Building for Oneself Before the Market Notices

Both Pebble’s revival and Clicks’ move from accessories into full devices point to the same structural phenomenon: companies rediscovering coherence by building first for themselves, not for an abstract market. In interviews around Pebble Round 2, Eric Migicovsky describes a deliberately small, self-funded team designing products they personally want to use, with no attempt to compete on feature breadth or platform dominance. The emphasis is on calm interaction, simplicity, and long-term usability, explicitly stepping away from the industry logic of escalation and specification races. Public reflections around Pebble suggest this re-orientation followed a recognition that earlier distance from the founder’s own use case weakened product clarity.

Clicks’ evolution shows a similar pattern, though from a different starting point. Initially known for physical keyboard accessories that reintroduced tactile typing to modern smartphones, the company’s decision to launch its own BlackBerry-inspired device reflects an extension of a validated internal preference, not a pivot toward mainstream smartphone competition. Reporting around the launch highlights that Clicks built on direct experience with users who value focused communication, physical input, and reduced distraction. The device does not attempt to redefine the smartphone category; it formalises a niche that already existed through sustained founder and user alignment.

What links these cases is not nostalgia alone, but sequence and restraint. In both, founders acted as primary users first, resisted broad market signalling, and only then allowed a market to gather around shared preferences. Neither case presents evidence of aggressive scaling intent or platform ambition. Instead, both illustrate how clarity can return when product decisions are grounded in lived experience rather than inferred demand. Public data on long-term commercial outcomes remains limited, but the behavioural pattern is observable.

From Papi & Laado’s perspective, both launches are worth close attention. Pebble’s revival imagery, including a Super Mario watch face, signals a light, self-aware embrace of nostalgia aligned with personal joy rather than brand reinvention theatre. Clicks’ device similarly draws on the cultural memory of the BlackBerry, not to replicate the past, but to reassert a mode of use that many users quietly miss. In both cases, nostalgia appears as a by-product of authenticity rather than a marketing strategy.