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How a Kickstarter Project Can Massively Exceed Its Funding Goals and Still Fail
An anonymous reader writes: In November, 2013, a Kickstarter project for a software-defined camera trigger scored £290,386 (~$450,000) in funding after asking for a mere £50,000. After almost a year of delays, they've now announced the project is dead. Their CEO has published a lengthy article about how such a successful funding round can still turn into a failed product. In short: budgeting. To get their software into a workable state, they ended up spending 940% of the amount they'd originally allocated to software development. Their protoyping went over budget, too, and they had to spend a fair bit in legal fees to fend off a major camera manufacturer complaining about their product's name.
Still, they had more funding than they expected, and would have been able to deal with these costs. Unfortunately, the bill of materials for their final product clocked in way higher than they expected. They would have had to sell the device at about $350 each, when they were originally targeting a $99 price point. (And that figure assumes good sales — with a smaller production run, price per unit goes even higher.) The company is now going to refund the remaining money left over from its Kickstarter campaign — about 20% of the total. They're also open sourcing the software and sharing the PCB designs and schematics.
Still, they had more funding than they expected, and would have been able to deal with these costs. Unfortunately, the bill of materials for their final product clocked in way higher than they expected. They would have had to sell the device at about $350 each, when they were originally targeting a $99 price point. (And that figure assumes good sales — with a smaller production run, price per unit goes even higher.) The company is now going to refund the remaining money left over from its Kickstarter campaign — about 20% of the total. They're also open sourcing the software and sharing the PCB designs and schematics.
"We'll go away if you pay us money."
Don't Kickstart something that seems like a good idea but has never been done before. If it's really a good idea then people have either tried and failed multiple times before, and/or people with more money that Kickstarter can provide will agree it's a good idea and invest.
Crowd funding is good for known quantities from reliable sources. Printing out a book for that webcomic you like, where the pricing is a fixed and known quantity before hand, or funding a game from a known and reliable developer like Broken Age from Double Fine or Project Cars from Slightly Mad studios.
If you make the wrong asumtions with your budget, you will fail financially? Who would have thought this?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If you think it's going to be easy to put together a real techy product with software and circuits and PCBs and enclosures and EM certification and patent minefields and manufacturing and packaging and distributors and competition, you might want to examine why you think that.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
...and are still delivering value. The Suez canal is a prime example, but if you do some research, you will come up with others.
The most important thing is that the achievements not be thrown away, and in software, there's a very nice way of doing it (no: it's not "some Intellectual Property Vulture feeds on the remnants"). So kudos for releasing the software and the hardware blueprints.
So yay for the visionaries of triggertrap (those who worked hard at it and those who risked their money). May you survive the crash and be richer after that. May the explosion disperse seeds far and wide for new things to grow.
Considering the amount of successful projects kickstarter has, I think they should offer an insurance for x% of the price of good (optional), where you get a full refund if the item is not delivered within 3 - 6 months. They'd probably even end up making money of the insurance, and for some things (like a $700 bike I was considering) it would help a lot.
Rather than spend all the money, 20% will be refunded. And a software source and PCB will be offered. It is a failed kickstarter, but not as bad as those which went home with the money breaking all promised delivery. Like moulyneux and godus for example.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Morale: gloomy
But!
That doesn't mean you should never contribute to hardware kick starters. It's a good idea to carefully examine what they have done before to see if they can handle making the new thing...
But!
Sometimes, it's just plain good to kickstart something even if it looks unlikely they will reach the goal. I would argue that is what happened in this case, because they found out a LOT about making this thing a lot of people want, and are sharing what they found. Eventually the thing people really wanted may well get made. If I had contributed to this Kickstarter (I did not) I wouldn't be mad, just a bit sad it didn't go through.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
so did they or did they not have a running prototype? it seems they did but then they wanted to develop another more expensive product.
the story reads like they started r&d after getting the money. _all_ r&d including case manufacturing options(yes there are other options than injection molding and 3d printing, which are all pretty much cheaper in their unit range) and all code for the micro and choosing another micro..
