If you mean sell as many units as Apple and never get bought? Sure.
But as someone who also owned an OG Pebble, if the "Pebble-way" was actually better, it would have won.
Winning might have meant getting acquired, or even just competitors making devices similar in spirit to theirs, but it'd still be a victory.
The "Apple Watch way" was the anti-thesis to the Pebble philosophy with it's needing daily charges and it's color screen, and trying to be a second phone on your wrist with beefy specs. While the Pebble was trying to be _literally_ a smarter watch.
And Apple's way won out. People just preferred that.
Well uh... The company went under, so I doubt they made out like bandits. The IP was sold off, but I suspect that much of that money was used to pay off outstanding liabilities. My impression was that the founders tried to do right by their employees as well. I find it unlikely that they came out of the process with a ton of money- more than likely they lost money.
They were also _way_ too small to compete with the industrial design, manufacturing capability, and marketing clout of Apple. Or even Samsung. They were inevitably gonna get crushed.
And I say this as a four time Pebble Kickstarter backer who could see it even back then. A couple of kids with an amazing YC pitch deck and ambitions-untempered-by-experience-or-reality? They were never gonna "win" if Jony Ives and Foxconn ended up in their market segment. I don't regret a cent I spent with Pebble. I hope the founders made out like bandits when they sold out, and I hope it launched them onto spectacular career trajectories. But they never really stood a chance of being the top player in any sophisticated consumer electronics space...