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Fitbit Raises $43 Million
- jug6ernaut 13y agoMaybe my understanding of a "Startup" is wrong, can someone explain to me how a company founded in 2007 is still considered a startup?
- chcleaves 13y agoAgreed - I once worked for a startup that had been around for 9 years - definitely defeats the purpose. I can't figure out how they raised that much with all the other competitors in the market with much bigger brand awareness - i.e. Nike's fuelband - yes the products differ but in theory do the same.
- theklub 13y agoYeah, back when they launched this tech was much more cutting edge. Now more and more devices can offer the same types of features.
- lotso 13y agoI know more people with Fitbit's than Nike Fuelbands. Obviously anecdotal, but definitely surprising for me.
- druiid 13y agoAs another person commented, I know far more people with Fitbit's than any other device. They kind of hit a lot of sweet-spots with their product. I do however also know a couple people with the Nike product. From there down I expect the competitors for those two split the remaining market-share up into tiny bits.
- noahc 13y agoOne definition of a startup is a company (person or business) that is still looking for product/market fit. I'd argue that you're a startup until you've found product/market fit and have found a verifiable profit generation mechanism in which you can put $10 in and get $10+ dollars out reliably.
- antr 13y agoThe term "startup" is many times used for: - Marketing: you get plenty of free press if you are a "startup" vs a medium sized business. - Hiring: new hires and many hardworking people want to work in a cool and hip company. The use of "startup" creates that halo. - Capital structure and financial discipline: there is nothing wrong if a "startup" isn't generating revenue and/or profits, because "we are in the growth stage". A medium sized business which isn't generating any revenue and/or profits isn't financeable and a shipwreck waiting to happen.
- aed 13y agoThere's this handy definition: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
- nhangen 13y agoHow much have they raised so far? According Crunchbase, around 96 million. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/fitbit http://www.crunchbase.com/company/fitbit This means they need to exit at a 'cool billion' or IPO in order to provide the return their investors are seeking. I think Fitbit is cool, but 1b for a product that has no demonstrable uniqueness would scare the hell out of me as a founder. I'd love to know why they went for so much.
- andrewljohnson 13y agoYou say they are not unique, yet cite no competitors. Do you know of any, without googling for it even?
- brandoncor 13y agoNike Fuelband and Jawbone
- akl 13y agoJawbone has a competing product, and even Samsung Galaxy S4's latest phone includes some of the functionality (ie: a pedometer) people look to Fitbit for. My anecdotal experiences with GS4 vs my Fitbit One shows the Fitbit One to be superior, but I'm more likely to forget my Fitbit than I am to forget my phone.
- rickyc091 13y agoiPhone has an app called Moves which is remarkably accurate (http://www.moves-app.com/ http://www.moves-app.com/). I'm getting fairly similar results from my jawbone. I believe the discrepancy is due to the fact that I don't have the phone on me when I'm at home.
- mahyarm 13y agoMoves eats your battery quite a bit.
- nhangen 13y ago
- andrewljohnson 13y agoGave my dad a fit bit. He now exercises much more. That's why they are in business.
- VLM 13y agoIts also mischaracterized as a capital purchase. Lets see, my wife has washed hers (got a "free" replacement) and somehow it ended up under the car and narrowly escaped crushing, and narrowly escaped washing a couple times. Mine has been washed once and still works. The key seems to be immediate bake out in the dryer. Take it out of the washer and start fooling with it and its toast, corroded in a couple hours. Its probably a little more disposable than exercise shoes. The Nike competitor is a good pairing. The scale is out of place. I'm not sure how it can be value engineered to require annual replacement. So far, its just doing its thing. If their business model revolves around reselling every year (or not) then one of the products has to go. Probably all they had to do to secure funding was show stats from the bracelet model, where it was available for about 2 days and perma-sold-out since. Obviously there's demand...
- kyro 13y agoThis sounds more like carelessness if anything. I've head the Fitbit Classic for about 2 years now and it's still going strong. I shower and swim with my Flex and it's still working too.
- grinich 13y agoThis is such a perfect comment. You completely sum up their business in 11 words. In the future, I hope they partner with hospitals/medicare to provide fitbits for free. There's immense savings in preventative medicine. A lot of people don't see the potential for movement trackers beyond counting steps. By looking at the data, you can identify when a person is beginning to get sick or weak before they even feel symptoms. One such startup working on the data problem: http://ginger.io/ http://ginger.io/
- eitally 13y agoI'm sure my company is not alone in offering a wellness program with incentives that include reduced health insurance premiums for increased/consistent physical activity and preventive care. How do they know you performed physical activity -- they issue you a pedometer or allow you to connect your Garmin/MapMyFitness/Fitbit/MyFitnessPal/etc account to the program. It's brilliant, and the $0-75/mo employees can save on insurance is a strong motivator, as is the $50/mo gym reimbursement (as long as you connect your account to the wellness system and visit at least 4x/mo), and other perks. What I would really like to see is an open standard for data formatting, similar to the IPC 2547 CAM-X series of standards for industrial equipment output, so it'd be easy for 1) developers and 2) consumers to shop around without worrying about losing their historical activity information. As you mention, this is a serious consideration for everyone, and it's incredibly annoying to feel locked in just because you can't get your data out (or even better, out and then into the next system). A personal example: I really like Runtastic and I have a couple hundred miles logged over the last few months. However, it's a European company and not nearly as popular in the US as Endomondo, Runkeeper, MapMyFitness and a few others. This means I'm missing out on the social aspect, which itself is a motivator. I'd like to try out some other apps, but I can't import my Runtastic data. Argh. (Runtastic is really great, btw.)