I mean, how the fuck can you spend so much more on your r&d that you were supposed to already have been done?
furthermore, they didn't design the product to the means they had available - for example, if you're a low run and injection molding tooling is too expensive(and you know that because you've done a cursory google search beforehand, right, right???) you can get of the shelf aluminium cases and such quite cheaply. sure it's 5-10 times more expensive per unit than injection moulding but still would be under 10% of the 99 bucks. lasercutting etc would all be options - they would just have had to compromise on the overall shape of the frigging device. like, fuck, http://www.alibaba.com/product... here's a box 3 dollars + cheap ass shipping. or a bunch of other similar boxes, extrusion they could have cut etc. then the cheap ass method of pcb for the ends( cheap cheap in low run too) to hold the display, buttons etc.
fuck you could even source them as 3d printed pieces nowadays cheaper than the quoted 25$ per case due to the tooling.
really, the whole story reads like they didn't do the development beforehand and promised stuff out of their asses. they wanted to change the product to a more expensive one and do the r&d again after the kickstarter while the kickstarter should only have had to pay for the production of what they already demonstrated.
whats even worse? they're using this as a publiciy stunt for their smartphone apps! that is they have a revenue source, they're an existing company, they just blew a lot of customers money on paychecks to themselves and didn't deliver.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From what I read the dongle is merely the interface from the camera (USB) to the smartphone (USB). That should be trivial. (For my setup a USB OTG cable + adapter to mini USB is sufficient, there are tons of apps to control cameras).
The article states that they had to use a beefier micro controller etc., but I wonder: why not do all the processing on the smart phone? These days our phones have so much processing power AND sensors, there should be no need to do any kind of non-trivial logic outside, especially when you're just trying to launch your first product.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
Since starting out as a platform for people who are able technically, but financially to launch their project I've noticed a huge shift to marketing centric campaigning. With the inrush of the general population as backers marketing driven teams have swooped in with ideas too good to be true, flashy, promising presentations and legal structures to ward of any consequences. The main idea seams to be just to accumulate cash using an appealing idea and figure out how to make good on their promises later. No engineering involved.
This also shows through the article, the bleeding dry, the surprises in BOM, prototyping costs... It's like they just spent the money without having a clue what they were doing.
Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to imply they didn't make an effort, but it sounds like they were very busy running a company without a product.
Refunding the remaining money and making the work they managed to get done available to the community is a decent way to act here. In a bankruptcy case your remaining assets would go to your creditors.
In this case they are giving those assets back to the people who paid for them.
That means the product could still come into existence or form the beginnings of other even better designs.
All in all, that was actually quite decent of them.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The fundamental problem with Kickstarter is that there's no accountability for handling the money. There's simply no assurance that the people running the show have estimated costs correctly, or know how to manage a project with budge constraints. Since the "investors" have zero ownership, they can't step in to right the ship.
Don't bother kickstarting any major project that doesn't have a project manager experienced in the field (a famous, experienced designer, for instance, isn't necessarily good enough.)
Play Command HQ online
"It's like they just spent the money without having a clue what they were doing."
Why would they? There's nothing in how Kickstaters work to make responsible action likely, even for projects run with good intention. Kickstarter is just another means to separate fools from their money.
Play Command HQ online
Between a real entrepreneur and a person with "just" a good idea.
You actually need to be both in order to sicceed!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
I believe that is theft. I'm glad I didn't read any terms and conditions for the project I funded. If the project fails to deliver then they have to accept the grave that awaits.
I agree, the whole explanation stinks of something bogus. Who has the nerve to do a mea culpa on this massivly funder project, and then promote the product they got 5 guys from china to write up for 20k.
Where did the money go, some nice looking bar graphs that essentially have no meaning or context. If you're really serious about showing it, then open your books to your investors. They wont though, because it probably gets tiring reading a few hundred transactions saying 'Got some cocain, lets party!'.
yeah kudos to them for at least preserving the rep of crowdsourcing, to some degree. It's decent of them to do that. but, what kind of god awful project managers were involved in this? The polar opposite of lean.,
really, the whole story reads like they didn't do the development beforehand and promised stuff out of their asses
You're missing the point of the kickstarter.
R&D is expensive. It takes months/years during which time you have to pay office costs, salaries, and parts for prototypes. The kickstarter was to fund the development.
Production is easy by comparison because as soon as you start selling units they're paying for their own production (otherwise you wouldn't be making a product) so you only need the initial outlay for the first few batches. And tooling of course.
fuck you could even source them as 3d printed pieces nowadays cheaper than the quoted 25$ per case due to the tooling.
