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Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Customers' Money, Then Shuts Downs (mercurynews.com) 166

Posted by EditorDavid from the money-for-nothing dept.
An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup: A Bay Area startup that promised to give music lovers state-of-the-art wireless earphones is instead closing its doors, becoming the latest in a string of crowd-funded companies to take customers' money and shut down without shipping a product. San Francisco-based Kanoa ran out of capital and shut down this week, leaving in the lurch scores of customers who paid $150 or more to pre-order high-tech earphones they never received. The company emailed customers on Wednesday to break the bad news, directing them to a letter posted on the Kanoa website...

Kanoa is just the latest local crowdfunded company to disappoint customers. Last summer San Francisco-based startup Skully imploded, to the dismay of 3,000 customers who paid $1,500 each for high-tech motorcycle helmets they never received. In February, Lily Robotics, another San Francisco-based startup, filed for bankruptcy. Unlike Skully and Kanoa, Lily promised to reimburse the more than 60,000 customers who paid for but never received its camera drones.
In a letter online the company claimed they are "in negotiations" with potential investors, "and also large tech companies on an acquisition" -- but unless and until funding materializes, "we do not have enough capital to stay operational..."

"We know you are disappointed, and can only ask that you understand that we genuinely tried."
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Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Customers' Money, Then Shuts Downs More

Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Customers' Money, Then Shuts Downs

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  • Duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @02:45AM (#55092111) Homepage

    It's a well-known risk of crowdfunding and backers are warned about this risk a gazillion times.
    This shouldn't be shocking to anybody even remotely sane.
    If you're outraged by this, you should instead be outraged by the psychiatrics wards' inability to keep you locked up inside.

    • Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @02:48AM (#55092117)

      Now average people know what venture capital people feel like with most startups.

      • Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)

        by David_Hart ( 1184661 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @03:31AM (#55092231)

        Now average people know what venture capital people feel like with most startups.

        Not quite true, companies that succeed offset the ones that fail for venture funds, that is if you are smart venture capital investor. Plus venture funds have a say in how the money is spent.

        When putting money into crowdfunding sites the only thing you might get back from the ones that succeed is the original investment in the form of a product. Basically, much more risky than venture funding with few of the rewards. In other words, kiss your "investment" goodbye and just be happy if a Fedex box shows up at your door a year down the line.

        • The venture capitalists does more research then people do on a crowd funding site.
          They will normally dig into the companies books, check out the companies location and make sure they are ready to invest big money into an idea.
          However most venture capitalists will invest more money investigating a company then most crowd source investors will put in.
          So there are risks for them just hunting enough wrong companies could put them out of business.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            Exactly. So often, people get all giddy about a brilliant idea, and don't understand that it takes more than a good invention to make a good company. If the management doesn't have business expertise, the odds are extremely high that they will fail. If you want to learn to invest the right way, you should be learning from places like http://www.aaii.com/ [aaii.com] I got a lifetime membership for $400 back around 1990, and it's easily paid for itself.

        • Unfortunately federal laws designed to protect the masses prevent Kickstarter and similar companies from allowing equity as a reward for backing, thus ensuring the real gains go to the rich.

        • Well in the same way as a VC, you should only spend money you can afford to lose. Your offset is that you are receiving a salary from someone. If you aren't, then you should question why you are allowing yourself to spend that money.

      • Re:Duh (Score:4)

        by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @04:52AM (#55092365)

        Now average people know what venture capital people feel like with most startups.

        No. This was not like venture capitalism; instead it was people buying something that had yet to be manufactured, tested, and independently reviewed. It is like, but worse than, going into a shop, paying for something you see on the shelf, and then you throw a dice and you only receive the item if you get a six.

        And they are not "average people", they are idiots who don't know how best to spend their money ... oh wait ..

    • It's a well-known risk of crowdfunding and backers are warned about this risk a gazillion times.

      Its a well known risk of any new startup regardless of where the funding is crowdsourced, friends and family, angel investors, venture capitalists, etc.

      When things take longer than expected and they burn through all the money and have to shut down, does it matter where that money originally came from? Did many crowdfunding contributors even do any "due diligence" research beyond reading the project web page? I bet friends and family do better "due diligence".

