Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Customers' Money, Then Shuts Downs (mercurynews.com) 166
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."
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."
Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
Now average people know what venture capital people feel like with most startups.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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.
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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.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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.
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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:5, Insightful)
Hmm, no.
The VC invests in 30 different companies. 27-29 of them fail. The 30th returns enough on the investment to buy a product from each of the 30, the capital invested in all 30 and a small to health profit on top.
Doesn't really matter how enjoyable the product from one of those 30 is, the VC is coming out ahead of you every time.
Re: Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, no.
The VC invests in 30 different companies. 27-29 of them fail. The 30th returns enough on the investment to buy a product from each of the 30, the capital invested in all 30 and a small to health profit on top.
Doesn't really matter how enjoyable the product from one of those 30 is, the VC is coming out ahead of you every time.
VCs own a slice of the company, and can sometimes get some asset value back even if the company fails. But most crowdfunding is simply pre-sales and not ownership investment. Either way, only buy in if you are willing to lose the entire sum.
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The VC that invested in our spinoff said they hope for 1/20 winners, 15/20 craters (zero ROI), and about 4/20 also-rans that return investment, but not in any exciting timeframe or multiple. Our spinoff was apparently an also-ran, after about 8 years the VCs restructured the company and returned $0.01 to each of the initial round shareholders, some of these guys had put in hundreds of thousands in cash - but the VCs also ran a bank and they loaned the company money until the estimated value of the enterpri
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If the shipped product turns out massively enjoyable - just like VCS you are rewarded with more than what you invested.
Not true. If the product turns out to be massively enjoyable, then I will be able to buy the product even if I did not partake in crowd-funding it.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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Except the company fucked up and had no way to tell the difference between the pre-order/special-edition keys and the regular purchaser keys. So in the end everybody got the "Amphibious APC" which was a big "FUCK YOU, SUCKERS!" for everybody that pre-ordered or spent extra for the special-edition.
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This is true if, say, 25% of the kickstarters you fund succeed and you get the product for 20% of its retail price.
Is that the case? No? Didn't think so.
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Either way it's not what can be observed. To make it worthwhile, you would have to get an discount equal or greater than X% if there is an X% failure rate to make the system worth it.
Usually, all you get out of the crowdfunding is the product at the same price as everyone else. More often than not, you even pay more than the retail price would eventually be and get some "bonus" of questionable value.
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Please google "percentage of startups that fail", and tell us what Fortune and Forbes links pop up right near the top. Go ahead, you big mouthed moron, we'll wait while you go read and learn something.
Re:Duh (Score:4)
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 ..
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They are entitled to a refund.
They won't get it, but they are entitled.
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How much salary did these guys pay themselves? Without an answer they haven't lived up the bad joke post-2014 kickstarter contract (which most failed kickstarters do not).
Hence why the backers are entitled to a refund.
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verb (used with object), entitled, entitling. 1. to give (a person or thing) a title, right, or claim to something; furnish with grounds for laying claim
Nope, and it doesn't matter one iota how much they paid themselves.
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It doesn't matter what they paid themselves, what matters is that they have to disclose what they paid themselves (among other things).
Just like friends and family, angels, VCs, etc (Score:2)
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.
... I've had VCs explain to me they wa
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
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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)
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.
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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
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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]
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?! ;)
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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]
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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.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
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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.
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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."
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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?
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Look for the political bumper stickers on their cars, and go after them is they aren't your favorite team.
Works for Google.
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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)
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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.
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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?
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Title is wrong (Score:2)
Correct title would be : "Another Crowdfunded Startup Takes Investors Money, Then Shuts Downs"
How would this look with UBI? (Score:2)
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?
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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?
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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)
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.
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50:50? More like 5:95.
Re: Not a problem (Score:5, Informative)
Some actual numbers, old and incomplete:
https://www.crowdfundinsider.c... [crowdfundinsider.com]
That's the best I could find.
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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.
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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)
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.
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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?
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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.
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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
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"Evolution books aimed at the 2-5 year old age group"
That's called Pokemon.
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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)
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.
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.
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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.
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Actually, it works surprisingly often. Some actual understanding on the side of the people funding this stipulated. Of course there are quite a few projects going for crowd-funding that have no real chance of delivering, but there are also a lot of people giving funding for these without any insight into that.
I still do not see a problem. For stupid people crowdfunding is just one more way to waste their money, which they would have done anyways. (Being stupid comes with penalties, stop complaining about th
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Coming up with an idea and starting a Kickstarter won't work as well as having a prototype and starting a Kickstarter.
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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.
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People already have a working prototype. They built *one* or two. I haven't seen a product that has started from complete scratch.
You do 5 stall builds. You don't invest $1MM into tooling until you are *absolutely certain* that's what you want your product to look like.
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Is a fixed English expression. Apparently you failed in that subject. It does get written in different forms though.
Also as to your WAG who I am, wrong on _all_ counts. Impressive.
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The monitor was 'the computer' and the computer was 'the hard drive'. It was almost funny.
Crowdfunding is not pre-ordering (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Crowdfunding is not pre-ordering (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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)
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.
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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.
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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.
Things to never pledge for at Kickstarter (Score:2)
* Any headphones
* Any chargers
* Any pens
* Any watches
* Any jerky
* Any box
* Anything for your pet
* "World's first" anything
* "Premium" anything
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NEVER PLEDGE MONEY TO A KICKSTARTER
This rule hasn't failed me yet.
Crowdfunding == suckerfunding (Score:2)
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, will fire founders (Score:2)
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.
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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
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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.
Woe to the would-be backer (Score:2)
Next Thing Co (Score:2)
Where's my Dashbot/Voder?
"Shipping in July"
No update since April.
It all unfolded after THIS review (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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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...
One point about the review (Score:3)
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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.
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Feel free to argue with the person I responded to about whether your anecdote trumps their anecdote.
ICO (Score:2)
No way (Score:2)
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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This is something that you should take to court together with others in the same situation. That is a scam!
Megol (moderado)
Must be very selective with crowdfunding (Score:2)
Suckers (Score:2)
Failure from the Start (Score:2)
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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Investors invest in the founder, someone with the vision and the skills to get the job done.
No, they seem to invest in someone with a vision and a willingness to follow it. In many cases the "visionary" is just an ideas guy and they then have to find engineers to actually make the thing. Engineers also have the habit of saying "nope". For example...
When I was in the medical industry as a startup, we kept on getting compared to these guys:
https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com]
and that device was somewhat more ca
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Startups exist because it is not just a matter of having the money. The founder has a very important role. Otherwise investors you be hiring people to create the products, not buying shares of high risky companies owned by people they barely know...
I spend a lot of time at poker tables in casinos, and if you play the right games at the right limits you will encounter filthy rich business owners, and here you can talk to them with their guard down.
A common theme when asking serially successful businessmen about how to be a successful businessman: Hire great people. The skill of starting a successful business is identifying the people necessary to make it work and then getting them on board. Elon Musk for instance is good at getting great engineers o
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A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place.
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Legally, that's true. That's why I've seen Kickstarters listing why the people getting the money are going to be able to give you something. Reputation is useful here.
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You clearly don't understand kickstarter, and what the (completely legal) risks you take by putting up your money. Unless the company was clearly fraudulent, you have no grounds for complaining.