Not in any volume - 3D printing is slow by comparison. And not as flexible in materials (you're forced to go all-plastic, and specific types).
so did they or did they not have a running prototype? it seems they did but then they wanted to develop another more expensive product.
A running prototype is a long way from having a sellable product. It wouldn't be unusual for a hardware prototype to exist on a breadboard. That's hardly something you can send straight to production.
Let me just say, that I am too old to not know how to wipe the planet they were placed on off the map, even in my perceived death it is still achievable, if the likes of them continue to steal. That's because I have already built my security device. A rhetorical question, how can somebody seriously ask for funding without knowing first that they can build it without requiring funding? The stupid tend to die sooner than the ones willing to admit they are mortal.
I've followed the TriggerTrap products with interest over the past few years, but I must say, I was blown away by the depths of stupidity it took to initially name the product RED.
For those not in the know, RED is a wel-known brand of professional-level videocams, and was one of the first products to really crash the traditional camera industry party through internet buzz, albeit before Kickstarter was a thing.
One of the most basic trademark law is that you don't try to trademark the name of a well known commodity IN THE SAME FREAKING INDUSTRY. Kamps pisses and moans about how t is a "common" word, but the very fact that the trademark not specifically photography-associated makes it easier to defend as it is considered "fanciful" and therefore much more effective at specifically identifying a product. It's like naming your computer company "Apple" rather than "Computer Products" or some such.
Giant legal bills on the first day of your Kickstarter? GENIUS!
As someone who has done a hardware startup, I really respect these guys for getting to where they did. It is a tough world out there, and getting your idea out there and into a form people want is a lot of work.
However, and this is very specific to the UK, it appears that the trouble they had is that they just didn’t hire any engineers. I mean proper degree educated EEs (to be fair, they only really needed one). This is a chronic issue in the UK and I believe seems to have stemmed from the Thatcher era attacks on anybody who did something practical.
For example, their website keeps talking about Arduino. I’m all for Arduino, in its ability to encourage more people to learn about hardware, but in the context of a serious company, asking for Arduino people is like trying to hire a car designer by advertising for someone who likes to drive cars. They also talk about eventually hiring a hardware product manager. I’m sorry, but that is a very simple product. They don’t need another manager, they just needed an EE who could get the thing going.
Anyway I don’t really know how the UK can solve this problem, which is why I do software development these days.
...ct needlessly degrades parsability of your comment.
Many successful projects went bankrupt and are still delivering value. The Suez canal is a prime example, but if you do some research, you will come up with others.
That's a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was one. When projects go bankrupt, then all those investors (if this is real investment and not crowdfunding) are screwed and some other entity comes in and purchases the assets for book value or less. The people who took the major risk get essentially nothing, whereas those who come in and make the thing work do so by having the advantage of taking a fraction of the risk.
Do you celebrate when people buy inexpensive homes from the bank due to other people being foreclosed upon after losing their jobs in a recession?
I mean, that's life, but I don't really know whose heart your story is supposed to warm.
This was the Triggertrap ADA a seperate device with modular sensors like a fricking lazer.
* Really: they had a "team happiness person"?
* Featuritis: Why not start with a single sensor (if possible itegrated in the basic product), but try to develop everything once
* Idiotic presumptions everywhere like asssuming that the non-availability of a specifi part for V1 is best cured by a completely revised V2. Or that the resolution of the display matters
* Senseless Perfectionism: Hoho, the company they hired was "not able to use github". Yes, then take the source and put it there yourself (no need to delay, and no excuse for delivering late)
* Lack of a preexisting SW concept (they really had to have a running prototype where a backer looked at the source to tell them that the MC could be put to low-power mode. (If you select a MC, the first thing you do should be to determing if the state transitions between the sleep modes support what you want to do *on the high level*)
* Complete lack of technical understanding about MCs (they complained that thet had no "arduino expert"). MCs are great tools. You dont select the MCs by the SW you have, or by how conevnient and popular they are in the "maker" circles. You select them by the IOs they have, and by the power consumption. For most things you actually dont end up with anything close to an arnduino (e.g. for low power: look at the MSP430, for raw IO features: look at the M16C series)
* A broken assumtion from the very start: That this needs to be modular. I am pretty convinced that (lets exclude the laser module) most of the sensors could have been integrated right away, for less money than the box you put them in.
That being said, this should have been a 2-4 man project for 6 months, with focus on solving the technical problems first. A more or less working prototype electronics design (2man months for the most important sensors) should have been done before promising anything on Kickstarter.
