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Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

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Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#71

Post by OverlordXenu »

meowface wrote: post #69
thehooplehead wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. How about in this thread? I was watched the video waiting for some big reveal, but was sort of let down by the offering. The site says more about the notebook's quality than the OCR/digitization, which is what I was more interested in.

I was hoping for a pen that simultaneously puts ink on the page and also tracks exactly what you write/draw and uploads it every minute or so. It'd probably be too difficult to do that with a tactile sensor, so perhaps a tiny camera could be used instead? I assume neither of those are very practical at the moment, otherwise a company would've tried it already.

They do exist ( http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/smartpen/ ) but I have no idea if they're any good. You have to use their pen and their paper… I like my Field Notes and Lamy.

Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#72

Post by egypturnash »

revolly wrote: post #49

Livescribe pen been on the market for years. It's good and you do not have to wait for 5(!) days for digitized version - it's there automatically. Could you please explain me, why would you want to use service like Modnotebooks? Am I missing something?

Livescribe just picks up "you drew a line here". For an artist, this is not enough. You need to pick up how hard the line was drawn, you need to pick up pulling out colored pencils or markers or paint and poking at your sketchbook that way.

I personally don't do much finished work in my sketchbook - I'm all about Illustrator - but a lot of my friends still love traditional media, and will casually whip out something amazing in their sketchbook because it's what they have to work on when the urge strikes.

Artists are an extreme example, a non-artist still might be using multiple colors for their notes and whatnot.

Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#73

Post by SimHacker »

avalaunch wrote: post #28
unreal37 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was premeditated either, but after reading the article it seems it worked out great for them being able to get Mashable and Verge articles, collect 2,000 emails from Kickstarter backers, and then not have to pay Kickstarter a dime. I'm sure the PR company wasn't too thrilled at losing their 7% cut of the proceeds either. But on the whole, it seems they have a really cool product and will do well. Goo…

From the article it doesn't sound like the PR company completely let them off the hook. It says Fundzinger "offered a deal that worked for us." As an aside, has anyone else worked with Fundzinger? Sounds like an interesting business model.

They highly endorsed "fundzinger" -- but that's not what some people have been saying: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1119213/fundzinger-do-not-us...

It shows up near the top of the google results for fundzinger, and a fishy sock puppet "Tim Koteke" showed up in thread and did some damage control for fundzinger. No google or linkedin hits for his name or his projects. Then once people started asking for some evidence that he wasn't just making shit up, he (or somebody) deleted the post (which is still quoted in the thread) and he disappeared.

That discussion inspired them to start this thread: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1126569/kickstarter-boost-co...

If that's the kind of "pr" fundzinger does for themselves, I doubt they do any better for their customers.

So why would they recommend fundzinger so highly? Are they just grateful they didn't have to pay them for the hours they worked (or pretended to work)? Or was there some kind of tit-for-tat: you say nice things about us and we don't charge you for canceling the project. That wouldn't surprise me much, after seeing their lame attempt at sock puppeteering.

...Maybe they should have tried to be hip and cool by calling themselves "Fundzingr", then I would have immediately known they were charlatans.

Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#74

Post by rdl »

I'm personally interested in when Kickstarter makes sense, vs. one's own self-hosted presales site. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

It seems like Kickstarter makes more sense for smaller projects, but the 15% cut and inflexibility (no bitcoins, no bulk sales, etc.) might be a bigger issue for larger projects.

The "virality" part of KS is nice, but it doesn't seem like a huge percentage of orders. The "all or nothing" part reassures people, but for a YC company or other respected entity, you could just make the same promise.

The "artificial deadline" part is nice, though.

Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#76

Post by hiharryhere »

joosters wrote: post #60
thehooplehead wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto. How about in this thread? I was watched the video waiting for some big reveal, but was sort of let down by the offering. The site says more about the notebook's quality than the OCR/digitization, which is what I was more interested in.

Do they bother to inform us how many pages each notebook contains? 10? 100? Seems pretty fundamental to me.

Had a dig around their twitter account, apparently 60 pages

I agree, pretty fundamental bit of info to omit

https://twitter.com/modnotebooks/status/445713003254513664

Re: Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

#77

Post by xerophtye »

dasil003 wrote: post #57
Timothee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the ongoing running costs though? Serving the scanned images? Sure, but if the only way to add more data to that bucket is to keep buying notebooks, that should be fairly safe. The hosting costs should be very low compared to the price of the notebook. And if you continue accessing your files, you're likely to want to buy more notebooks.

Are they hosting the images? I assumed it was relying on Dropbox/Evernote/OneNote, or at most a limited time drop.

They have their own app which integrates with dropbox/evernote/onenote for user conveneince
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