Garadget is a "cloud-enabled garage door opener" sold for $99 on Amazon. The manufacturer seemingly disabled the product, or primary advertised features of the product, in retribution for a short negative review left on Amazon. IMO Amazon should immediately drop the product when they catch wind of that, and so should any other retailer that carries it. The manufacturer's abused their relationship with the retailer (w…
Their domain still leads to an indigogo page. People should avoid startups those use crowdfunding websites as risk free capital gainer preorder pages. They don't get proper investment for a reason.
That's not always true. Ergodox-ez.com has an awesome product (a keyboard) they funded through indiegogo. Not to mention basically every 3d printer company, even the VC funded ones.
Crowdfunding (and pre-ordering in general) helps hardware startups raise the cash they need to manufacture a batch of product. Without it, they'd have to raise the full cost of the batch in advance, (which is probably a lot,) on the hope that customers will buy it up. I can't think of many startups that have that much goodwill from investors.
It makes sense to be extremely skeptical when giving your money to an early-stage company, whether as an investor or a pre-order customer. But writing off crowdfunding in general means you're writing off almost every hardware startup, including some of the great ones.