      FWIW ... I've had VCs explain to me they wa

      • Its almost too easy to get money from crowd-funding (pre sales). You really don't need to know much about business or convey that knowledge. Many entrepreneurs completely underestimate the cost and challenges of bringing a product to market. They think it will be simple because they have a prototype. Then they realize that haven't worked out final bugs to make it user proof, haven't figured out how to manufacture easily and need to re-design for that. Haven't figured out how to source quality components at

    • It's a well-known risk of crowdfunding and backers are warned about this risk a gazillion times.

      Folks used to be very wary about pursuing dubious "Get Rich Quick!" business offerings, like shares of the Brooklyn Bridge over swampland in Florida. Hell, business scams are as old a humanity. Just look at that old Jewish Fairy Tale about the first business scam involving Eve, a snake and an apple. (No, sorry, you'll have to Google for the GIFs yourselves).

      But somehow the lure of "high-tech" diffuses the caution that most folks usually have. This new gadget IS really going to be bigger than Facebook,

      • The corruption of established tech (Score:5, Interesting)

        by swb ( 14022 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @06:41AM (#55092491)

        I think the reason that high tech crowdfunded products are so popular isn't due to the inherent foolishness of the people who back them, but because of the failure of established technology companies to actually meet market demand.

        Too many products are crippled by their parent company or VC financing MBAs who look at the product and figure out how it can be manipulated into 5 years of new models and revisions, which features can be withheld or turned into vendor exclusive options or upgrades, and so on.

        The high tech landscape at all levels from consumer to enterprise is littered with good technology corrupted by relentless marketing and financial scheming to extract the maximum amount of money from the buyer, and quite often with the side effect of not fixing bugs or making basic functionality or features completely reliable.

        It seems like so many kickstarter projects are attempts to fix broken products with accessories that ought to be built in features or produce a variant of a product that wasn't crippled at birth by its maker for whatever marketing or long-term pricing games they have.

        • I think the reason that high tech crowdfunded products are so popular isn't due to the inherent foolishness of the people who back them, but because of the failure of established technology companies to actually meet market demand.

          Is it a failure to meet market demand when the technology just isnt there yet?

          Remember that video compression scammer that was peddling bullshit high quality video on 56K modems? Video compression technology STILL isnt there decades later even after massive improvements. The demand for it continues to be there. Some things just arent possible in actuality regardless of "the demand" for those things.

          I think the root of the "crowd funding problem" is the simplicity in engaging in it. Lots of people are j

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            Some things just arent possible in actuality regardless of "the demand" for those things.

            I've been waiting for my flying car as long as I can remember, but the history goes back much further http://auto.howstuffworks.com/... [howstuffworks.com]

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chihowa ( 366380 )

          Too many products are crippled by their parent company or VC financing MBAs who look at the product and figure out how it can be manipulated into 5 years of new models and revisions, which features can be withheld or turned into vendor exclusive options or upgrades, and so on.

          I only wish this were the case. It seems like the typical MO of the MBA who doesn't understand the product is to get it developed to a marketable state and then fire all of the R&D staff with no thought to future products. I don't know if they think that they'll be able to sell the same product forever or if they just assume that they'll get their bonuses and move on before the strategy backfires, but it seems to be a recurring theme.

        • Literally everything you and I are using to post on Slashdot and this trillion(?) dollar internet infrastructure was made without crowd-sourcing.

          I think we'll be okay.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        Agreed, but it's the same lure used to get people who are bad at math, to play the lottery, because they want to get rich quick or think they actually have any kind of realistic chance. All the while, the majority of the people (70% according to one study...google it) who do hit, go broke because they don't know how to handle money in the first place.

    • you should instead be outraged by the psychiatrics wards' inability to keep you locked up inside.

      Why do you think I keep going back everyday, scream obscenities at them from outside and then run away before they can grab me? How could those idiots let me out in the first place?! ;)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        I know you're joking, and it was good (now I'll take the off-topic hit), but our good intentioned release of the mentally ill in the 60s & 70s has been a long term failure, and we've known that and done next to nothing about it, and yet we wonder how the mentally ill get access to guns. Here's a NYT article from '84.

        (not paywalled)
        http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10... [nytimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A better model would be pre-orders that the company can then take to other investors as evidence that their product is in demand.

      Alternatively Kickstarter could have a team that evaluates proposals in detail, but they make a lot of money from these scams so that's not going to happen.

      • There are any kickstarter companies that do exactly this. Nothing quite gets a VC's attention as knowing that 100's or 1000's of people have put up cold hard cash to pre-purchase your product

        • If you have concrete orders and a product, you can go to a banker for funds. No need to give a VC control, when you can just pay interest.

