

Small iPhone 4 holder raises 100k at Kickstarter and counting - eande
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/danprovost/glif-iphone-4-tripod-mount-and-stand?ref=category

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edash
I contributed a week or so ago. It wasn't charity, though, I simply thought
$20 was a fair price to pay for the item and was willing to wait a couple
months for it.

I want this to exist...

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boredguy8
Can someone explain what "THIS PROJECT WILL BE FUNDED ON TUESDAY NOV 2, 9:45PM
EDT." means? Is it when, if funds keep accruing at the current rate, they'll
have made their goal? Or is that when they'll get the money they've raised
from Kickstarter?

I didn't see anything on the page explaining that bit of information.

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enjo
It's when the funding period ends. At that point the money will actually
change hands. They've already done basically 10x their goal ($10k).

Note: Kickstarter is not a forum for _investment_. You don't get equity in
return. In this case you are really just pre-ordering one of those stands.

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blasdel
What's bizarre about the Kickstarter model is that for the most successful
projects they end up acting as a blocker — if you reach your goal in a few
days and you set your deadline to a month away, there's no way for you to get
the funds until it passes — even afterwards it'll take a while for Amazon to
let you cash out.

There's no way for the creator to say 'we passed the goal, that's enough
money, lets get to work' — something that set Diaspora up for a far more epic
failure.

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tom_ilsinszki
_"something that set Diaspora up for a far more epic failure"_

Is Diaspora a failure? How did the Kickstarter model set them up for this
failure in your opinion?

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blasdel
It was clear from the beginning that Diaspora would have problems — they were
a handful of NYU students just learning to program who'd never shipped
anything before, starting from scratch on a white-elephant project that
several other groups had been working for years on. When they were forced by
their schedule to release something a month ago it had more fundamental
security vulnerabilities than features!

Had they not taken donations none of would have cared that they'd released a
totally unviable social network Rails app licensed under the AGPL. Kickstarter
did them a great disservice by raising $200,000 instead of their goal of
$10,000 and swamping them with the publicity to match. The expectations were
far higher than they could possibly meet.

Kickstarter sure got a lot of marketing out of it though (and a $10,000 fee)

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citricsquid
I don't think this is a problem with kickstarter, I actually think this shows
the power of kickstarter! The problem is with diaspora itself, you touched on
it there: "they were a handful of NYU students just learning to program who'd
never shipped anything before" and it's _they_ who chose kickstarter.

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ovi256
This is one of the times I wish I had a 3D printer. To make one RIGHT NOW.

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jsz0
Some Styrofoam and an Exacto knife could probably replicate a close
approximation. Might not be very durable though.

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ugh
They will have to 3D print 360 (for those who pledged $50 or more). I don’t
know how fast their 3D printer is but that seems like quite the task.

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jonknee
According to The Economist the 3D printing is outsourced to Shapeways so the
load shouldn't be a problem.

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/small-
scale_p...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2010/10/small-
scale_production)

Shapeways is apparently already doing north of 10k prints a month:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/shapeways-and-
its-3...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/shapeways-and-
its-3-d-printing-comes-to-new-york/?src=me)

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ugh
That’s a great article, thanks for that! The two guys behind the project
really seem to be very thoughtful.

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gokhan
Their pitch video is great in explaining the product with all the alternative
use cases. I'm inspired.

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ThomPete
Is there a Kickstarter in europe and if not shouldn't there be?

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mhb
Why are so many people willing to pay $20 for a product, that if it _already
existed and was available_ at a checkout counter would probably cost less than
$5 or $10?

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steveklabnik
EDIT 2:

Hey there, it's early in the morning, and it's pretty clear that 3,000 *
30,000 != 100,000... But go ahead, downvote me some more.

I think I need another few cups of tea.

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chegra
$25 per person? [I think Diaspora did it with much less people] I will be
looking at you from now on with suspicious eyes. EDIT: Feel free to delete it

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steveklabnik
I'd rather publicly admit I made a mistake than just make it disappear. I
rarely think deleting posts is appropriate.

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chegra
Well you already deleted the first half of it, so why not the rest?

