The story of Fitbit: How a wooden box was bought by Google for $2.1bn

A short recap of the founding story of Fitbit

In 2021, Fitbit underwent significant changes following its acquisition by Google. While some speculated that this might put Fitbit in a precarious position, the brand continues to develop fitness trackers and smartwatches under Google’s ownership.

Since Fitbit has undergone major changes since its founding, we started wondering how it all began in the first place. How Fitbit broke through the wearable tech arms race to become a household name, achieved a $4.1bn IPO in 2015, and what happened next.

Fitbit's gone from a hopeful startup to a tech powerhouse in just a few years. But how did it get here? Like all good stories, this one involves triumph, terror, and even a little bit of sex.

• Essential reading: Compare our reviews to find the best Fitbit for you

Update: This article was originally published in 2016. We've updated it with more of Fitbit's recent history

The beginning

Fitbit was founded in early 2007 by James Park and Eric Friedman, who saw the potential for using sensors in small, wearable devices. They raised $400,000 but soon realized that that wasn't enough, so they did the rounds of potential investors with little more than a circuit board in a wooden box.

But the idea was good, and when Fitbit addressed the TechCrunch 50 conference on 9 September 2008, Park and Friedman hoped to get 50 pre-orders, although Eric suspected the actual number would be closer to 5.

In fact, in one day, they took 2,000 pre-orders.

Getting orders was the easy bit. Neither Park nor Friedman had any manufacturing experience. As Park recalled in an interview with Jeff Clavier at the Computer History Museum.

"Several times, we were pretty close to being dead. Seven times we were close to death. We probably spent about three months in Asia looking at suppliers, bringing up production lines."

There were problems with their design, too: the antenna wasn't working properly. "In my hotel room, I was thinking, ' This is it," Park said. "We're done. We literally took a piece of foam and put it on the circuit board to fix an antenna problem."

Fitbit launched its tracker at the end of 2009, shipping around 5,000 units with a further 20,000 orders on the books.

Because Fitbit was selling its product directly to customers, those 5,000 units were sold with "pretty darn good" profit margins—but Park and Friedman knew that to shift big numbers, they'd need big partners.

They raised more money from venture capitalist Brad Field, teamed up with Best Buy to reach four, then 40, then 650 Best Buy stores, and Fitbits are now sold in thousands of retail outlets and online channels worldwide.

Don't stop movin'

One of the reasons for Fitbit's early growth and success was its investment in new models.

The first tracker was pretty good, but in 2011, Fitbit improved it by adding an altimeter, a digital clock, and a stopwatch. That was the Ultra.

In 2012, Fitbit launched Fitbit One and Fitbit Zip, two of the first wireless fitness trackers. Fitbit One tracked steps, distance, floors climbed, calories burned, and sleep patterns, while the more minimalist Zip tracked steps, distance, and calories. Both devices synced to both iOS and Android phones, as well as the Fitbit website.

The following year, Fitbit moved to the wrist with the Fitbit Flex and Fitbit Force, but it wasn't entirely successful: some Force customers reported that the band was irritating their skin, an issue that was most likely due to allergic reactions to nickel, and the product was recalled in early 2014.

Some 9,900 customers were reportedly affected, and the Force was replaced with the supposedly non-irritating Fitbit Charge and Charge HR—although allergies appeared to be an ongoing irritation for Fitbit, with complaints about the duo, and the company was forced to blame hygiene issues.

Too much information

From the very beginning, one of Fitbit's strengths was its website: you'd upload information from your Fitbit device to the web so you could analyze your performance and share it with other Fitbit users. Now, Fitbit primarily uses its mobile app and Google’s ecosystem for data tracking.

In 2011, however, that caused a little bit of a problem: it turned out that users who recorded their sexual activity (in terms of time spent, not what they spent the time doing) were unwittingly sharing that information with the world.

Fitbit realized that "share all my stuff with everyone" wasn't the best default option, and it changed its site so that user information would be private by default. Stand-alone fitness trackers were iPods in a world moving to iPhones.

