I think Pebble's CEO simply screwed the moment of selling. He should have sold to Citizen for almost 10x the value a year before. He did not. He burned his cash in the process of making another product.
He thought he could create more value from his product which he did not. You either can or cannot. A counter-example is that of Mark Zuckerberg. He stuck to his product.
A good CEO has to know the limits of his product/service and stick or sell at the right moment.
I think being a good CEO involves many traits. Obviously he had the wrong impression of where Pebble stood in the marketplace and where the company was headed (ie. he didn't foresee the fitness trend, or thought they could successfully pivot). But I assume he had good reasons for doing what he did. Having multiple $10M+ kickstarter launches is evidence that he understood product needs better than most of us could ever hope to.
I'm sure he regrets the decision to not sell more than ever now, and realizes he was wrong, but to say he was a bad CEO because he didn't sell at the right time is akin to being a "Monday Morning Quarterback Expert" where it's easy to criticize somebody for not acting correctly in the past because the right decision is so obvious now.
I understood what you meant, that's why I disagreed. :)
> but to say he was a bad CEO because he didn't sell at the right time is akin to...
My point is exactly this. This, in hardware startups at least, is probably the most important trait of all, at the end of the day. Everything is a wave. You need to take the photos and jump while you are on the top of it, otherwise you are swallowed by it further down the "road".
Knowing when the wave is at its max (before breaking) is as important in surfing as in business, apparently.
It was a textbook CEO mistake.