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Once Valued at $3.2B, Wearable Company Jawbone Shuts Down, CEO Launches New Startup: Report (axios.com)
Consumer hardware company Jawbone is being liquidated, according to The Information. From a report: The San Francisco-based company, which once was valued at $3.2 billion by private investors, has hired Sherwood Partners to handle the wind-down process and assume its ongoing litigation with rival FitBit. Jawbone 2.0: Co-founder and CEO Hosain Rahman reportedly has formed a new company, named Jawbone Health Hub, that has hired many of Jawbone's employees and will take over servicing Jawbone's products. BlackRock, which loaned Jawbone $300 million in 2015, has a stake in the new company. No other existing Jawbone investor has a stake in the new startup, with one telling Axios that his firm has been kept in the dark.
Someone should make a computer they can wear on their wazoos to track the amount of money blown out of it.
The tech in the headset was fantastic for its time, but the wire ear loops repeatedly snapped off just from putting the unit on your ear. Their response to the raft of complaints was to put out a YouTube instructional video showing how to put a Jawbone on your ear "properly" (i.e., without breaking it), and to only sell replacements in 3-pack of different sizes -- use one, throw the other two away. This doesn't surprise me at all.
Fitbit didn't do it with Pebble. Pebble's management spun it that way to try to shift blame away from themselves - making it sound like Fitbit was the one eliminating Pebble's jobs. Fitbit simply bought Pebble's IP, nothing more.
There used to be some good premium Bluetooth headsets. Jawbone led the pack, BlueAnt had a good strong showing, and there were a couple of other also-rans that weren't so bad.
Jawbone is gone, BlueAnt's inventory is drying up and getting dated.
There's all sorts of stuff from China that's super cheap, and some of it isn't too bad, but there's nothing that reaches their reliability and has JawBone/BlueAnt noise cancellation. Motorola stuff has horrible background noise and it's actually painful for me to listen to when someone is using one on the other end. Jabra has gone desktop and never did have the noise cancellation down (but did have the most comfortable headset I ever wore). Plantronics, despite being known for indoor/desktop stuff is sort of stepping up to the plate. Still there's really nothing left that really fills the void being left by Jawbone.
I personally consider talking on the phone an annoyance I can't avoid. I work, drive, and do chores with my hands. I started using headsets back when the only really good option was a Jabra with a wire, I even figured out how to integrate that wire and headset into my clothing so I never had to stop doing what I needed to get done for a phone call. Before that even as a teen I got a headset for my normal wired phone so I could keep doing what I needed to do.
I'm really going to miss Jawbone for headsets. I don't think the fitness band was a bad idea, but the company shifting focus to it probably wasn't the greatest move they made. They should have focused on making cheaper but still high quality headsets, maybe even going binaural so the music people could get their fix. Had Jawbone kept their focus right they could have been the people who beat Apple to the market with their own Airpod.
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hope to get out and leave someone else hold the bag.
You just described the stock market. And the bond market. And the Federal Reserve...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
No, we need stories like this to remind everyone that in life there are winners and losers. For sure some win through luck and good timing, and some lose through entirely external forces, but most of the time, companies (and people) win by making good choices, exercising restraint at the appropriate time, hard work, and learning from failures. Jawbone had terrible customer support, released products that were clearly not ready and that will kill a company about as fast as possible, especially when there is competition in the market space.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
When I bought my first Aliph Jawbone headset, I was amazed at the ability of the "noise assassin" to knock down noise. So much so, that I was on the phone during an ice storm, where we had part of our office running on two gasoline generators out in the parking lot. I was on the phone talking to a coworker and turned the noise canceling off and then on and he was amazed that if he didn't know any better, he would never have known the generators were running. Kept with them buying another one that was considerably smaller, but, by the time they came out with "the new era" one, it was a piece of junk. VERY poor battery life, kept disconnecting etc. Sent it back, the replacement didn't work, sent that one back, had poor battery and sound quality. I gave up on them and looked elsewhere. I think they stretched themselves with all the do-dads, speakers, fitness bands, and let their headset part falter. Yeah, a lot of people don't use these, but someone in my line of business NEEDS that type of headset working in a noisy environment and needing both hands free. Hopefully someone will buy/license their noise assassin technology and put it in their headset.
Huh? I guess if you call losing $330 million last quarter, and $720 million over the last 4 quarters "in the green" - then you are verifiably color blind...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
You realize it's perfectly possible to show a loss on your financials and still be making money, right? Especially when your sinking money into a new factory. That's why you ALSO need to look at the balance sheet.
Not when you follow GAAP. It's highly defined, and you cannot "ignore" capital costs - that's why they are amortized over time. The only way that Tesla is "making money" is when you use non-GAAP accounting and ignore expenses that other car companies do not ignore. You may increase your net worth by "investing" more than you actually make (meaning - you take loans to invest, or in the case of Tesla you sell more shares of stock, getting loans from shareholders), but your income is still negative. Net worth may increase, but income is negative. Flat out, full stop.
Hey, my net income would look a LOT better if I didn't have to actually "recognize" my mortgage payments or my health care insurance premiums! A solid $3K per month change in my stated monthly cash flow! Of course, I can't do that - that's not accepted. Even if most of it is going to build total "net worth", my cash flow still takes that $3K/month hit. Hey, why don't I go get a $50K/month mortgage - well beyond my monthly income - and claim I still have the same income, I'm still cash-flow positive (no loss - profit!) whilst building more net asset value? Can't do that... That's called fraud.
Tesla was slapped by the SEC for it's non-GAAP shenanigans, and now reports GAAP numbers. All of which show Tesla losing money. As is correct. Corporate value - net assets - may be increasing as cash flow is spent on factories, but that does not change the fact: they are spending more money than they are bringing in, they have a negative earnings per share.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!