On the injection molding thing. Are there also cheaper types of injection molding for low volume production. Things like silicone molds, other plastics, etc?? Yes, there more expensive if your making a butt load of parts since the molds wear out but way cheaper for smaller runs.
Do you celebrate when people buy inexpensive homes from the bank due to other people being foreclosed upon after losing their jobs in a recession?
Yes. I also celebrate a few years later, when I sell them at the peak of the next boom. I've resold the same properties 4-5 times already. I like it even more when I do it with stock.
...ct (oh, well ;)
Anyway, back to the subje...ct:
not everything has to be about investor value. Of course, your extreme example (foreclosure, loss of job) is about a whole existence. Not nice.
But back to the current example: they've spread a vision. They've made some designs. They've built some software. Those things stay, especially in the framework of free software/open hardware.
If I invest into such a project because I am convinced that such a thing should exist, then I get some value out of that. This is the whole concept of risk. I'm not going to put my (sparse) old-age savings wholesale into a Kickstarter. But I well might support a project even if I think that it's (short-term) doomed, because of the above reasons.
Of course, if you measure an enterprise strictly by its short-term ROI (something which is very fashionable these days), that's what you'll get: grey, dull enterprises run by bookkeepers.
Life would be extremely boring if all moonshot projects belonged to companies with very deep pockets.
Silicone molds are just pulled from existing things, anyway. You've got to have a thing to pull a silicone mold from before you can use it, because you can't machine silicone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's Arduino syndrome again. They see people selling those for a few bucks, and cases for $5 and figure that they will be able to do the same.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Why is it that the Chinese can throw together HD cameras for $10 but western companies struggle to do the same for $100? Is manufacturing no-how not taught at universities any more or is it that the Chinese simply have all the factories and hence the manufacturing skills.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
"Kickstarter does not offer refunds. A Project Creator is not required to grant a Backer’s request for a refund unless the Project Creator is unable or unwilling to fulfill the reward.
Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill."
So for those who invested in return for a reward, they're entitled to a 100% refund. Not 20%. Seeing as the company behind this has other assets and doesn't plan to close its doors, giving back only 20% doesn't cut it. If the IP has value, it should be sold, along with the rest of the business, to make the refunds happen. And judging by the number of people who are demanding a full refund or that they liquidate their business, this will get ugly.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
What's sad, is this wasn't Triggertrap's first bite at the kickstarter apple, nor is it their first fail. They had an earlier campaign that asked for $25,000, and got $77,262 when it closed in July 2011. They had promised delivery "before Christmas" in 2011, and the delivery started in June 2012. I had thought they were almost a year behind schedule, but it was only 6 months. They were a textbook case of what not to do in a KS campaign, particularly trying to do manufacture a product when they never had experience in bringing a product to market, using foreign manufacturing and trying to manage it long distance, not realizing the holiday schedule for your foreign manufacturer, claim compatibility with X different cameras without delving down into exactly what each camera required, and letting engineers with no prior experience at bringing products to market set price points and shipping schedules. I didn't read the latest explanation in detail, but a lot of the problems that crept up in the original KS campaign resurfaced, particularly on the project management side. This time, they seemed to add legal issues to the mix of project mis-steps. I stayed away this time, because even at $99, it was more than I was willing to pay for what they were delivering. That being said, unlike some KS projects, they did actually produce a product that worked as they claimed. I used it a few times until I managed to fry it, but there were some design choices that made it less useful to me. And for me, the delay got me interested in programming Arduinos (and later Teensys, etc.) to do camera triggers, so it wasn't a complete loss.
Funny, that's exactly how the banks felt when they got us into the mess. Mortgage a house on a NINJA loan and when the person inevitably defaults they've got the money up to the default, plus a house worth more than they originally paid (who needs fannie and freddie to insure that? Subprime utopia here we come!)
The next boom didn't happen fast enough for them so we had to bail them all out.
I imagine many are exposed to the process and know people in it, they're using their own money, and often use shoddy components that didn't quite pass Q&A. Its a bit like the Korean 27" monitors that were the rage last year, the panels were the ones that didn't quite meet the grading for Dell / LG / Apple.
Cheap and slave labor. Labor costs in China are 100th the cost as in the West.
