We spoke with Eric Migicovsky, the founder of Pebble, an innovative smartwatch that was launched last week with a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign. It has captured the worlds attention (see Forbes, Engadget, Wired, and Bloomberg) and raised an astonishing $5 million in 6 days. Eric shared his inspiration behind the product, the enthusiastic response it’s received from consumers and developers, and what the successful fundraising campaign means for startup investment. Eric can be followed at @ericmigi.

What’s the inspiration for Pebble?

It’s actually an evolution of our first idea, which was a smartwatch for BlackBerry. It came about because I wanted to know what was going on with my phone while it was in my pocket. So I wanted to check email, text messages, caller-ID etc. without having to take my phone out. I actually first had the idea when I was cycling and I wanted to not drop my phone while riding. We really stuck around notifications for a while and were emphasizing how to get notifications to our wrist. Then in 2011 we got some great advice from Paul Graham from Y Combinator who said you should really look at making an SDK for this watch so that people would take to it as a development platform. We did that for the original watch, InPulse. The development platform was fairly successful – we only sold about 1,500 watches but had over 80 apps available for our watch.

So for Pebble, we took what we learned from our previous generation of watches and shoved that into a completely new built-from-the-ground design which works with the iPhone and Android.

Can you share any numbers, such as units sold and developer interest?

Sure. At last check we’ve sold about 37,000 now. In terms of developers, we’ve had 32,000 hits on the developer blog. Which is great because a lot of developers means a lot of new apps, and I think developers will get really psyched when they see the total tally we have sold on Kickstarter. A lot of other platforms never really take off, but we’re fortunate that ours has taken off before it’s even out the door.

What made you choose Kickstarter over traditional fundraising?

Well, we tried the traditional route and it didn’t work. So we went for Kickstarter.

And has raising considerably more than the original $100,000 goal created any strategic or product pivots?

Yes. We’re able to hire really quickly – we added another 5 people to our staff. As for product, we’re able to put a lot more effort and care in terms of what we’re creating. It won’t necessarily happen faster, but the quality will be a lot better.

What do you think your success means for startup fundraising?

I think it changes the game for hardware companies. Those who have a prototype, a great story behind their product, and a lot of use cases, Kickstarter will be the new way to launch that product.

What do you think the key is to nailing the Kickstarter campaign?

It’s a combination of things. Since Kickstarter is largely about marketing, you have to create a product that people want to use and then explain to people why they want to use it. You don’t have to be “super-ady”, we were just honest. We filmed it oursevles using the product around the house, cycling, running etc. And that lent itself to just showing people how they can use Pebble in their life. We looked at the most popular and successful projects on Kickstarter and styled our pitch on them because Kickstarter is different from anything else we’ve seen. It’s not Amazon, it’s not Best Buy, it’s different.

What have you learned over this last week?

I’ve learned you have to trust people in your network and that it really pays to have the groundwork for success built up before you get really lucky. The only reason why we can do what we’re doing is because we have this amazing network of Y Combinator and my friends here in the Valley, back home in Waterloo and Vancouver. That’s been the key to our success.