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Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

vintedgoods.com

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Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#31

Post by camiller »

rprasad wrote: post #27
goatforce5 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off!" "Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! Good luck! You'll need it!" [Kids post to kickstarter and get tons of funding. Mentor decides that maybe he wants some of that action.] How much funding had been pledged before Kickstarter pulled the plug?

Based on the conflicting statements the interns wrote, this is how I would put it: "Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off! [And we're taking your designs with us!]" "Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! [I don't know that you're taking any of my designs to create competing products.] Good luck! You'll need it [because you don't have any designs and it will take you a while to come up with go…

A admittedly cursory look at both websites doesn't show any obvious copying (unless there is some sort if internal structural magic you can't see in pictures). Besides, the article only mentioned things like the website navigation and promo pictures. Not product infringement. Although as others have mentioned, we are only getting one side of the story.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#32

Post by ChuckMcM »

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #24
stcredzero wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Figure out a way to route all of your writing through your search engine, and have it flag phrases which do not occur in its database, or which occur much less frequently than similar ones. So, in this case, it would ask: "Did you mean 'desert planet'?" Or, one could build a table of trigrams and bi-grams for English words and use that in the spell checker. It would be helpful to have some sort of approximate index…

My suggestion was for Blekko, where he works. It just occurred to me that there are interesting possibilities in connecting a search engine with a word processor. Anyway, even though your table/index thingy would work, it's availability and/or accuracy might suffer from whatever manual intervention which would be necessary for maintenance, but mostly, it would not have the advantage of constant updates from crawling…

I caught the reference, and have been idly thinking about ways to plug the generic AJAX style text edit box into an API that allows for spelling analysis. (this is more analysis than correction, as you point out). Not surprisingly if you get aggressive about the corrections folks complain.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#33

Post by Tipzntrix »

colindoc84 wrote: post #30
Tipzntrix wrote: post #19

Tsk, it stings that the timing is so poor. It's almost malicious to pull the rug in the eleventh hour like that. I agree that the story is pretty one-sided here. The posts reeks of PC, sanitized writing which is to be expected, considering they will be going to court soon. Motives are well hidden and the overall tone of how each interaction between the Vinted and their mentors sounds way too congenial.

It's certainly better to pull it before the money is distributed. It sucks but the money going to the bank account of Vinted Goods is only going to make the situation messier.

Right, I agree with that. I will clarify stating that the order should have probably been done earlier rather than just before all the plans are in place.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#34

Post by tjic »

sixQuarks wrote: post #8

It does feel like something fishy is going on, because we're only getting one side of the story. Regardless, VintedGoods is now getting a ton of free publicity.

> It does feel like something fishy is going on

I'd really like to see the letter.

Even if names and a few other bits are redacted, it would let me tell the difference between:

a) I've got a logo up top, they've got a logo up top [ clearly craziness ]

and

b) I was producing the same three designs two years ago. These kids stole my designs, made the handles 1mm narrower, and are producing the exact same objects that I worked for years to perfect.

Big difference.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#36

Post by rexreed »

I don't understand why a company with such a fan base doesn't just add a "Donate" widget to their page and directly solicit donations rather than go through Kickstarter and give up 5-10%?

The power of Kickstarter is attracting fans you couldn't otherwise, but they take a nice big chunk. I always wonder why companies with a great story and fan base just don't solicit their fans directly instead of going through Kickstarter -- am I missing something here?

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#37

Post by efuquen »

malenm wrote: post #13

A little Googling finds the founders - Jason Sun [1] and Ben Yi [2] - both worked at KILLSPENCER [3] before starting Vinted Goods [4]. While it's true that both sites have a top nav, I couldn't find any pics of someone operating a sewing machine on either site. Either way, the products seem similar, but what would you expect from a mentor/protege relationship? [1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-sun/20/84a/124 [2]…

"Either way, the products seem similar, but what would you expect from a mentor/protege relationship?"

Seem similar in the sense that they are both selling bags? Looking at the products they both look to have completely different designs and styles, I don't see how they seem similar.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#38

Post by MartinCron »

rprasad wrote: post #25
Dystopian wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More likely - "Mentor" was training (grooming) these interns so that they would eventually work at his company. Interns decided to move out on their own (nothing wrong there), Interns signed some kind of overly general internship / employment contract that included some form of non-compete which he's leveraging to strengthen his lawsuit. If I'm mistaken and the mentor's lawsuit really is as weak as the founders excla…

The interns note that they were accused of stealing designs in the mentor's complaint. They never address this, and talk instead about website infringement issues. If the suit relates to the misappropriation of their mentor's designs, they are in hot water. If the suit is merely about them copying the website, then it may blow over fairly quickly.

If the suit is merely about them copying the website, then it may blow over fairly quickly.

If it turns out that these interns copy/pasted a few lines of CSS, then they will be righteously raked over the coals.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#39

Post by iloverobots »

malenm wrote: post #13

A little Googling finds the founders - Jason Sun [1] and Ben Yi [2] - both worked at KILLSPENCER [3] before starting Vinted Goods [4]. While it's true that both sites have a top nav, I couldn't find any pics of someone operating a sewing machine on either site. Either way, the products seem similar, but what would you expect from a mentor/protege relationship? [1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-sun/20/84a/124 [2]…

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it strange that the founders at Vinted Goods seem to leave their name off of everything. Whether or not it is fair, it makes me think that there is more to the story--particularly when their mentor shares so much about himself and his brand on his website.

Re: Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

#40

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #32
ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suggestion was for Blekko, where he works. It just occurred to me that there are interesting possibilities in connecting a search engine with a word processor. Anyway, even though your table/index thingy would work, it's availability and/or accuracy might suffer from whatever manual intervention which would be necessary for maintenance, but mostly, it would not have the advantage of constant updates from crawling…

I caught the reference, and have been idly thinking about ways to plug the generic AJAX style text edit box into an API that allows for spelling analysis. (this is more analysis than correction, as you point out). Not surprisingly if you get aggressive about the corrections folks complain.

"folks complain"

I wouldn't, as long as all of the extras can be toggled on/off. I'd actually pay a monthly fee for a search engine which has many features and is very customizable.

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