Kickstarter Technology Projects Ship 100
An anonymous reader writes "Shocking Kickstarter news this morning, not only did I actually I receive my Brydge this morning, but a Kickstarter software project shipped on time! Connectify Dispatch, the load balancing software for Windows, was released today as well. Perhaps the Kickstarter model of funding technology is not nearly as doomed as some naysayers here would have it. Why are so many here hostile to crowdsourcing? Shouldn't we be glad to have Venture Capitalists cut out of the loop so that companies actually listen to us?"
Who Has Had Bad Experiences with Kickstarter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, that said, I'm still waiting on three or four video games to be released like Grandroids, NASA's Astronaut game, Kitaru and, of course, the OUYA console. I'm also waiting on a movie that is well overdue (although the dude running it is very responsive and was clearly in over his head), playing cards, a new cartoon from Ren & Stimpy's creator, a board game called "The New Science" (which I might also try to review for Slashdot) and another DVD/CD combo and T-shirt which were very recent so it's not a big deal.
Now, I've only put money in here that I didn't really care about. Yeah, it adds up to real cash but I've been quite happy with all of the things I've gotten out of this and super excited about the future projects. I agreed that the facebook glasses sound like a scam [slashdot.org] but I was really disheartened when people called the OCULUS a scam [slashdot.org]. Nobody seems to be covering Zeyez's engineering updates [kickstarter.com] and all the comments are just that it's still a scam and they want their money back.
So why is there there so much negativity associated with Kickstarter? My experience has been largely positive although I would have thought I would be seeing the NASA game sooner (the other funding didn't hit until November of 2012) and I thought I would be watching "Flood Tide" by now. Aside from that, my experience has been largely positive. Do people have negative stories where they've been screwed or cheated or lied to on Kickstarter?
My worry (Score:4, Interesting)
I just worry that its increasing popularity is going to bring in the scammers and con men. Any venture where honesty is important and there is money to be made seems to ultimately attract them.
Re:The negativity surrounding KickStarter (Score:5, Interesting)
I called Kickstarter on my blog [livejournal.com] (I know, I'm going to start calling myself a futurist soon). When Kickstarter popped up, it was almost exactly as I'd thought of it, with one key difference - and I think they're really going to have to address that difference as investment ramps up and confidence in their brand name becomes more important.
In my model, I assumed that the crowd-sourcing service would also act as escrow - that they'd release funds as-needed to projects, instead of handing it over in one lump sum. The project owner would have to specify milestones and demonstrate completion before they could access the rest of the cash. Now, obviously, with small projects gaining only a couple of grand, that's probably not going to fly, but with million-dollar projects becoming ever more common, I think either Kickstarter is going to have to start adopting that sort of model, or someone else will, and will eat their lunch.
Re:The problem with being open about funding... (Score:5, Interesting)
Most projects when they list on Kickstarter are already well advanced. Depending on the type of project, they've probably already made pilots/mockups/prototypes, done their own market research, looked into manufacturing costs, etc. There's also not enough datra released on a Kickstarter prospectus to really give anyone else a really big edge.
People with big funding wouldn't race to market anyway - they'd clone the project after it's released, then out-market the original.
Re:Furries are ahead of the curve (Score:4, Interesting)
That is similar (but not identical) to an idea I've batted around for the better part of a decade:
Bounty-Porn.
The public determines who it would like to see do hard core porn and pools all their money. Then a representative approaches the people the public wants to see do porn and offers them the ridiculous amount of money in exchange for doing it and the directors and producers and distributors take a small cut off the top.
Think of it. If every person who wants to see Scarlet Johansen do porn chipped in ten bucks, it might be hard to turn down that half billion dollars for a few days of work. :)
Teensy 3.0 shipped on time (Score:5, Interesting)
My own Kickstarter project, used to launch Teensy 3.0 (a low-cost Arduino compatible board with a 32 bit ARM chip), shipped on time.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/paulstoffregen/teensy-30-32-bit-arm-cortex-m4-usable-in-arduino-a [kickstarter.com]
We had 2 levels of rewards shipping, half within 2 weeks, the other half the next month. We did end up shipping the last several September rewards on October 1st, so technically we slipped 1 day for small group of rewards. Otherwise, all the September rewards actually shipped in September, and the rest shipped before the end of October.
Of course, a tiny number of backers didn't respond with their address or had other logistical problems with their info. Most of those shipped late, but even then, we resolved nearly all of them in October.