One problem with being an innovator is that you can end up at the forefront of issues you might not have considered, and in Fitbit's case, one of those issues is privacy.

Health data recorded by Fitbit isn't legally protected in the same way as normal medical records, which means Fitbit's data can be subpoenaed by relevant authorities.

Fitbit data has already been used in court. In December 2014, a personal injury lawyer in Canada used Fitbit data in what's believed to be the first case of its kind.

The client was a personal trainer who claimed she was unable to work normally after an accident and shared her Fitbit data voluntarily to support her claim; however, there's no obvious reason a lawyer wouldn't request such data to use against a defendant, either.

In 2016, data from a Fitbit Surge was used in an alleged sexual assault case, where investigators analyzed the data, which contradicted a woman’s claims.

Fitbit vs the world (and Jawbone)

In August 2014, US Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer singled out Fitbit as a "privacy nightmare" and—in all-caps—claimed that "WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE, FITBIT BRACELETS & SMARTPHONE APPS ARE TRACKING USER'S MOVEMENTS AND HEALTH DATA THAT COULD BE SOLD TO THIRD PARTIES."

Schumer demanded that the US Federal Trade Commission regulate fitness trackers, though in its response, Fitbit noted that it didn't sell data to third parties and said it would "welcome the opportunity to work with Senator Schumer on this important issue."

Following these privacy concerns, the firm has since made its privacy policy clearer and hired lobbying firm Podesta + Partners to work with politicians on privacy and healthcare issues. Schumer said he was delighted, and that customers should "be aware that this company cares very much about their privacy and their security… we are urging all other fitness-tracking companies to follow Fitbit's lead".

Since its decision to go public was announced, the company has been embroiled in two lawsuits in 2015: one pursued by big rival Jawbone over its sleep-tracking claims, and another brought by a consortium of claimants over heart rate data accuracy.

However, Jawbone soon pulled out of the wearables market, and claims were settled in 2017.

Tanks on the lawn

But the introduction of the first Apple Watch into the wearable tech space put tanks firmly on Fitbit’s lawn, and the company was slow to react to the consumer shift to smartwatches.

What’s more, it wasn’t just Apple playing in Fitbit’s backyard.

Xiaomi, which launched its first Mi Band in 2015, has also become a thorn in Fitbit’s side, offering comparative features at a fraction of the price. It has launched five devices in that time, most available for around $30, with the Mi Band 5 expected imminently.

And Fitbit felt the effect. In 2018, revenues started tumbling, and despite the Fitbit Versa setting a record for the fastest-selling product in the company’s history, the follow-up Versa Lite was not a financial success.

And with Apple and Samsung aggressively owning the smartwatch world, Fitbit's market share has ebbed.

Acquisitions

It soon became apparent that smartwatches would eat the fitness tracker market—and Fitbit was exposed. So next came a series of acquisitions aimed at bringing the right technology on board.

The main additions were smartwatch start-up darling and Kickstarter superstar Pebble for just $23 million, which had itself run out of steam against the powerhouses of Apple and Samsung. The company would have been working 10x that just a few years before.

And then followed Vector, a Romanian start-up closely linked to the Swiss watch world. It had made breakthroughs in battery life, enabling Fitbit’s Versa to compete with the Apple Watch on battery life, offering 7 days instead of 24 hours.

Google Buyout

But the next move for Fitbit took everyone off guard. Rumors and whispers quickly turned into an announcement that Google was to buy Fitbit. Perhaps a union of the weakened, Google has not managed to get traction with Google Fit, and Wear OS has stuttered—leaving the company well behind Apple in terms of health care ambitions.

Fitbit, therefore, was a natural fit. It brings together the user base, health and fitness knowledge, and hardware operations that Google has always struggled to harness. And Google brings the financial clout that Fitbit needs to progress to the next level.

The acquisition by Google was finalized in 2021. Since then, Fitbit’s technology has been integrated into Google’s wearable ecosystem, allowing Google to continue competing in the smartwatch market.