If we are talking about hardware kickstarters, or book kickstarters, or anything which involves manufacturing, if they do not have a working prototype yet it is always a risk to invest in it. If they have a working prototype and the money is only to pay for low rate initial production then the risk is low.
From what I read these guys did not do much of anything. The manufacturing was off-shored to China and the software was outsourced. So they probably had quite a poor grasp on the actual time and cost to do the product. They had an high-level concept of what they wanted but that is not enough to allow you to estimate development costs.
As for the software kickstarters, given the nature of software, the cost of replication i.e. copying is basically irrelevant so when they ask money it is always to do product development. As with any project like this you have to ask yourself how much prior experience do these people have, do they have any functional prototypes, story or art designs, etc.
The delays and cost overruns are something that happens. But this kind of cost overrun makes me suspect either feature creep or foul play.
A software defined camera trigger? What is that? Is this something I can do with a Raspberry Pi for $35 and a few jumper wires?
"From what I read these guys did not do much of anything. The manufacturing was off-shored to China and the software was outsourced. So they probably had quite a poor grasp on the actual time and cost to do the product. They had an high-level concept of what they wanted but that is not enough to allow you to estimate development costs."
Over the past 40 years, I have been involved (or asked to be involved, and refused, as I get older) with quite a few of this sort of thing.
"I have this idea for an X"
"Let's raise some money to build an X, it should only cost Y, but I'm an idea guy, I let others sweat that details"
"Darn contractors didn't deliver"
"sorry guys.. But I have this idea for a Z"
They had a concept
They had a target sell price
What they didn't have was a rational basis for understanding whether they could build the concept for the sell price.
several technical issues: Building production units is different than building prototypes, both in costs and in "how you do it"
They also didn't have a good model for slow start: betting the farm on high volume injection molding is a risky maneuver if you've not bought this before.
I myself have looked into using someone to get my models produced and found I could get it done much cheaper than these guys claim.
Proto Labs was my choice as i found I could get protoypes from a proper injection-mold cheap ($4-5k) and after the protos I could get production runs of 5k series for less than $1 each. Compared to the 50k I read in this silly fail, they could have done 5 rounds of new mold + 5k impressions for same price.
Oh, and I am not affiliated with or paid by Proto Labs. I just wanted to mention it so we maybe get fewer failed Kickstarters...
Why is it that the Chinese can throw together HD cameras for $10 but western companies struggle to do the same for $100?
Because the Chinese don't care it if breaks after only a year or two while the western companies have reputations to uphold.
In the original kickstarter, the founders had programmed their Arduino clone themselves, and had a working prototype. As they started moving to the mobile space on Apple/Android phones I have to imagine they needed to add talent, and may have used contract labor. I recall vaguely that the founder was not a professional programmer, and his day job during the first kickstarter would interfere from time to time.
At least it's not the bloody space elevator project from Liftport, those thieves. Nothing to show for hundreds of thousands of dollars except for the guy travelling around the country on our dime. Claiming he's going to build a space elevator and he can't even manage t-shirts, cards, and artwork. I honestly think that is a case where someone needs to go beyond the law, since it's obvious fraud and the law has failed. Hell, even potato salad guy was able to deliver more.
They've made some very major blunders. First of all, for that price and that sales volume, you go with an off-the-shelf enclosure and machining that can be done in your kitchen, if need be. Yeah, the custom pluggable enclosure looks cool, but is wholly unnecessary. A membrane keypad with display and other windows can be had cheaply even when full custom. All in all, they've totally overdesigned it physically. If I wanted to develop open source firmware for such a device, giving my time away for free, I could probably make a profit on such a device in qty 100, never mind thousands. Sure it wouldn't have a full custom look, but it could be done for the price point they quoted.
IOW: What a clusterfuck.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
That's what happens when you don't know what you're doing. Overpromise, underdeliver.
Hardly surprising that it's so hard for people to understand their own incompetence. The real art is recognising incompetence of the people pitching stuff to you - mastering that would not just save you from throwing money away on foolish crowdfunded projects, but it would also make you a good investor.
Well writing a software DVD player that runs on a $999 PC and designing a standalone hardware DVD player for $99 are totally different things. When you have something that works on an Arduino you have a prototype, sure, but the prototype does not solve a lot of the hard problems which need to be solved in order to meet the actual design criteria, which are not only functional criteria, but cost criteria as well.
