
Kickstarter mini drone kicked out - oinkgrr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34858171
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leoedin
One thing that consistently strikes me as a problem with Kickstarter is that
the investment is open ended. In this case, they received 15x the funding they
were initially asking for. In some ways, this is good (it spreads your NRCs)
but it also can lead to the scope of a manufacturing project dramatically
increasing. Giving an inexperienced team millions of dollars and expecting
their project to go smoothly is asking for trouble.

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aikah
There is absolutely no proof the product they advertised ever existed, there
was never a single prototype made. So yeah cost of manufacturing is tricky,
but for that you need something to manufacture at first place. This stuff
never flied .

Edit : the sub mysteriously 'disappeared' from HN's homepage ...

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AndrewDucker
The worst bit here is the lack of communication.

"Everything's fine. Almost there. All on track. Any minute now. You're getting
nothing."

As someone who's backed plenty of projects, I'd much rather have clear,
honest, communication than pretending that everything is fine up until the day
the project goes bust.

As it is, I have no idea if this project was inches away and then ran out of
cash, or if they never produced anything usable and have been smokescreening
the whole way.

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woody223
"'No more Kickstarter for me. Willing to pay more after the product hits the
shelves,' wrote another."

Despite several fairly high-profile Kickstarter's that did not deliver, this
line still seems to come out after new failure. I wonder if Kickstarter needs
to do more to explain what a donation is and is not. Or if, given the number
of people backing Kickstarter projects, there are just always going to be
backers who don't understand the funding model.

~~~
TheCondor
Part of it is the dream, that new startup type euphoria and adrenaline you
get, despite previous failures it seems like anything is possible. The buyers
get that too. I don't think more fine print would make a difference.

Now what might make a difference would be if Kickstarter had coaches that
could coach the project teams up and then maybe give their own feedback.
Perhaps less granular time lines unless they are coach assisted timelines.

There are some definite patterns, overly aggressive timelines to raise funds,
underfunding, overly aggressive responses to over funding. When dates slip,
the community of backers turns nasty pretty quickly, when things become
challenging the communication drops which further increases the nastiness. If
not a coach, perhaps a group of five independent consultants from that field
could provide their opinions or something, there would be some challenges to
keeping it fair.

It is insanely frustrating when you've given someone some money and you don't
hear anything at all and the project is already 6 months to a year later than
their initial projections, it doesn't seem that unusual on Kickstarter or
indigogo