    • Investing is risky.

      But this could easily be fraud. I say show your work or it IS fraud. If your failed attempts to do the thing that you said you were going to do and took money to do are not documented for public scrutiny, then thats a very serious thing.

      Invest in a corporation and the corporation wastes the money, there will be a court case, and jail time may be served. Not so for crowd funding because its indemnified up front with "investors are warned about this risk a gazillion times."

      • How do you tell the difference between a company that purposely set out on an impossible task because they knew the task would attract crowdfunding they could use to pay their salaries, and then puts all possible effort into it and of course fails... versus a company that has totally honest intentions?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        Investing is risky

        Investing has a range of risks, which is why people talk about risk v. reward. Typically, higher rewards go along with higher risk that you'll lose your investment, You need to assess your own risk tolerance (how much can you afford to lose, is the timing right, etc.), Don't put your kids college funds into a start up if you're not willing to say, sorry but you're on your own. Plunking cash into the S&P500 has been a long term winner (the majority of "experts" don't beat it over time, and they'll ch

    • Re: Duh (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dougdonovan ( 646766 )
      the general public always has been and always will be gullible.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      The point, at least to most crowd funding efforts, is to create a kind of hybrid of purchasing and investing.

      Well, this is the "investing" half of the equation: sometimes you lose.

      But you have a chance to change the world, at least in a small but observable way; a way that otherwise only venture capitalists would get to experience.

      • The point, at least to most crowd funding efforts, is to create a kind of hybrid of purchasing and investing.

        No, crowdfunding is intended to create an illusion of investing, but in reality, there is no investment from the crowds, there is no ownership by the crowds.

        People need to remember what happened with Oculus Rift. The Kickstarter suckers provided the seed funding, yet, when the company was sold for $2.3B, the suckers got nothing. I don't think they even got their headsets, did they?

    • But stories like this are still important as a reminder this actually DOES happen.

    • Correct title would be : "Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Investors Money, Then Shuts Downs"

    • So, now, imagine this scenario with the company based in a country with a UBI program.

      How many workers could "hang with" the company while it got it's act together because they weren't going to be out on the street, starving, if they did so?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        What incentive would they have to work there at all if they had UBI? Even if it was just for the extra money, wouldn't they be risking working for nothing when they could go elsewhere and remove that risk?

    • What gets me are products that don't abide by the laws of physics of thermodynamics, such as battery powered, compressor air conditioners. The concept is cool, but when looking at the photos of the prototype units, they have no exhaust hose (or pair of hoses for decent efficiency in blowing warm air away.) Or they expect 500-1000 BTUs to actually do much.

      What blows my mind is that these items get crowdfunded in days, then the people who paid into it wonder why they are getting something other than "oops,

  • Not a problem (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @02:46AM (#55092115)

    Crowdfunding is not a game that promises to deliver. Realistically, it is a 50:50 thing and people need to understand that and need to stop complaining that it is not a 100% thing. On the plus side, you get a 50% change of getting something you would otherwise have a zero chance. If you take the probability of failure into account, it is actually a pretty good deal in many cases (if you want what is being promised). Also, if you are somewhat realistic in your expectation, you can recognize campaigns that have only a very low probability to actually deliver.

    That said, if you expect it to be a 100% thing, then stay away from it as you have _not_ understood what this is about.

    • 50:50? More like 5:95.

      • Re: Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)

        by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Sunday August 27, 2017 @03:09AM (#55092191) Journal

        Some actual numbers, old and incomplete:

        https://www.crowdfundinsider.c... [crowdfundinsider.com]

        That's the best I could find.

        • That's only about projects which are successful from the project starter's perspective, i.e. successfully funded. Failure to deliver or delivery of incomplete or unsatisfying products is not counted.

          • At least with Kickstarter, you're only charged if the project is funded. If I contribute to a fund that never hits its goal, it doesn't matter if I don't get anything because I didn't pay anything.

      • Re:Not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moronoxyd ( 1000371 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @03:51AM (#55092271)

        Of the 100+ projects I supported on Kickstarter, way more than 50% have delivered. Usually later than promised, sometimes not quite the way it was originally envisioned. But they delivered.

        The trick is to choose the projects you support not based on 'oh, that sounds cool' but to check if the project starter seems to know what they are doing, if they considered potential problems and if they have a reasonable time table.

