Smart Pebble revenue surge soared into the most successful KickStarter financing project

June 12, Pebble, the smart watch maker born on the crowdfunding platform KickStarter two years ago, with more than 85,000 orders plus more than $ 10 million in support, sent Pebble's intelligence Watch became the most successful financing project ever since KickStarter was founded. And in 2013, the company's revenue has reached 43 million US dollars, and, if no accident, will double its revenue this year.

George Zachary, a partner at venture capital firm Charles River Ventures and Pebble's first institutional investor, said on Wednesday that Pebble's revenue in 2013 had hit 43 million U.S. dollars and is expected to double this year. Zachary said Pebble is his fastest growing innovative company funded. Among Zachary's funded businesses are Twitter and Yammer, a corporate social network acquired by Microsoft for $ 1.2 billion in 2012. Zachary is currently also a Pebble board director.

Pebble now has just 100 employees and raised about $ 25 million from venture capital firms. Pebble, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, has a smartwatch with a gross margin of 52%, which means that each priced at $ 150 (Pebble smart watches on the site up to $ 249 ), After deducting the cost of goods sold, there will still be 78 US dollars remaining. In contrast, Apple's current gross margin has dropped below 40%.

Market research firm NPD released a report on Wednesday said that Pebble currently accounts for 18% of the smart watch market share. Since last October, the global smart watch revenue totaled 96 million US dollars. Among them, Samsung Electronics Gear occupied 78% of the share. Pebble had previously said that the company sold 400,000 smartwatches last year.

Pebble is one of the most successful cases of crowdfunding platform KickStarter. In addition to the company, virtual reality technology company Oculus is one of the success stories of the platform. Facebook announced on March 25 this year that it will acquire Oculus for about $ 2 billion. This includes $ 400 million in cash plus 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock (valued at $ 1.6 billion at an average closing price of $ 69.35 for the 20 trading days prior to March 21). Oculus, a leader in immersive virtual reality technology, has built a strong reputation among developers and has won 75,000 orders for its development tool for the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display. (Ming Hin)