- showwebgl 13y agoIf you don't have your fitibit yet, get a 3D preview here! https://sketchfab.com/show/rtKMNxtTBPh5dA70gdt81nxipgx https://sketchfab.com/show/rtKMNxtTBPh5dA70gdt81nxipgx
- ececconi 13y agoI hope that they use this money to fuel the development of new innovative products. I have a Fitbit One and want to see this company succeed. It seems like Fitbit and Jawbone are going head to head trying to out dazzle and out create each other.
- ckluis 13y agoI have a fitbit and enjoy it. I'd easily buy a second bracelet if it measured pulse or blood pressure periodically throughout the day. Quantified self FTW.
- epoxyhockey 13y agoif it measured pulse or blood pressure periodically I'm with you on this suggestion. Though, I would really get excited if a device like this could somehow gather metrics from the blood stream without needing direct access. Pie in the sky, I know. If pedometers get people to exercise more, I wonder how a real-time cholesterol monitor would change peoples' eating behavior?
- beefxq 13y agoBubble 2.0
- pearjuice 13y agoLife is a bubble too. Who gives?
- kyro 13y agoPeople are wondering why they'd need to raise so much at this point, so I'll throw in my guess: The consumer health wearables market is one that exploded recently, but is now at a standstill. We have several companies (Jawbone, Nike, Fitbit) who have been selling well-designed slightly-advanced pedometers for the last few years, and others (eg Basis) that are scheduled to ship similar products very soon. There's been little innovation in this space, but the market is still enormous, and there's a ton of money to be made. Now considering that the current products are more or less equal, the company that will win in the end is the one that can 1) first get to market with a new innovative product, 2) brand it effectively to appeal to a wider audience, and 3) develop an ecosystem around the product that leads to customer lock-in. With these points in mind, it may make the $43 million funding round more sensible. Although one could argue that Nike has the R&D resources to out-innovate its competitors, giving them point 1, Fitbit has also been in this game for a long time. Where FitBit is currently winning is their market and ecosystem. They're marketing to a large segment of the population who just wants to develop healthy and happy living, so they push features like calorie logging and sleep tracking -- features that Nike's products lack. Nike's Fuelband, on the other hand, is geared towards a smaller more athletic market. As for ecosystem, Fibit also offers the Aria scale, which can keep track of an entire family's weights, and a whole line of Fitbit trackers geared towards various lifestyles. And for Jawbone, well, they may have the R&D strength to innovate (I don't know), but they haven't been in this game long enough to get a foothold on a segment of the market, or to develop any sort of ecosystem around their product. At this point, there is no other company that's marketing to a wider audience and that offers both the variety in product as well as complementary offerings than Fitbit. My guess is that investors see that Fitbit is best-positioned to win this race and needed the cash injection to break the stalemate it's currently in with its competitors.
- nhangen 13y agoI think that's a reasonable assumption. My impression of Nike+ is that they could be great products, but Nike seems to lack the interest/agility necessary to iterate and move them forward. It's almost as if they are doing it just for fun. The Aria scale is an awesome concept (can't wait to get one), and I'm sure there is more where that came from. I'm just wondering why they didn't pursue alternative investment. As always, there's probably a significant portion of this round that was used to pay off earlier investors/founders.
- tehwalrus 13y agoI'd love a device like this, but until it understands that cycling is not driving mode, it's pointless for me. (I think I heard about someone tying it to his shoe when cycling; I'd be interested to know if that kind of thing actually works.)
- gav 13y agoThe Garmin Vector is very cool for cyclists: http://sites.garmin.com/vector/ http://sites.garmin.com/vector/ The $1699.99 price tag (plus cost of a matching unit) is the issue.
- tehwalrus 13y agoouch. Thanks for the info! I can always just use an iPhone app to track GPS - the MapMy[Run|Cycle] series seems to do OK at this, including factoring in gradients, but I want the convenience of something like a fitbit so I don't have to mess around configuring it every time I want to do some exercise.
- AlwaysBCoding 13y agoThe fitbit one came with this velcro sleep wristband. http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/10/fitbit-ultra-wristband.jpg http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/10/fitbit... When I want to ride, I take my fitbit out and put it into the velcro band and tie it around my ankle. It works surprisingly well, registering approximately each pedal stroke as a step. I register around 8,000 steps for a 15-mile bike ride. Since a 15 mile ride is a lot more exercise than 8,000 steps, I'll also mark in the app that I went cycling, and that's that.
- munaf 13y agoHope they use this to invest in customer service. I've been infinite-looped on their automated support line three times.
- Raphmedia 13y agoGot myself a Fitbit this month. Makes me take so much walks. All I want is to fill those 5 little stars to have it rumble on my wrist as if I had a level. ... Fitness too. But levels, really. I'm grinding so much.