        • Not to get too personal, but could you list a few you supported, both some that succeeded and some that failed? or the 'type' of product if you can?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Same here. Some actual intelligence required, as always when you invest money speculatively. There is a class of people that lack that intelligence and then complain when they get bitten.

      • I'm running around a 90% success rate kickstarting things. Here are my numbers:

        Video Games: 13/15 @~$20 each
        Books: 8/8 @~$15 each
        Board/Card Games 7/7 @~$35 each
        Music Albums: 2/2 @~$75 each
        CRISPR Gene Editing: 0/1 @$40

        So not 100% success there, but really not a ton of wasted money either. I'm happy to have helped a number of these things come into being. I know for a fact that a lot of them would not have existed without myself and a number of others being willing to take a risk.

        Suc

      • If all you back on Kickstarter are pipe-dream impossible products, then, yeah - 5:95 could be your success rate.

        I've done about 4 of these things, one returned 1/2 of my money with a promise to try to return the other half, another delivered me a crappy product that didn't work even close to as advertised, and the other two delivered early product as promised.

    • Re:Not a problem (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @03:42AM (#55092261)

      No, companies and startups need to start to learn how large companies develop products.

      We don't come up with an idea and then make 100,000 of them.

      We make 1. Work it until it breaks.

      Figure out what went wrong.

      Then we make 100. And we break all of them again.

      Along the way we figure out our certifications, tooling, suppliers, quality control, end pricing, and all the other issues Kickstarters run into.

      I want a crowdsourcing/funding site that stages the release of money to follow the proper way to release a product.

      • Build 50 prototypes. Send it to 'developers'. Garner feedback.
      • Build 500 prototypes. Send it to 'early adopters'. Garner feedback.
      • Repeat until there's a shippable.

      Round 1 buyers will want it enough they'll pay the premium. Take pre-orders for the final conceptualized product from the beginning. Don't release those funds until it's ready for an actual pre-order.

      Hell put them in a mutual fund and turn it into a 'savings' account for people that can't seem to save money. A majority of Americans don't have $500 in savings [cnn.com] but I would bet more would if you add in failed crowd funding campaigns. If the campaign fails you just have money in a mutual fund or savings account; surprise you have something more than nothing.

      • No, companies and startups need to start to learn how large companies develop products.

        Companies and start-ups do. What is typically referred to as a "start-up" here in the crowdfunding realm, is a couple of kids with an idea. That doesn't make it a startup and one of the best ways of learning is actually by doing.

        We make 1. Work it until it breaks.

        Figure out what went wrong.

        Then we make 100. And we break all of them again.

        That is a great process if you have an investor that will invest in R&D. That is not how crowdfunding works.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You really have not understood how crowdfunding works. The judgment whether someone asking for funding is doing it right rests solely with the crowd-member investors and that is both its strength and weakness.

  • Crowdfunding is not pre-ordering (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JarekC ( 544383 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @02:48AM (#55092119)
    People confuse crowdfunding with pre-ordering. In crowdfunding you sponsor someone's attempt to achieve something, because you want it to happen. Perks are just an additional incentive. Sometimes a perk happens to be a product, but it's still a perk for your sponsorship, not something you bought or pre-ordered.

    • Re:Crowdfunding is not pre-ordering (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Talla ( 95956 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @04:04AM (#55092295)

      People confuse crowdfunding with pre-ordering. In crowdfunding you sponsor someone's attempt to achieve something, because you want it to happen. Perks are just an additional incentive. Sometimes a perk happens to be a product, but it's still a perk for your sponsorship, not something you bought or pre-ordered.

      If that's what it was marketed as then it would be ok, but in these cases it was not. It's a preorder when they ask for exactly $1500 and promise you a helmet in return. In reality it is an investment with no upside (you only get your money back in the form of a product if it succeeds) and a huge downside.

      • Every crowd-funded project I've seen has a blurb at the end saying that it may fail and you may lose your money.

        But I agree with you that crowdfunding (in its current state) is just a half-assed version of venture capitalism where the project owner retains 100% ownership and control, instead of having to share it with the people putting up the money. I've only "contributed" to two projects - one was an art project, and the other was for a device [kickstarter.com] which I always wondered why it didn't exist and the projec

  • Not customers (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

    None of these people were customers. They were charitable people donating to a yet unstarted business with the hope of getting something in return.

    The sooner the media stops calling everyone who parts with money a "customer" the sooner people may start setting their expectations straight. Businesses have failed at inception for millennia. It's only recent that we decide that it's constantly newsworthy when a small insignificant one with little investment fails.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Boronx ( 228853 )

      It's also only recently that thousands of people will gift money to a commercial business. Previously, a company had to sell a product or give away a portion of ownership.

