>Pebble crowdfunded as an alternative to venture capital. The last time it was out of necessity, because there were no investors interested. And the way they did crowdfunding was basically selling their product at a steep discount, basically leaving a lot of money on the table. I don't know if that was a good strategy.

It's understandable you want to offer attractive perks with your Kickstarter, but at that time the Pebble brand among tech enthousiasts was big enough to limit the discount and stress the early adoper angle. You have several thousands of customers eagerly waiting for your next generation product, in that case there's no need to give steep discounts in the perks.

I guess the Pebble management was too focused to make the last Kickstarter another well-publicized runaway success, so that they could use that success to convince investors once again. But in the process they discounted their product, their brand and ultimately their chances of survival.