University graduate rakes in $5m

A university graduate has teamed up with his friends and made a smartwatch that has earned close to $5 million in a week. Eric Migicovsky and his team put up the pitch for their new android and iPhone compatible smartphone on Kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects. All they wanted was a funding guarantee of $100,000. What they got instead was a massive $4.87 million in just four days and the number is going up by the minute. During the last 24 hours the project has earned an additional $1million and increasing by almost $1,000 a minute. At last count at 10.21 am local time (April 19, 2012 Thursday) about 33,800 backers had already pledged $4.872 million, an increase of about $1m in just 24 hours. At 9.42am local time it was $4.859 million. The e-paper smartwatch Pebble developed by a California resident Eric Migicovsky and his team is compatible with both Android and iPhone smartphones and connects via Bluetooth. It informs the user about updates such as a text message, email, telephone calls and social media updates, apart from acting as a remote for the music player on the phone. The smart watch also assists the user especially cyclists to track speed and distance travelled. The team has joined hands with Free-caddie to help them develop a rangefinder app that will help golfers in more than 25,000 golf courses around the world. The project is an upgraded version of a previous smart watch inPulse, that worked on BlackBerry devices. The developers made a pitch for the project on Kickstarter Project with a target of $100,000 which they achieved in just two hours.It has since gone on to become the most successful project on Kickstarter and has beaten all records. (Here is a time lapse video for Pebble funding on youtube) The smart watch is estimated to be ready by September this year. Apart from bout 22,000 individual backers who have ordered one and two sets of smartwatches, they have also received the backing of five mega distributors who have pledged $10,000 each for 100 units any colour. The Kickstarter website also has interesting comments from those who have pledged with suggestions such as making it compatible to Windows based smartphones, making it water resistant upto 200 metres, a solar powered inductive charging etc., Migicovsky and his team are also working on building an SDK that will allow developers to come up with interesting and user friendly apps for the smart watch. In an interview to Wired, Migicovsky said he plans to release the SDK by August and says their production plans have changed significantly afollowing the massive support they received. Commenting on the funding itself he said, “We were expecting $100,000 over a month, so when it came in two hours, it was a surprise. On Thursday, we were earning $80,000 an hour. By Sunday morning, we passed the Wasteland 2, which was the second most popular Kickstarter after Double Fine Adventures.”