      • Not at all. It's only recently that the pie got divided into something smaller (I'm happy with getting one of your products), and that it is facilitated by the internet.

        The idea of gifting money to start a business is as old as business itself.

  • * Any headphones
    * Any chargers
    * Any pens
    * Any watches
    * Any jerky
    * Any box
    * Anything for your pet
    * "World's first" anything
    * "Premium" anything

  • If I were a conman, I would hang around crowdfunding sites to harvest suckers.

    When a bank or venture capitalists funds a product or company, they make money out of it if the product is successful - they take a risk with an upside. In a crowded funded product, the funders are fools who don't partake in the success of the product in the off chance that the product is successful.

    • If I were a conman, I would hang around crowdfunding sites to harvest suckers.

      When a bank or venture capitalists funds a product or company, they make money out of it if the product is successful - they take a risk with an upside. In a crowded funded product, the funders are fools who don't partake in the success of the product in the off chance that the product is successful.

      VCs also own the project. They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea. Crowdfunding contributors have no such control.

      • They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea.

        I dont think they restrict themselves to the original idea. When they are booting the guy that couldnt deliver [X], they bring in someone that will make the best of whats left, and no longer give a shit if [X] comes out the other end or not. If the first guy fails, then the plan has already failed. The sunk costs arent chased because that whole line of thinking is a fallacy.

        Thats how you end up with things like "snuggies" and "spray-on hair." These werent the intended goal. They were not [X]. These were

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          They will fire founders who are failing and bring in professionals to actually deliver on the original idea.

          I dont think they restrict themselves to the original idea. When they are booting the guy that couldnt deliver [X], they bring in someone that will make the best of whats left, and no longer give a shit if [X] comes out the other end or not.

          True, sometimes there is a salvage operation, but sometimes there is just a change to more competent leadership. Sometime the problem was the team, not the original idea.

  • These things are always a risk. If you're going to put your money in a company for a yet-to-be released product, make sure they have an existing track record. If they're on Kickstarter (or similar), check their previous campaigns; were they successful? are their products useful? did they deliver what they promised? If they're an established company, maybe question why they're turning to crowdfunding instead of investor backing; is the product all it's cracked up to be? is the company doing well financially?

  • Where's my Dashbot/Voder?
    "Shipping in July"
    No update since April.

  • It all unfolded after THIS review (Score:5, Informative)

    by cjeze ( 596987 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @03:37AM (#55092249)

    KANOA send headphones for review, this guy THOROUGHLY reviewed them and SLAUGHTER the product, shortly after they closed their web page

    https://videosift.com/video/Re... [videosift.com]

    • Ew... yeah, that would have killed any inclination of actually doing business with that company for me as well.

      I guess they'd have been better off if they had just repackaged a generic no-brand headset and sold that. At least it would have worked better...

    • I am pretty sure you can't have blue tooth device having signal go through your body. When it is my back pocket, I cannot hear any signals. Having tried with two different manufacturer I was told that if there is nothing to bounce the signal off, e.g. outside, it does not go through the body and that is why it gets interrupted, and they recommend a front pocket. Now i don't know if it is a load of crap, an EE can chime in, that would be interesting to know, my front pocket in the mean time being too loaded

      • Water absorbs 2.4 GHz signals pretty well (which is a big part of the reason microwaves use that frequency to heat food) and the human body is mostly water, so yes... the body does block bluetooth signals fairly well.

  • ICO (Score:2)

    by lannocc ( 568669 )
    They should have put their solution on a blockchain so they could have raised $10+ million with an ICO!
  • What? Earphones for $150? LOL!

  • Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @08:15AM (#55092705) Homepage

    Okay, please explain.

    You want a product. You want a product so bad that you finance the company to make it before it even exists. Your reward for doing this is to receive the product.

    Is this not just pre-ordering something that doesn't exist? If it works and is successful, you'll be able to pick one up not long after they make them anyway, whether you invested or not. If it doesn't work, you're going to lose money or receive a substandard product.

    What's in it for you to crowd-fund that kind of thing?

    Now, I have crowdfunded things. Literally, they were all limited run, support-for-the-creators projects, where the product wouldn't exist afterwards and/or the product wouldn't get made otherwise where the creators had a proven history of success.

