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Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

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Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#111

Post by zanny »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #62
wubbfindel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even a VC backs a project purely because they believe in it - they look for the potential return.

A VC invests large amounts of money (which isn't their own) for financial gain. That's very different to chipping in $10 of your own money for something you want to see built that probably won't be built otherwise.

I disagree. VC's put money in enterprises to get more money out. But their transaction is just money -> time -> more money. Kickstarter isn't the solution (there needs to be a platform that has legally binding contracts that the funded party deliver within some time frame or face fines / reimbursement of funds for fraudulence or negligence, the same way some investors can go after their interests if they abuse the money) but what people want is money -> time -> thing they want.

And I think it is the only way to produce information anyway, so refining the technique and recognizing its value is economics is huge.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#112

Post by usbmemorydirect »

bbx wrote: post #16

The project has reached a $196K funding while the initial goal was "only" $12K. Maybe Kickstarter should limit the amount of money to this initial goal, or at least to twice the amount of this goal. If a project looks promising, more people are likely to pledge for it. But if Cryptrade thought $12K was enough to develop their project, that's probably all they actually needed. And $12K is both less tempting for Cryptr…

We attempted to produce and sell a very similar product (in fact the kick starter creator commented on our project and thanked us for the idea): http://www.usbmemorydirect.com/cryptex_usb_drive_update_page...

We didn't go ahead with production when we realized how expensive making these USB drives would be. If they really thought 12k would be enough they were pretty naive.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#113

Post by mvkel »

Kickstarter users should demand that Kickstarter realign their incentives for project success.

As it stands now, Kickstarter has zero incentive to ensure a project succeeds; they make money on funding transactions and that's it. "Who cares if the project is vapor? We got our money."

They could easily make an additional revenue stream out of it. Instead of just taking X% of each transaction, they can add an additional "delivered project" fee in exchange for more exposure on the homepage, social media channels, etc.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#114

Post by mratzloff »

kissickas wrote: post #101
mratzloff wrote: post #81

The video features F. Komaya, Product Development Director at Bitwize SARL and Lead Designer for Crypteks Inc. Bitwize is a web design company in Lebanon.[1] Sorry, but I'm not going to be sending money to someone in Lebanon no matter how good the CAD renders look. [1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/bitwize-sarl/62/b19/256

Why not? I honestly have no idea what point you're making.

Hezbollah.

But I was also under the (incorrect) assumption that if the project is in the US that I as a US citizen would be able to file a claim in small claims court across state lines in my own jurisdiction should the Kickstarter project owner fail to deliver on his end of the contract.

A contract is largely useless if you have no practical recourse in the event of fraud.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#115

Post by nightski »

nightski wrote: post #57
officemonkey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a huge incentive to keep backers comfortable with using Kickstarter. Too many "scamstarter" projects and it's their brand which takes the hit.

This makes no sense. If you are concerned, don't back a project that is already 100% funded...

I don't understand the down vote. People actively choose to back projects that are past 100% funding. This means they want to participate. Setting an arbitrary limit in order to protect people seems ridiculous when the information about funding levels is right there, in real time. How is contributing when the project is at 150% funding any more risky than when it is at 50%? You are still in for the same pledge amount.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#116

Post by jdechko »

makomk wrote: post #87
didibus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting by only giving them the amount of money they said they needed would be nice. 196 000$ of a 12 000$ goal, that's ridiculous, and very tempting to just disappear away with.

The trouble is that, particularly with physical products, being overfunded often means the project does need more money up-front than originally estimated. For example, they may need to change their production process to one that has higher upfrunt costs but allows for higher volume.

Yes. But with economies of scale each individual unit should cost less than the one before it. That's why you have minimum runs for production. Any less and the manufacturer doesn't make enough money to be worthwhile. Fixed cost vs unit cost, etc.

With things like aircraft, the first one costs billions because of the R&D having gone into it. But by the time you roll out the hundredth F-22, you've learned a lot about the process and refined the techniques. Same thing with processors.

One of the biggest downsides of kickstarter projects is that the creators have some engineering/ design skills but seem to have practically no business skills. (I'm generalizing here for the sake of argument).

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#117

Post by avalaunch »

nightski wrote: post #115
nightski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. If you are concerned, don't back a project that is already 100% funded...

I don't understand the down vote. People actively choose to back projects that are past 100% funding. This means they want to participate. Setting an arbitrary limit in order to protect people seems ridiculous when the information about funding levels is right there, in real time. How is contributing when the project is at 150% funding any more risky than when it is at 50%? You are still in for the same pledge amount…

The only legitimate concern I could see is that by allowing projects to fund well over 100%, you're potentially increasing the risk to all backers as an easier to manage 12k project balloons into a very complex and potentially hard to manage 200k project.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#118

Post by kalleboo »

makomk wrote: post #89
run4yourlives wrote: post #56

I'm actually surprised it took this long for someone to "take the money and run". It seemed like one of the major issues with kickstarter, and I'm surprised they don't seem to have given it much thought.

It didn't. Off-hand, HanFree and Lockpicks by Open Locksport are both confirmed to have taken the money and run by the project creator, and ZionEyez and a whole bunch of others have simply gone silent.

The Open Locksport guy had a mental breakdown and the project has been taken over by new management and it seems like they're making (slow) progress now.

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#119

Post by shabble »

jdechko wrote: post #116
makomk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is that, particularly with physical products, being overfunded often means the project does need more money up-front than originally estimated. For example, they may need to change their production process to one that has higher upfrunt costs but allows for higher volume.

Yes. But with economies of scale each individual unit should cost less than the one before it. That's why you have minimum runs for production. Any less and the manufacturer doesn't make enough money to be worthwhile. Fixed cost vs unit cost, etc. With things like aircraft, the first one costs billions because of the R&D having gone into it. But by the time you roll out the hundredth F-22, you've learned a lot about…

> But with economies of scale each individual unit should cost less than the one before it.

Not really. At pretty much every step of the mass-production pyramid (higher volume, lower per-unit cost), there are significant capital costs involved. The tooling for a injection mold can be in the $10-100k+. That means the first unit in subsequent process is going to be huge, because you've got nothing to amortise it over yet. Even if the process change is free, there's almost certainly going to be some NRE work updating your designs, optimising DfM, etc.

There's an example mentioned in the excellent 'The Factory Floor'[1] where going from single-colour injection-molding plus hand-painting (with 50% defect rate) to a 'dual shot' injection-mold (with 0% defect rate) ended up costing $0.94/unit (vs $0.70 for the former; 35c each, and throwing away half)

Likewise, for small runs handing it off to Shapeways might well be the most cost-effective, but after a certain size, it would be madness. Firstcut/Protomold[2] look like they're stepping up to be the medium-scale option, which is nice.

[1] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=2850

[2] http://www.wired.com/design/2013/01/protomold/

Re: Kickstarter project raised $196K and stopped responding

#120

Post by alpb »

jmharvey wrote: post #95
tekacs wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems rather unlikely (hyperbole, to be frank) - those using Kickstarter are surely aware of the nature of the platform, not thinking of it as a checkout. Unless the refund process is unduly complex, there doesn't seem to be an obvious reason why the vast majority of backers wouldn't ask for a refund.

I think a lot more Kickstarter backers (especially on big projects like this one that attract a lot of first-time backers) think of Kickstarter as a checkout than as a way to contribute to cool projects and get something in return if the project succeeds.

I don't. I actually invest in projects and wait for them to get their product out. Sometimes I just back projects for donation (e.g. remember Aaronsw Documentary project).
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