
$3M Andronium Superbook Kickstarter goes belly up - anothernerd
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop-f
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anothernerd
The last update sent out from the company a short while ago.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/bi5ksu/...](https://www.reddit.com/r/shittykickstarters/comments/bi5ksu/superbook_weve_run_out_of_money/)

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anothernerd
[From here]([https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-
superbook...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook-
turn-your-smartphone-into-a-laptop-f))

> First of all, I'm sorry for the silence. We owe you an explanation both for
> the lack of communication and the delay.

> Second, to explain the situation — we've shipped ~75% of Superbooks, but
> have run into a roadblock financially. As a company, we've been running on
> little budget for quite some time. Since 2017, we've run into a multitude of
> issues including: we had key component prices going up significantly, we had
> to change manufacturers (as our first one did a bit of bait-and-switch on us
> on pricing, along with gave us poor quality product), and we had one of our
> major distributors (King Oasis) steal ~$300K of component inventory from us.
> We had to cut back on staff and expenses. Andrew and I have not received any
> pay since July 2017, as we wanted to make sure every dollar went into
> finishing the product and paying our team. In fact, at the beginning of
> 2018, we had a significant amount of liabilities to cover with no sources
> for additional cash — so our team had to pick up contract work along with
> some limited licensing revenue to cover all of the costs needed to finish
> manufacturing.

> One great question I'm sure some of you are wondering is: why not just tell
> us about all of these issues while they're happening? It is an extremely
> fair question to ask. One of the biggest challenges of manufacturing as a
> startup is you need to convince dozens of vendors, manufacturers, and supply
> chain companies to cooperate with you, give you decent pricing, and help you
> succeed because it is in their best long term interest. All of our vendors
> read public (and often private) updates as well as our Slack channels - one
> of the downsides of having a public campaign. It is not uncommon for vendors
> and manufacturers to decide that a project is now too risky and ask for a
> price increase or hold up production for a larger upfront payment.

> Since December we have been dealing with a very large bill from our
> logistics company and negotiating for a couple months over it. Part of the
> reason we couldn't share any of this information is that we don't want to
> publicly call out our logistics company during a long negotiations, lest it
> have an impact. However now some people are now reaching out directly to
> them with particularly harsh emails, so that definitely backfired on us and
> impacted the negotiations as well. At this point our options are somewhat
> limited.

> Third, as we have not been able to pay anyone for over a year, everyone on
> our team has had to find work else where or work on new projects (including
> Andrew and myself). Without doing so, they wouldn't be able to continue
> supporting Superbook in any capacity, as they still need to make a living. I
> think some of you have found their new work contacts and have continued to
> send messages to them and their coworkers. Please don't do this — each of
> them gave years of their lives with little to no pay, under very stressful
> conditions.

> Finally, regarding next steps, we have had another round of discussions,
> looking for any ways to solve this in the coming weeks and get even _some_
> inventory released. Given our very limited budget, we don't have a ton of
> options, but I hope to have some update for you guys in a few weeks. When I
> started Andromium 5 years ago, it was a hobby and a hope for a more
> interesting future. Your support has meant the world to me, and I'm deeply
> sorry to our backers for our struggles to bring Superbook fully to market.

> Gordon

