

ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder - goatforce5
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/magazine/zpm-espresso-and-the-rage-of-the-jilted-crowdfunder.html

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Adaptive
I'm an original backer. I backed at the machine level, so would have received
a unit.

My _full_ take away from the situation was simply that they had bad business
sense and burned through cash on a several bad decisions, then hoped to pull
success from the jaws (or more realistically, the stomach) of defeat, so made
ridiculously upbeat postings in an attempt to hand wave over the cracks in the
project.

It was a risk; I took it on. Not my most expensive bad investment by far. I
checked out of monitoring the Kickstarter feed once it became clear that it
was going no where. That was well before the final gasps from the ZPM people.

I'm glad that Kickstarter has pushed projects to post risks, avoid renders,
etc. None of that would have mitigated the bad-businesspeople issue, however.

-

Edit: To make things clear, I really don't hold a grudge on this. I threw
money at some clever ideas, but we all know making them happen at scale can be
hard. They didn't handle things well but I felt that the hugely negative
response was largely an overreaction.

~~~
jonah
It seems Kickstarter should allow people to set a maximum number of donations
and cut it off after that. It they could have handled building/wanted to build
50 machines, but not 5000, they should be able to set an upper limit on the
number of backers to their project to prevent runaways like this.

~~~
lazerwalker
Kickstarter does allow this. Rewards such as physical hardware are associated
with specific reward tiers, and individual reward tiers are allowed to (and
frequently do) have hard limits.

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bobf
I'm pretty unhappy with them, but for different reasons. I ordered more than a
year after their Kickstarter -- as a pre-order through their Shopify site. At
that point, they had indicated they were going to ship units "soon", so I felt
the pre-order would be fulfilled in a timely manner.

I had intentionally avoided backing the Kickstarter because I didn't find the
risk to be worth it at the time.

One thing I learned through the process, which everyone should be aware of:
there is no consumer protection available with either Shopify or American
Express Platinum (famous for it's high level of customer service, "return
protection", extended warranty on purchases, etc) if more than 60-120 days
passes after a purchase and you haven't received the item.

Lesson: file claims early.

Don't order pre-order goods with uncertain delivery dates (or if you do, don't
let them slip past 60 days from the order date without filing a claim for a
refund with the merchant provider or your credit card company).

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johnbuckman
This comment from one of the original consulting engineers is really
interesting:

"Bio-Med Engineer Langhorne PA 13 hours ago I worked in an engineering design
consultancy that was contracted early on to help productize the ZPM design,
and as such am intimately familiar with their initial concepts. In my opinion,
the founders were initially earnest and dedicated but also naive and lacking
in engineering judgement. They confused the ability to raise money with the
ability to make sound engineering and technical decisions. Falling in love
with one's ideas is a trap into which many inventors fall, and ZPM fell hard.

Additionally, I believe that ZPM received a lot of questionable advice from
people who did not have their best interests at heart, and were swayed by
strong personalities.

But the early backers - particularly the engineers - should have had the sense
to realize that open-source firmware that is intended to control a consumer
product that delivers scalding hot water is a fundamentally BAD idea, and that
using a PID loop to manage the process is totally unnecessary.

What this article highlights is that Mr. Polyakov's talent is in raising money
and expectations. It is unfortunate that neither his ethics, nor his
engineering abilities can match those talents."

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JacobAldridge
_" As someone involved in the project from its beginning, he felt entitled to
know everything."_

As a business owner, and a fairly transparent one, that sickens me. In what
world should customers feel "entitled to know everything" about a business.

Absolutely entitled to ask, to take their business elsewhere if they don't
like the (lack of) answers, but entitled to know? No way.

This sounds to me like another group who confused Kickstarter with Amazon pre-
ordering, or an investment fund where they became shareholders. You assessed
the risks, took the risk to put some money down, and it didn't work out.

It's often said that Silicon Valley works, in part, because of its acceptance
of failures. This is a witch hunt that says more about the hunters than those
they are chasing. Good luck building the American Dream in a society where
failing to deliver on a Kickstarter project means it's _" entirely appropriate
that he never work in technology, finance, consulting or the coffee fields
(sorry, that kills the barista career) again.”_

~~~
slavik81
I don't agree with your characterization of Kickstarter. They've always been
quite clear that there is a legal contract between backers and businesses that
obligates the business to provide the goods and services they promised. [1]

The company in question broke the terms of their contract. As such, backers
are legally entitled to their money back. If the company cannot pay, the
company is insolvent and may need to declare bankruptcy. That's life as a
business; you need to pay your debts.

[1] As mentioned in the article, that contract changed recently. Businesses
can now be absolved from their obligations by being transparent. Basically,
backers for new projects _are_ entitled to know what happened if the project
fails. [https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-
use#section4](https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use#section4)

~~~
JacobAldridge
You make a good point in regards to Kickstarter, and while I still feel some
of the responses in the piece are naive the link you provided certainly
supports some of their arguments in a way I didn't fully appreciate.

I still don't think it extends as far as the two quotes I used (the first one
was the NYT paraphrasing; the second was direct).

Even in a direct customer situation, where far less _" there's a chance
something could happen that prevents the creator from being able to finish the
project as promised"_ grey area exists than with KS backers, there's no
entitlement to know everything about the company. And to suggest people who
try, and risk, and fail aren't even eligible for barista work sickens me
personally and would create enormous problems for society.

------
paulftw
Did you notice how things went downhill once they entered the stealth mode?
What kind of startup consultant would suggest that and for what reason?

~~~
FullyFunctional
(I preordered one myself).

No, I don't think that's accurate. Things had gone bad long before that, but
it wasn't obvious right away that the ship was sinking. That said, going
stealth didn't help them one iota but caused a lot of ire.

My experience with ~ 25 KS has been mixed. ~ 4 failed to deliver, more than
half delivered successfully. A couple delivered a lousy product. ~ 1/3 are
still pending. Almost _all_ of them are late or very very late, especially SW
projects seems to drag on forever.

My appetite for KS has cooled a lot and frankly I'm surprised my experience
hasn't been worse.

~~~
CodexArcanum
I've had a few bad experiences with KS but as someone whose been using it
since very early on, I'm generally pleased with it. KS launched in April 2009
and my first backing was in December 2009. Since then, I've backed 75
projects, 20 of which have yet to deliver, but only 2 which I think will
probably fail completely. Most of my pledges are for board games, books, and
small gadgets, all of which seem like pretty safe categories.

Around 2009, I had been thinking that the future of music and art might be a
return to the patronage system, only with mass audiences funding artists
instead of rich individuals. KS, Patreon, and other sites like them seem to
have proven that theory out. And I'm happy to see them do so. I still strongly
believe that distributed patronage is the best way for artists, musicians,
game designers, and even film makers to be able to produce what they and their
fans want.

~~~
reitoei
> Around 2009, I had been thinking that the future of music and art might be a
> return to the patronage system, only with mass audiences funding artists
> instead of rich individuals. KS, Patreon, and other sites like them seem to
> have proven that theory out. And I'm happy to see them do so. I still
> strongly believe that distributed patronage is the best way for artists,
> musicians, game designers, and even film makers to be able to produce what
> they and their fans want.

Smart words, 100% agree.

