I started working on Pebble back in 2008 while I was an engineering student at the University of Waterloo.

When we first launched our product, I was embarrassed about its readiness, but we had to ship it. We learned from our initial customers, who provided valuable feedback that helped us improve.

We didn't launch our product publicly until December 2012, several months after our demo day, to ensure we had a reliable system in place before opening it up to strangers.

We launched our product online, supported it via email, and maintained a frugal, cash-neutral operation while reaching an international market from the start.

In late 2009, we decided to publicly announce our product, which led to significant interest and media coverage.

After launching our first product, we received positive feedback from investors, but I was unaware that we were about to face a long period of struggle.

Our team grew significantly after launching, and we shipped hundreds of thousands of watches worldwide, despite initially feeling uncertain about our direction.

We had four different iterations of our product from 2011 to 2014, and while we didn't pivot, we iterated based on our learnings to find product-market fit.

It took three years before we had a product that was actually used to solve problems, and during that time, many team members were exhausted and close to quitting.