    For example, Defense Grid 2. It couldn't have happened without the kickstarter. The people behind it had proven themselves already. There was in fact already a substantial amount of the game complete. They weren't reliant on just the kickstarter. And actually I profited quite heavily as AMD gave them some graphics cards to give away to backers, I got the game, and all kinds of other stuff. Even then, that kickstarter really worried me, as it's not how I normally do things. I've only ever backed four or five small projects with a tiny percentage of my disposable income. Four succeeded, delivered the product, after having proven they could deliver a product before they even started. One stopped the kickstarter and never took the money because they found investment, and the game came out anyway (and backers got a free copy).

    But... at no point did I put money, into an unknown company, with no track history, promising to make something that didn't exist, that you'd just be able to buy normally later even if you hadn't funded it.

    I'm afraid I have to apply my normal rule here. If it doesn't exist, in a shop, to buy, today, then it's all hype and hyperbole. For anything from fancy battery technologies and electric cars, to Half-Life 3, to the latest iPhone, or even a movie.

    All the pre-hyping stuff just flies over my head, because it's all irrelevant if you can't actually buy that product yet.

    You can "invest", but what you're really doing is "donating" - to be honest I'm quite happy donating to a project where I'm enjoying the fruits of their previous labours so much that I think they deserve more. If I get something else out of that too, cool. If not, I've paid them back for something they gave me (yes... even if I have paid more than I needed to, I'm fine with that if - say - a computer game cost me almost nothing but ended up giving me hundreds of hours of entertainment.
      I've been known to buy second copies for friends, even if those friends likely won't play that game, etc. It's the only reason I'll buy DLC too... to support the original game).

    If you can't buy it today, but you could buy it tomorrow no matter what, then why would you lay down money today instead of just waiting?

  • A little spot of reality here... (Score:3)

    by kaizendojo ( 956951 ) on Sunday August 27, 2017 @09:50AM (#55092909)
    OK, so I see everyone saying "you know what your risks were" but that doesn't account for things like this: Qube Smart Lights were funded 540%. I ordered 4 bulbs well over a year ago and despite not receiving anything, the lights were being sold on a number of online site including Amazon and their own site. In fact, THEY ARE STILL TAKING ORDERS ON THEIR OWN SITE!! We're not talking about crowdfunds that for one reason or another, never get to the actual product stage; we're talking about a company that produced enough product to sell on multiple outlets yet DIDN'T SEND THE PRODUCTS TO THE BACKERS **FIRST**. Now, after 3 months of no updates they are claiming that they 'Running out of cash flow as the development time for Qube took much longer than we anticipated" among other things. They also claim "We understand the disappointment that may arise from such a decision and would like to assure each and every one of you that we remain committed to our obligations and will continue to source for new funding." yet they dissolved the LLC in California so chances of that ever happening are slim. So tell me again how this should be allowed? Tell me again how I shouldn't expect anything in return for my investment? I paid for shipping on a product I will never receive - how am I not at least entitled to a refund of the shipping?
    • Wow this is super shady. When you gave, were there clear terms and conditions, is that something that is typical or no? Seems like bare minimum terms should be that first units are shipped out to Crowdfunding supporters prior to commercial release.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      This is something that you should take to court together with others in the same situation. That is a scam!

      Megol (moderado)

  • The only type of crowdfunding product I will generally "invest" in is a computer game. And that usually requires a number of factors before I'll put any money into it. 1) It must be from someone with a track record of successful games, most likely in that genre, 2) Must be heading towards completion because I never give money to any project that is basically "I have this great idea for a game....", and 3) It isn't from a company that should be making this game without crowdfunding in the first place. This s
  • Crowdfunding...just another way to mostly fool people out of their money. Narcissist types that "just gotta be first" to show their other shallow friends "look, I got something you don't". If it's such a good idea, there would be venture capitalist that would be willing to back it. Usually, these things fail because the "startup owners" have no business plan, spend the money on crap, and then, whoops, too bad, we're broke! If I can't walk into a store, Amazon, Wally World etc...forget it. I don't "need" to

  • Looking at their past website you can at least see one problem.

    getkanoa web [archive.org]

    Unless it is on another page of the website, there's only the option on their website, to pre-order. No data on how many people backed or how much funding is there.

    Basically, this crowdfunding was very likely to fail with the backers very likely to have a high risk simply due to not being able to see how the startup is doing. There's no way to know if they've reached their goal, had enough backers or anything at all. Let's say th

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