Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: Pebble sold around 1,500 watches before launching Kickstarter
“Most people don't know this, but when we launched our Kickstarter campaign, we had already made and sold around 1500 of our first watch.”
Insight
Migicovsky: Hire for trust, dependability, and general intelligence over deep domain expertise
“I actually opt for in the early days and pretty much all days trust and dependability and kind of, Smartness over very specific, deep, domain-specific knowledge in who I'm looking to hire.”
What-if
Migicovsky: Pebble might have succeeded by operating as a frugal, hits-driven business
“I don't think we ever Reached escape velocity to a hit with any of our later products, and I think if we had built a more frugal organization, if we were able to build products cheaper, and then launch them and test to see if they were successful, and if they …”
Insight
Migicovsky: A Medical Device MVP Requires Peer-Reviewed Science and Clearance Roadmap
“For medical devices, I think the MVP is successfully peer-reviewed science that supports what you're working on, that, that there's an, that there's some sort of opportunity here, and a kind of understanding of what your path to clearance is.”
Assertion Contradicted
Migicovsky: Relativity Space's thesis was that 3D-printing eliminates integration testing costs
“Their thesis was it's not actually rocket assembly that costs a lot of money, it's the testing phase of integration, where if you have hundreds of different systems that have to work perfectly with each other, when you assemble and build the final rocket, you …”
Insight
Migicovsky: Hardware startups should trade unit margins for shorter component lead times
“Sometimes it's in your best interest to pay more for the product, pay more for the bomb, the bill of materials, pay more for the components, if The lead times are shorter because you may not actually have a margin problem. Maybe like you actually have quite a …”
Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: 9GAG bootstrapped early content by scraping memes from other sites
“A lot of the best user-generated content networks, like, Ninegag, which is now this, like, massive Meme, meme website was started by, like, scraping memes from other sites.”
Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: Autonomous trucking startup Embark began with a camera-rigged golf cart
“So, we've had companies that are now off building, like Embark, which builds, ah, self-driving trucks. Like, literally, they're running on the streets and the highways in Nevada. They started with a club car. I think, like, at demo day, they had a golf cart th…”
Insight
Migicovsky: User interviews must extract data, not pitch or sell
“The goal of a great user interview is to extract information from the person that you're talking to extract data that will help you improve the product, or improve your marketing, or improve your positioning. It is not to sell them on using your product.”
Disclosure
Eric Migicovsky pitched Pebble at CES in coffee shops without a booth
“I remember that when I was working on Pebble we actually went to CES, which is this large consumer electronics show in Vegas. We didn't have a booth. We just went in gorilla style. We just like randomly started setting up in setting up meetings with potential …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Migicovsky: Seven of Pebble's first 10 watches broke apart during shipping
“We screwed up everything you could possibly screw up. In the first 10 watches we had a lot of problems, but we had a problem with RF. We couldn't get the signal out of the watch, because it's like a Faraday cage sitting on your wrist. And so we said, well, may…”
Disclosure
Migicovsky: Pebble hand-manufactured 700 to 800 units before full automation
“We continued to manufacture hand by hand, one by one by hand, up until around 708 hundred units.”
Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: WhatsApp first launched on the FlyerTalk travel forums in 2009
“You know where the WhatsApp guy posted his app first in back in 2009?
[2266] Adora Cheung: No.
[2266] Eric Migicovsky: He posted it on FlyerTalk.
[2268] Eric Migicovsky: Forums, which is, like, a whole bunch of, like, geeky business people who fly a lot.
[22…”
Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: Early scooter startups began by gluing modems onto Alibaba Xiaomi scooters
“A good example of this would be kind of the scooter companies. They took Xiaomi scooters, you know, nine-bought scooters, and they just glued on cell modems. That's it. That, that's how scooter sharing started. It's like cell modems in GPS plus scooter. They d…”
Disclosure
Migicovsky: Pebble Recruited Seven College Friends in Days Post-Kickstarter
“Right after we kind of hit on Kickstarter, we were only two people at the company. Two full-time people and two interns, and so we had, like, nobody, and all of a sudden we needed to hire people, and we could have spent, you know, three to six months hiring a …”
Assertion Supported
Migicovsky: Xiaomi managed inventory by only selling phones on Tuesday mornings
“Xiaomi, up until two or three years ago, sold their phones on Tuesday mornings. Like, they had a, once the, you couldn't go on the website and buy Xiaomi phones. You could only buy them, like, Tuesday mornings, and so it was like a thing. Everyone would be at …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Migicovsky: Pebble name was conceived two years before creating the smartwatch
“I actually thought of it while lying on a beach, and it was like two years before we actually made Pebble, and I just like wrote it down in Evernote on a list of Good names.”
Eric Migicovsky