Crowdfunding — The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

I remember, they just axed you ! Kerplunk. Off with your head.

Because of what happened to you RiK, i looked up the Kickstarter policy agreement, after you told us what happened. ( That’s over in the Pipes thread for anyone who’d like to read it. )

Kickstarter seems pretty loose in this regard with their terms. I wonder what the Indiegogo policy is like ? Everyone should check the agreement document.

EDITED: Changed a couple words for clarity, and added link.

Funded a rhyrhmo 2 years ago. Everyone in America got theirs way back and apparently the UK ones have been sitting in customs for months. Shit show

Damn that sucks!

What’s a rhyrhmo ?

Annoyingly you can buy it even though nobody in Europe has their one they paid for on kickstarter

Something to do with the shipping company

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I followed up on the list i put together the end of January:

Synths

  • SB01 Space Bee from Superlative — Delayed badly
  • Implexus from Majella — Delayed but close
  • Osmose from Expressive E — Delayed
  • Anyma Phi from Aodyo — Shipped and available
  • Töörö from Fred’s Lab — Shipped and available, issues ?

Controller Only

  • OffGrid from birdkids — Delayed badly
  • Theoryboard (redo) from Irijule — Shipped, new firmware still not done
  • Erae Touch from Embodme — Not built, they’re showing at Superbooth, panicking
  • Striso Board from Striso — Shipped and available
  • JV-1 from Joyst — Shipped and likely available

Utility

  • MRCC from Conductive Labs — Shipped and available.
  • T-1 from Torso — Shipped and in demand
  • Timetosser from Alter Audio — Shipped and available
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Thanks for this list! Abstrakt Instruments VS-1 is still delayed too. Seems like it’s just a matter of time but their decision to move to a real-time operating system for handling control data seems to have had a big impact on their plans, along with the usual component and shipping delays from board manufacturers, etc :slight_smile:

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The target delivery date Abstrakt put on all of this complicated multipart development when they listed this project in January 2020, was July 2020. One might assume from that, that this project was completely finished through all development engineering phases including firmware ready for final assembly, and had accounted for the delay in funds clearing Kickstarter. Clearly not the case.

Yes Covid happened in the meantime, but this project had no chance of hitting the target date as set regardless.

Which points out a much larger flaw in the way Kickstarter projects are sold in general. There is little incentive for companies to show reasonable development schedules upfront. Schedules for projects of this complexity bracket a range of time, with best case, worst case estimates. Hard to sell a project to a corporation, let alone investment partners when you present worst case estimates.

I think this accounts for a lot of the long delays in so many projects. It’s not really delay though, it’s that the initial schedule is being used to “sell” the project.

Good to be aware of this distortion when evaluating backing electronic development projects.

Many project schedules on Kickstarter are very realistic and doable, and those projects often complete on or ahead of schedule. But stay aware how frequently project schedules are made overly optimistic to sell a project.

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Yeah I agree - and I always go into Kickstarter expecting the worst :joy:!

For this one, I don’t know if they saw the likely delay in components/ boards due to China’s COVID situation early last year and decided on the OS rewrite given the extra time, or if it was always planned, or an impulse decision …

One thing people were frustrated about was in their pitch they budgeted some money towards having a project manager to overcome some of the communication issues people had with them in the past. That seemed to be ditched very quickly once things got going, leading to predictably erratic updates :slightly_smiling_face:

At least Abstrakt are known to be this way and deliver eventually, so I’m confident it will show up. I have the DIY kit, so at least that will go out the door before the assembled ones, which were a much higher investment from folks. Feel bad for them particularly.

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All excellent points !

You bring something else up that applies to all electronic development projects, and to people investing in them.

When you plan a project with a schedule, you have to do your best to anticipate what the market will be, not what it is. The market window is always moving, and a delay may just close your opportunity. That’s a very common story.

The same issues apply to you as an investor or backer. You are not buying a product now, but in the future. And then there are two factors in play. Not only does the market change, but so does your needs as a buyer.

Now predicting the future is … well, risky. Hard to anticipate what a Behringer or a Sequential or a Black Corporation is going to do in the future. But that said it’s not unreasonable to foresee competition arriving for this particular product. This is a product that was well defined a long time ago.

In a similar category to this is the Superlative SB01, which also has been a long time in coming. That product also goes into a crowded well defined market niche. But Superlative did at least engineer in some unique enhancements. But their time to market is killing them, and their backers too.

AN ASIDE: If i was building the kit, the complete version of this product might just arrive before i was done. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Have they talked about things causing delays much? I always imagine when something has a built in battery it ends up being much more work than people initially expect. Especially once you realize you need to ship the thing internationally. Obviously covid has slowed many things down.

Two things that were preorder style and not kickstarter, M8 which looks to be quite close to shipping and Space Case TE-2 which seems to be plugging along but is years behind the initial release schedule, but also seems like a really crazy project to take on.

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Was the isla 2400 Kickstarter style ?
I mostly bring it into this conversation as it was a little late ,but the machines shipped seem to be delivering on their promise. Overall I’d say it was a success ( I don’t own one , this is just my observation)
Of course had I ordered one I’d probably be moaning that it still hasn’t arrived yet but the shipping / delivery definitely seems Covid / ship delays .

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Happy the EMPick/Wond II project is still going, it’s been a bit of a dev cycle.