My over-all impression is of a typical fool who thought (maybe still thinks) that he's the next Steve Wozniac, but in fact had none of the knowledge, or ability that The Woz had at that age.
Anybody can come up with a cool idea for a cutting edge product. Hell, I do it daily.
The reality is, there is a big difference between an idea and a product.
Yes, it is important to try something new. It's also important to have a reality check. Small steps people !
These guys had a year long delay shipping, which is a LONG time in the consumer drone market. The product that finally shipping is a complete joke and from the comments page on kickstarter, the management is not responding to people's emails at all--other than to bump people up in the shipping queue if they complain. There are reports of drones just flying away under no control. It sucks that there is no recourse, since the period for a refund through most credit card companies is 60 days after payment. Timothy Reuter and TJ Johnson are the responsible parties for this mess. Chance Roth was with the company in the beginning, but left and is now trying to help the owners community salvage the train wreck of a drone that they paid $500 for last year.
So for those who invested in return for a reward
well, no. it's not an investment. it's a donation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's listed as a reward on the kickstarter site, so it's a reward. Same as if you make a donation to a charity and have a chance to win a car for participating, or donating to PBS and getting a jacket. And the rules are that promoters who fail to deliver on the rewards have to give the funders a 100% refund.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
what kind of god awful project managers were involved in this?
Read the linked articles. He admits they should have hired a project mamager who had dealt with that kind of project, and shgould have kept a tighter rein on the software developers.
I bought the original Triggertrap and got to know about this guys: They always find a reason to fail.
In the business world you met people that always find a way to success against the odds, people that will do whatever is necessary to meet expectations. This people are the contrary.
No matter how easy it is, they always fail.
With the original triggertrap they had problems with the acrylic mold, a stupid mistake that was easy to solve. WE THE BACKERS PROPOSED SOLUTIONS, but they got drowned on the pond.
The part of needing 30 million to back a hardware project... it must be a joke, the same price of the original Iphone design. Probably if your team is created by MBAs idea people with no skills in the field like it seems is the case.
I backed other inexpensive photo shutter projects and I am way more satisfied.
I wish I could post on the backers page, but I didn't back this "project", so I wanted to point out a few things:
1. In this FAQ they say they are obligated to the original terms of service which requires a full refund.
2. They also say the new Kickstarter TOS "clears things up" and point out the language of the new TOS:
"...they offer to return any remaining funds to backers who have not received their reward (in proportion to the amounts pledged), or else explain how those funds will be used to complete the project in some alternate form."
Of course they point out in another faq that their actual budget was projected to be 100k pounds and not 50k pounds but they thought they could make it up with PR drive.
That looks suspiciously like a material misrepresentation to backers. So if they want to go by that new cleared up TOS they should know that: ..."
"A creator in this position [of not completing a project and providing rewards] has only remedied the situation and met their obligations to backers if
"... they’ve been honest, and have made no material misrepresentations in their communication to backers;"
So apparently both the old and new TOS agreements require a full refund in their case. Even if they disagree that they should be giving a full refund, the whole "material misrepresentation" thing looks like a legal argument that provides a strong argument for the backers getting a refund at the very least.
- If you have a crap business model, it can fail
- if you have a crap financial model, it can fail
- if you have crap project management skills, it can fail
- if you don't have the right execution background (e.g. tech skills, money skills, management skills), it can fail
- if you don't spend the time required, it can fail
Frankly, having started businesses before, it's fairly amazing that most Kickstarter projects don't fail because of the above
Silicone molds can be cast on 3D prints. It's a very rough-and-ready way to go about manufacture, but it gets the job done.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
If we are talking about hardware kickstarters, or book kickstarters, or anything which involves manufacturing, if they do not have a working prototype yet it is always a risk to invest in it. If they have a working prototype and the money is only to pay for low rate initial production then the risk is low.
Looking at their project page, it really seemed like they had a prototype. They had lots of pictures taken with their "really fast" prototype. Which was presumably actually an updated V1 unit, and not actually a prototype of the new one at all. This puts them in a nasty position legally. They claimed to have a functional prototype. They appeared to be displaying an actual cased prototype. They gave every indication of being further on than they really were.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Not sure why it is presented as a surprise, just because there is funding it doesn't mean there is also success. We all should know that after the .com bubble burst....and that money came mainly from banks and VC ending up in the hands of office furniture companies, catering services, and software vendors.