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Hello's Sleep-tracking Kickstarter Hit, Which Raised Over $42M In Three Years, Collapses (bbc.com)
Reader AmiMoJo writes: A sleep-tracking tech start-up founded by a Briton, which was one of Kickstarter's biggest success stories, has collapsed. Hello raised more than $2.4m (1.9m pound) for its Sense bedroom monitor via the crowdfunding site in 2014, and went on to attract a further $40.5m. Private backers included Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Facebook Messenger chief David Marcus. Hello confirmed it would "soon be shutting down", via Medium's news site. The equipment produced a unique score for the previous night's sleep and aimed to wake the owner up at the best point in their sleep cycle.
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If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
$2.4m (1.9m pound)
So, 0.0024USD, and 0.0019 Pounds? No wonder it failed, you can't buy anything with less than a penny!
Founded by a Briton? What kind of detail is that to give by itself?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
This amazes me.
Apps that tell us when to drink water, devices that track our sleep, measure our heart rate, tell us when to pee, poop and have orgasms*, what the fuck is going on?
use all those apps and devices and instead of dying at 50 because you smoked, drank and partied too much, you'll die at 50 of boredom.
Live a little, for fuck's sake.
(*) some of those are not yet available, but just wait a few years
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
He had a great idea, and a lot of energy, but flame-out was inevitable.
Over the years I have watched Kickstarter projects rise and fall. Some receive very limited funds and go on to succeed. Some receive massive funding and go on to succeed. Some receive massive funding only to fail. This marketplace of ideas is strange, but a good thing. Someone has a great idea, and they are able to receive funding by people who appreciate the idea without any technical understanding as to why it may or may not fail. Regardless of some very expensive and spectacular fails, people continue to throw money at great ideas that are at least nothing more. This does not seem to slow the whole machine down. Through such services as Kickstarter, we do not know what great innovations are to be hatched and realized that may have otherwise never seen the light of day over those great ideas that will fail. You can argue that it is a model for throwing money at a wall to see what sticks, but in this case I think that is a good thing for those things that may come but otherwise would not have.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
From the description in the blurb the "Sleep as Android" app will do all that for free, or $4 if you want to unlock extra features, and it's been around since... 2011 or so? And i'm sure there are other apps around that do similar things. I can't really understand why there was $42 million of demand, or why given that money they couldn't accomplish what others have done on presumably shoestring budgets.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Surprise, surprise, projects which are simplistic enough to be student coding assignments really don't have market value.
Don't waste money on shit like this. You'll sleep better.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Seriously, why the hell do you fancy device to track your sleep? You know what I use? A clock. That's right, that timeless device that has been around for ages.
As for this nonsense of wake you up at the right point in your sleep cycle crap, most people either need to wake up at a fixed time to show up to their place of employment, education etc.
Otherwise, you know when the correct time to wake up is? Sunrise. As soon as sunlight starts coming into my bedroom windows, it's time to wake up.
I don't need my alarm clock spying on me.
...A founder who looks like he's about 15 and wears jeans and t-shirts all the time.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
In this case, that's what happened.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
My best guess as to why companies keep coming up with sleep trackers in spite of the fact that past sleep trackers worked well and failed in the marketplace is that there's something intrinsically optimistic about the genre. Basically, everyone seems to think the reasons why the previous versions failed does not apply to the new version, even though it totally applies to the new version.
Actually, maybe this is just a software-engineer thing. Like the guy who founded "The Melt", where they eventually found out that in the restaurant business the important variables are location and whether anyone wants to eat your food, not whether you've built optimized delivery systems. [Or maybe a different phrasing is that some variables are just threshold variables, their values have to be "good enough", but there's only limited return to optimizing them too much.]
So, where did all that money go? Hmmmm.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
It's more newsworthy when one actually succeeds. I've been in 5; one of which was the fabled Kreyos Smart Watch massacre (which I recently found when cleaning up and promptly threw away), two which were DOA and got cancelled before production (at least I got my money back), one which turned out to be a repacked speaker from a Chinese company (for twice the price). The last debacle was the Qube Smart Lights which are over a year late and new lies everyday. Never again. I see "crowdfund" in an article and I don't even click anymore.