The TE-2 thread on Mod Wiggler is a bit of an adventure, and after all the excitement, tempers now seem to be fraying. Here’s a post from earlier this week:

This was billed as “order the product” like 4 years ago, but even then the details were beyond shaky, and at this point is several levels worse than an intentional, regimented crowd funding campaign. In fact traditional crowdfunding sites would have banned this producer for blowing through delivery dates, poor comms, selling other tangential products when the original item isn’t even properly prototyped, etc. There is no ETA, and there isn’t even like a checklist or roadmap to getting the orders fulfilled… unless that’s “only on the buyer’s email” (which maybe it is, I don’t know). I know he posted some clips of “a device” making sounds, but there is still not even a fully functioning prototype, right? And you guys are talking about it shipping in a couple months lol.

https://modwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3595256#p3595256

Having said that some of the instagram posts of it in action are quite exciting https://www.instagram.com/p/COJYjklhXg8/

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Meanwhile, the Dirtywave M8 is shipping at ~100 units per week (after some minor and announced delays) and everyone’s loving it:

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There is a three oscillator analog hybrid mono synth in 60 hp Eurorack project now up for funding until December 14th. The Artisan Nucleus.

This looks to be in the good category, with the engineering largely done, the funding for scaling up production, where development gets expensive. Also left to do is some sound design, which is legitimately done later. This company has sold hardware on a small scale before, and some of this new design pulls from previously done hardware.

The KS version of this is $770 USD, which is legitimately expensive, for what this is. I expect the likelihood of them hitting their target ship date in Spring of 2022 as good.

Kickstarter

Another positive side to this, if they get funded, is that the core of this mono product will be used someday to make at least two polyphonic product — a 4 voice desktop unit, and a 6 to 8 voice keyboard unit.

Elektronauts Thread

ADDED : The Nucleus did not get funded.

its like a baby waldorf something in eurorack form.

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There is a post over in the birdkids OffGrid thread from Mike Beim one of the principles of that company, and leader of that development.

It’s an inside view of developing a new product, and the process of funding through KickStarter. In particular also is the effects the pandemic has had on manufacturing, and business development.

We don’t often get an inside view of the processes and risks of new product development, unless you’ve been in the business, and done it yourself. Crowdfunding has opened parts of that, bringing others into the process as funders in a partially opening of the process.

When things go well, everyone is happy, and you might almost think that that is the way things are always. But it’s not. Things go badly, despite the hard work and dedication, experience and collective intelligence of all those involved. These sorts of things are hard to do, and there are real risks, risks that are nearly impossible to anticipate, even by the best.

Mike Beim’s post gives some view into the inside of that process.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

The post also mentions the third party marketing and advertising done to promote, a KickStarter campaign, and drive it to success and increase the amounts of money raised. I don’t know much about this end of the crowdfunding business, but it makes sense that over the years that sort of 3rd party assistance would develop. Part of that is good, in that it makes fund raising more efficient, but it also increases the risk for others to game the system.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this ?

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I’ve pulled this over to the Crowdfunding Thread, because my response is about what is OK and permissible to say regarding any crowdfunded project and not specific to the OffGrid product from birdkids.

Perhaps “and I really don’t like seeing any negativity” is just a manner of speech. If you mean negativity as lying to damage another then i would agree. But open truthful commentary to me is completely fair game.

To me once a company enters the commercial realm, and especially in the situation where someone has accepted another person’s money up-front, on the basis of a loose pledge to deliver a product in a certain timeframe, then truthful open comment about the delivery of that product is completely legitimate. Whether you like it or not.

In any marketplace, crowdfunding included, there needs to be rules and expectations — the very glue of commerce — that all participants follow, for that system to work, and thrive. It’s a freely struck agreement between two parties, and open comment by either side must be allowed.

One unwritten part of the “agreement”, is the idea of priority. The creator is offering priority access to a good in the future, in exchange for an up-front payment. This applies to pre-orders from a retailer, as well as the crowdfunding seller, as well as the commodity markets. Fortunately this part of the agreement is followed most of the time, despite it sometimes advantaging one side or the other in the agreement down the line, “in the future”.

What is it that is being offered for “up-front” money, beyond the altruistic reasons, when later on anyone can skip to the head of the line to buy a product ?

There are practical reasons when “priority” cannot be followed, but this needs to be an exception. Fortunately these sorts of exceptions are very uncommon, but when they do occur, like in this case, it is entirely legitimate to comment upon.

Now there are some specifics of the Kickstarter process, in particular their “comment space” which sits at the border of a place for free comment. I’ve concluded, that the “Kickstarter comment space” is not a good place to make free open comment, that it “belongs” in some sense to the seller.

But any comment made in a free and open forum like Elektronauts, given that it is truthful, is fair.

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Yes I agree with “I’ve concluded, that the “Kickstarter comment space” is not a good place to make free open comment, that it “belongs” in some sense to the seller.” But one thing I feel with KickStarter (and other crowdfunding sites) is that it is NOT a consumer or a commercial agreement between the creator and a person, certainly not a pre-order but a pledge. I’m sure it’s a bit blurry and I tried to read KickStarter T&C’s but it’s not that clear. Anyways I did find this (which is a bit old so maybe not relevant anymore) … Crowdfunding and the Consumer - All Consuming Interests … but yes I agree any comment on an open forum is fair enough :slight_smile:

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