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Peachy Printer Funds Embezzled To Build New Home Instead of $100 3D Printer (hackaday.com)
Reader szczys writes (edited): Peachy Printer made it big on Kickstarter, raising over half a million dollars on the promise to build the first 3D printer and scanner costing $100. The company has now collapsed due to embezzlement (Editor's note: BBC's coverage is better) of those funds. The original investor stole around $350,000 of backer's money and funneled it into a new home. This was discovered about 18 months ago but became public only now as the company is unable to meet their already delayed delivery dates. Peachy Printer has posted a video admitting the screw-up. Sounds familiar?
Well, the really sad thing about this is we had a working printer in January 2015. It's finicky, sure, but so is our Solidoodle. Not only did we have a working printer, but it would have been profitable at $100.
Love the idea of Kickstarter because most people are nice and want to do nice, but... The lack of accountability is a FATAL flaw in the implementation.
So here's a constructive suggestion for a solution I call the "charity share brokerage":
The brokerage will earn a commission on the funded projects based on providing IMPORTANT supporting services for proposal preparation and evaluation of the results. In particular, the brokerage will make sure that EACH proposal has:
1. A realistic schedule
2. An adequate budget
3. The critical resources (including the people) and all of them are available
4. No gaps (such as insufficient testing for a software-related project)
5. SUCCESS CRITERIA
The projects should NOT be over-pledged, which is the critical flaw in Kickstarter's business model (and the other such websites I've studied). They allow over-pledging because they take a flat percentage and more money in the project is more money for them. Instead, when the project is funded, that's it. They earn their percentage for "meta-expertise" in preparing project proposals and evaluating project results.
After the project has been completed, the brokerage applies the success criteria and reports the results to all of the donors and to any websites that were linked to supporting the project proposal.
My new motto is "More detailed suggestions available upon polite request, but I'm not holding my breath." After all, everything is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I think they need a rule that first-time project owners are only allowed to collect up to 200% of their "goal" amount. Once the project hits that number, the "PLEDGE NOW" button goes away.
That limits the amount of damage that a first-time project owner can do. It doesn't prevent them getting the money they need to get the business started - plus a healthy "win" for doing a great job. But it would prevent viral projects from dumping so much money into someone's lap that they become intimidated by the magnitude of the task and find it easier to take the money and run than to complete the project.
Once someone has proved themselves and delivered as promised, they can try again without the cap.
Having run 5 successful Kickstarters myself, most of them 400% or more over goal - I understand how daunting it can be. When the project is running, a kind of "red mist" descends and pushing the total higher and higher becomes highly compelling. When the countdown expires and you suddenly realize that you're tens of thousands of dollars better off - it's exhilarating. But the next morning, when you start to realize the magnitude of what you've just signed up to do...it can be very daunting.
It's also very difficult to plan a project when you don't know whether you'll sell 100 widgets or 100,000 widgets. When you go from "Oh - I can just 3D print that component at home - and solder that switch to the circuit board myself!" to "I've got to get a $10,000 mold made by a company in China and I have to fly out there to make sure it's OK - then find a factory that can solder that switch on for me."...suddenly things get much more serious.
It's exceedingly difficult to design, price and schedule production on a product where you have literally ZERO idea how many you'll sell.
So for that first project - make it so I'll know that I'm selling between 100 and 200 widgets.
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