I'm guessing "Read the rest of this comment..." is based on the number of characters...maybe it should also be based on the number of lines.
A startup would ideally be concerned about discoverability of their product. If not, then good riddance.
Just the name "hello" and "sense" are pompous and arrogant.
Q: oh, what's the name of your company?
A: hello!
Q: what the hell?
I mean come on, when does "hello" transmogrify from a mellow greeting into some obsequious tech company selling a sleep monitor?
Kickstarters rules are insane:worse than a bankloan or selling shares because if you hit a problem which delays or sinks your project - very common in any technology project - you can find yourself having to pay the whole thing back. This is in their terms and conditions. It's insane!
Banks and shareholders accept the risk and take it on the chin if it doesn't pan out: "that's business!", but kickstarter leaves you liable to repay every cent you received! Their FAQ encourages you to negotiate with your Kickstarter funders but you have no room here: If they ask for their cash back - most of them do -
you are contractually liable to replay it.
So while no responsible entrepreneur would take Kickstarter, clueless idiots are all boots in.
Anyone with a brain considering a Kickstarter: Reconsider! Google around for the nightmare stories of people who took out kickstarter funding and found themselves on the wrong end of law suits or psycho "investors".
They keep thinking they can go on getting money from everywhere to support their unicorns
In the meantime they do nothing useful
You just have to be careful what you choose. Look at the goals, are they realistic? Look at the people involved. Are that raising enough money? Do they want too much money?
I've only backed one crowdfund, the Veronica Mars movie. It had the original show runner, the main cast members (and ended up with almost all of the huge original cast). They wanted a reasonable amount of money. The production values could have been low, but it wasn't something that was a concern. If they produced a TV-episode like movie, I would have been ok with that.
The goals were not over the top, and the people had a track record of success.
Tech products from people that have never mass produced something is a bigger risk than TV episodes or indy games (unless it's a wing commander successor games).
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
aimed to wake the owner up at the best point in their sleep cycle
And here I have my body, which wakes me automatically at the best point in my sleep cycle, i.e. when I'm rested. But hey, wetware is not cool and does not attract startup funding...
(Now it would be cool to be able to determine the best time to go to sleep so the wakeup point coincides with when I need to get ready to be at work in time. So far T-8hours has done fairly well for me, and if I wake up too early, well, there's always little tasks to be done.)
How was this funded when there has been a similar product in the app store for years ie. SleepCycle.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I call your anecdote and raise you my own: at least 15 successful projects on various platforms. I tossed out the CHIP I funded, but still use the aluminum wallet. Quite happy with my success rate.
Maybe you're buying into over-hyped projects? That was my mistake with CHIP - look for the little-but-useful ones instead.
It's more newsworthy when one actually succeeds.
I've done 30 or so, and while some run over time, most have produced the final product, and only two are still in progress. Perhaps you are just bad at choosing what to back? Still, a friend who is pretty much a professional Kickstarter Organizer has said that it is pretty much a matter of betting you reputation and personal contacts. Most people don't back something they don't know about or whose creators aren't already known. Personally, the stuff I back is pretty much all small runs by small companies for niche products or one off items by artists and writers that already have produced product that I am familiar with. I doubt I'd ever do the sort of hardware projects you seem to.
You just have to be careful what you choose. Look at the goals, are they realistic? Look at the people involved. Are that raising enough money? Do they want too much money?
Look at if they have ever done anything previously. Seriously, jumping in on an out of nowhere hardware gadget that seems great that doesn't have a prototype is just begging to wish you had played the lotto instead. Even if they do have a prototype, it might be easy to produce twenty of such items in their spare time and send to backers, but if they get successful and need to produce 10,000, the added complication will often cause them to fail. If somebody is producing a significant item, such as a physical product, and doesn't have a company, pervious successful Kickstarter, or some sort of history behind them, it's probably going to fail.