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Webinar

COREDUMP #010: From Pebble to Intel: can hardware startups beat the big players?

Chapters

  • 00:00  |   Welcome and Introduction to Today’s Topic

  • 06:00  |   Lessons from Scaling Teams at Pebble

  • 12:00  |   Chaos, Structure, and Growing as a Startup

  • 18:00  |   Building Process Without Killing Agility

  • 24:00  |   Hiring Smart in Fast-Growth Environments

  • 30:00  |   From Product Complexity to Organizational Change

  • 36:00  |   Staying Productive Through Engineering Transitions

  • 42:00  |   Applying Startup Lessons in Larger Organizations

  • 48:00  |   What Kean’s Building Now at Eagor

  • 54:00  |   Live Q&A and Closing Thoughts

Listen to the Podcast

About the Session

In this Coredump Session, we explored the wild early days of Pebble and what it takes to scale a hardware startup against industry giants. From scrappy hackathons to 100+ person engineering teams, Kean Wong, former VP of Software at Pebble and now CTO at Eagor, joins Memfault’s François and Chris to unpack how startups can outpace Big Tech by staying nimble, hiring wisely, and embracing constant change.

Key Takeaways:

  • Early-stage hardware startups benefit from direct engagement with developer communities for recruiting purposes.
  • Transparency and shared business context can create stronger, more motivated engineering teams.
  • Scaling a hardware company requires embracing organizational change, not resisting it.
  • “Trial by fire” can be an effective onboarding path for technical leaders in fast-moving environments.
  • Engineering leadership should balance short-term firefighting with long-term vision setting.
  • Hackathons and passion projects can be powerful hiring channels in embedded tech.
  • Growth requires thoughtful infrastructure investments—even when it’s tempting to keep things scrappy.
  • A good leader earns respect by doing the hard work, not just delegating it.

Speakers

Black and white headshot of Kean Wong
CTO & Co-Founder, Eagor
Kean Wong

Kean has spent his career working on the forefront of new consumer products, from PDAs and Smart Watches, to AR glasses and AI. A veteran of Pebble (VP of Software), Palm, Intel and Facebook, he has led and built engineering teams ranging from rapid-growth startups to large organizations with hundreds of engineers around the globe. He is the inventor on over 100 issued patents, and the co-founder and CTO at Eagor Inc, building consumer-focused AI products.

François Headshot
CEO & Founder, Memfault
François Baldassari

François Baldassari is the CEO and Co-Founder of Memfault. An embedded software engineer by trade, François was driven to start Memfault by his passion for tooling and automation in software engineering. Prior to Memfault, he ran the firmware team at Oculus and built the operating system at Pebble. François has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Brown.

Chris Coleman headshot
CTO & Co-Founder, Memfault
Chris Coleman

Chris Coleman is the CTO and Co-Founder of Memfault. Prior to founding Memfault, Chris was an embedded software engineer at Pebble and Fitbit where he led efforts across the firmware stack and developed a reputation for tracking down and fixing challenging firmware bugs. That, coupled with his passion for using tooling to efficiently deliver high-quality hardware products, drove him to start Memfault.