Pixate - beautiful native mobile apps with CSS

I'm getting the same vibe. And I'm beginning to think that allowing this kind of thing will be the downfall of Kickstarter. Yes, I will explain.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the Kickstarter concept. But in practice, their scaling seems to quickly be turning hem into a sales platform that has no controls or accountability.

And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash". And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that -- by all means, people should be free to do what they wish with their money, and the Kickstarter campaign will probably work out beautifully for them. That's great.

But this whole perception of Kickstarter being a place for bootstrapping interesting projects is turning into a dangerous myth. Like many things before it, Kickstarter is becoming a place for people with money (and/or obvious ability to make money), to make even more money, though marketing under a vague guise of "bootstrapping", with no checks or balances to keep people honest.

This isn't an accusation leveled at Pixate -- I don't believe they're doing anything wrong and I have huge faith in YC's filtering. But once enough clever people figure out that you can earn a killing or huge bonus on top of anything, just by tacking on a nice Kickstarter campaign, it will become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then people will move on to the next thing, and the cycle will repeat.

Yes, it's becoming legal sometime later this year or very early next year. SEC is currently working on the regulations that we'll all have to follow in making use of it.

It is very very easy to create a nice demo, the difference beteween that and a nice product is lots and lots of time, effort and money.

There is a balance to be made between 'we have this idea and need money to build it' and 'we are serious about this, we have done X much already, we need money to go over the finish line'

"I just saw that it's retailing for $299. It all feels rather cynical."

Huh? For a $99 pledge, you get the $299 license when it launches, it looks like.

This looks like every other product kickstarter, which essentially are saying, "We've invested considerable time and money. We're committed. We'd love to have you pitch in to help accelerate us and get us over the finish line. In exchange, your pledges entitle you to discounts and other favors."

> And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash".

I fully agree. Honestly, I hope both that this campaign fails and that the guys at Pixate are able to develop and launch their product successfully. The point of Kickstarter is to enable creative endeavours that would have trouble succeeding in a market environment -- a talented friend of mine financed his first short film via a similar site, which will hopefully get him a foot in the door of filmmaking. In his case, the Kickstarter idea is a great thing: It guarantees artistic independence and audience involvement.

This app, however, already has backing and will easily make plenty of money on the market. It's not a catastrophe in the long haul, but I sincerely hope this doesn't catch on: That's not audience involvement, that's a commercial transaction. You give me money, I give you product. On a larger scale, it's abusing opportunities for people who have few, which is particularly nefarious if it comes from people who have no need to beg.