that we were done.
It turns out you’re free to be done.
What does long term success now look like for you?
A sustainable profitable, long running company that just continues long into the future making these watches.
The reason why companies fail is they run out of money, right?
Or they lack profitability.
I think in our case, the company’s going to be extraordinarily small.
Right now it only has one employee me and not earning a salary.
So, the whole premise is sustainable.
How do we build something that’s just always going to exist?
Definitely this year, absolutely.
When we were starting to build smart watches, factories didn’t know what a smart watch was.
But now, like you said, everyone’s making smart watches.
So the factory knows how to do this.
You basically send them your specs and they’re like, sure, I’ll go and make that.
I wasn’t going to go and reproduce the whole operating system from scratch.
That would have taken millions of dollars and years worth of work.
And now you have other people who can help you do it, too.
Exactly, and it’s all going to be open source, so that’s another big difference.
So the software was never open source for Pebble, right?
And this time around, anyone who wants can hack on it.
And if they want to contribute, great.
If they want to build their own watch, fantastic.
Have there been any applications that people have built that sort of surprised you?
There’s a real sense of it feels special.
It feels like people really appreciated the distinction.
You know, there’s just not too many companies that make gadgets.
They’re building the same old stuff every year.
Every phone looks exactly the same.
Everyone’s making the same headphones now, everyone’s making the same smart rings.
There’s very little newness.
They’re even running hackathons on Pebble.
I’m going to help make hardware, but it’s not all about me.
Like this is in a lot of ways, what do people want to hack on?
What do they want to build on top of this platform?
What’s the coolest Pebble hack that you’ve seen?
But I think my favorite part is just the watch faces.
I love like right now I’ve got this watch face.
But I do have a Mondrian one.
I’m going to go find that because I love Mondrian.
So I just love that.
