06-19-2016, 03:41 AM
(06-18-2016, 08:45 PM)GtwoK Wrote: Looked it up, and turns out, not only do they have a Kitchener office, but it's their ONLY office, and they're a Kitchener company!? Holy cow! Dunno how that got past me, I had no idea Pebble was started here, no one's ever seemed to have mentioned it before!
They've got quite the local history. Founded by Eric Migicovsky (UW student) as Allerta, they made the InPulse smartwatch which worked with BlackBerrys. It was hyped at the time but never took off, so it was re-branded to Pebble, redesigned, and taken to the US as a part of Y Combinator. As mpd618 said they've got an engineering office here, but the company never really "came home", with head office remaining in California. In the era they went to Y Combinator coming back to KW after was pretty rare, I think VidYard was the first company to. Apparently the failure of the InPulse left a fair bit of bad blood between them and BlackBerry, which is why Pebble never supported BlackBerry, and may have been in a factor in them not returning to KW.