WATERLOO - For years people asked Eric Micigovsky what he was going to do when Apple started making smartwatches, and when that day arrived last September the founder and chief executive officer of Pebble was actually relieved.

"But it is still the biggest battle that we have to fight," Micigovsky said Thursday to more than 300 adoring fans in the Theatre of the Humanities at the University of Waterloo - the same room where he took first-year psychology.

"Very often we think about how we are telling our story, how we pitch our product, how are we getting the word out about Pebble," Micigovsky said.

Micigovsky told the amazing story of the Pebble smartwatch, from its invention in the garage of a student house on Columbia Street when he was an undergrad studying systems design engineering, to breaking two records for crowdfunding.

The 28-year-old entrepreneur has rock star status among startups after raising $20 million earlier this year on Kickstarter for his next watch - Pebble Time. In the spring of 2012 he set another record of $10.3 million on the crowd-funding platform for the first Pebble watch.

After his formal presentation, Mike Kirkup, the head of startup services at the University of Waterloo, joined Micigovsky on stage and asked some questions that had been submitted by audience members.

"What was your team's initial response when you saw the Apple Watch? How do you think about moving forward when you are challenged like that?" Kirkup said.

"Every company has a question that they get asked constantly, and this is ours," Micigovsky said. "And for the first six years of our company the question that was on the tip of everyone's tongue was: 'What happens if Apple makes a watch?'"

Micigovsky always found it hard to respond to questions about how a hypothetical watch from Apple or Google would challenge his company. But when the challenge arrived last September, his reaction was surprising.

"So we were relieved," Micigovsky said. "It is counterintuitive, but when the Apple Watch was actually launched in September 2014 we were relieved."

The Apple Watch is very different from the Pebble.

"It turns out the laws of physics still apply to Apple," Micigovsky said.

The battery on the Apple Watch will last for one day. The Pebble battery is good for a week. The screen on the Apple Watch goes dark, requiring a flick of the wrist to wake it up. The Apple Watch only works with the iPhone.

Kirkup, who worked on developer relations for BlackBerry before joining the startup program at the University of Waterloo, said Micigovsky sounded like BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis when he first talked about the iPhone.

"Sounds like Mike Lazaridis reincarnated. He talked all about the laws of physics, but he didn't win the battle with Apple," Kirkup said.

Apple has a beautifully designed watch that works with iPhone, Micigovsky said, and Pebble is building the Swatch of smartwatches.

"It's fun, it's affordable, it's customizable, it reflects who you are and you can make it your own," Micigovsky said.

"You can change the strap, you can change the watch face, you can build your own watch face," Micigovsky said of Pebble. "It works with the phone you already have, and it doesn't force you to conform around it."

The Pebble is water resistant and durable, and owners do not have to babysit it like an expensive piece of hardware. There are smart straps that have sensors and can be added to the Pebble.

"When Apple came out it was interesting, it was good for us because it brought a tonne of attention to the market," Micigovsky said. "There is a hell of lot more people who know about smartwatches now than before."

The Pebble is based on a platform that is open to developers, and will lead to a new generation in software that ties together all of the wearable tech.

"Computers are getting smaller and smaller," Micigovsky said. "They are moving from desktops to laptops to phones to tablets and wearables. They are going to be on our body."

It starts with a smartwatch.

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"So my . overarching goal for the future is to become the next generation computing platform," Micigovsky said.

Operating systems and platforms that work on laptops and desktops are different from the ones that work on smartphones, and they are going to be really different from the ones that work on wearables.

"And at this time Pebble is one of the only companies in the world that's actually nurturing and building a platform that runs on your body."