Fitbit: James Park
James Park, co-founder of Fitbit, explains how the Nintendo Wii’s motion-sensing technology inspired him and co-founder Eric Friedman to create a wearable fitness tracker. Park details the early struggles of prototyping with a balsa wood box and circuit boards, and the critical hardware failure where a display cable interfered with the antenna, which was temporarily fixed with toilet paper before being solved with rubber spacers. He discusses the company's rapid growth, the competitive threat from the Apple Watch, and the strategic pivot from hardware sales to a health and behavior-change service model, culminating in the acquisition by Google.