

Kickstarter Fundraising Record About To Be Broken - mirceagoia
http://pandodaily.com/2012/02/08/kickstarter-fundraising-record-about-to-be-broken/

======
otakucode
The article would have been approximately 88 times better if the writer had
bothered to mention what the hell the Elevation Dock does, why anyone is
interested in it at all, etc. As it is, it just leaves the reader saying 'what
the hell does it DO? Are the people interested in it mad?'

~~~
Andrenid
I got 1 paragraph in, wondered what the dock actually does, quickly skimmed a
few lines to see it it had decent pics or explanation, then looked for the
link to Kickstarter and left the site.

------
st0p
Forgive me my sarcasm, but the posterboy of crowdfunding will be a piece of
hardware that is designed for people who are too lazy to use two hands to
undock their smartphone?

~~~
draggnar
Like the computer is designed for people that are too lazy to do math? Or the
car for people who are too lazy to walk? This is a perfect posterchild because
no company, including apple would spend the time and resources to make the
perfect dock. Kickstarter facilitated a non-obvious innovation that made it
big. Clearly the need is there.

~~~
azth
Straw man argument :)

~~~
chairface
There are no straw man arguments in this entire thread, let alone the comment
you replied to.

------
Impossible
This doesn't break the trend of the most funded Kickstarter projects being
accessories for Apple products.

Afaik, you don't have any legal obligation to deliver perks to people that
fund your project. A decent scam would be to come up with a "dream" iAccesory
that generates a lot of interest and pocket the money without going through
the mess of actually manufacturing and shipping the product.

~~~
Cushman
I would be absolutely shocked if no such obligation exists in practice.

~~~
Impossible
From the accountability section on kickstarter
([http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#A...](http://www.kickstarter.com/help/faq/creating%20a%20project#Acco)):

"If I am unable to complete my project as listed, what should I do?

If you are unable to fulfill the promises made to backers, cannot complete the
project as advertised, or decide to abandon the project for any reason, you
are expected to cancel funding. A failure to do so could result in damage to
your reputation or even legal action on behalf of your backers."

So definitely it's possible that your backers could start a class action
lawsuit and sue you because you took their money and didn't deliver a product,
but this would require some organization on the backers' part, kickstarter
wouldn't do this on their behalf.

------
jakeonthemove
I'm really not big on accessories (I prefer universal/multifunction devices),
but I have to say, this dock is pretty impressive (if it works as advertised).

Most docks are like 80% there, this dock's attention to detail brings it close
to 100% (perfection), kind of like the MacBook Pro...

------
efsavage
I love the idea and execution of Kickstarter, but I do find myself
disappointed that much of its "funding" (at least the high profile stuff) is
really just pre-ordering.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Although one can argue that is a benefit. You can 'guess' how many you might
sell, this tells you how many you will sell. So its a win in that perspective.
If you spent $75K tooling up to make this thing and only sold a hundred, well
you'd be putting the rest up on Woot! or something. This takes the risk out of
it.

~~~
efsavage
Oh for sure it is better than the guesswork of the old way of market research
and relying on unfavorable deals with investors, but when put in the same
space as actual investments which entail a level of risk, I have to wonder if
the pre-orders will siphon money off the "We need 50k to pay our bills while
we do something cool for y'all" projects, which I think are also important.
For now it's all relatively small so there probably isn't much cannibalization
going on, but I see it as an inevitable concern.

------
james33
The only problem with this is the risk that the next iPhone coming out a few
months after this ships could have a different body and might not fit.

~~~
baddox
I always assumed the spec for dock manufacturers (and the dock connector
pinout/protocol) was designed to support at least one generation of devices
past and future. With some speaker docks costing hundreds of dollars, I sure
hope that's the case.

------
Steko
This dock is gorgeous and innovative and I'm not even thinking about buying
one.

I do love the easy 30 pin charging on the elevation dock but to me the killer
feature of a charging dock is a simple landscape swivel (i.e. no engine).

I haven't seen one that does it right but all the talk about the Elevation
Dock this morning got me looking though docks and this is about the closest I
could find to what I'm looking for:

[http://www.ebay.com/itm/Swivel-Mount-USB-Desktop-Cradle-
Char...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Swivel-Mount-USB-Desktop-Cradle-Charger-GM-
iPhone-4-/330597524997?pt=PDA_Accessories&hash=item4cf925e605)

Ideally I'd like something that leaves the lower speakers free though.

------
corysama
There's a good chance their time at the top will be short-lived. Double Fine
just posted a proposal to fund an old school point-and-click adventure on
Kickstarter.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-
adv...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure)

At this moment they are at "2,951 BACKERS $156,197 PLEDGED OF $400,000 GOAL 33
DAYS TO GO" and rising very fast.

~~~
whatusername
Also see the HN submission on this Kickstarter:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3569676> (tl;dr: Tim Schafer!)

------
smackfu
It's funny that the Apple dock has this problem, given that ye olde original
Palm Pilot dock had a big chunk of steel in it just to avoid this very issue.

------
thedangler
Watched the video, Did anyone really remove their iDevice from the doc like
that? I know I didn't. Nice design thought.

~~~
mirceagoia
Kickstarter becomes more and more the platform to be for stuff like that. As I
see, anything related to mobile gets a lot of traction there.

~~~
pchristensen
More like anything related to iOS gets traction - I don't recall seeing a
single Android-specific or even compatible project on Kickstarter, let alone
the most successful ones. It helps if design-y people love your
products/brand.

~~~
r00fus
iOS devices present a (mostly) constant form factor, allowing a large
addressable market with customers/funders who are willing to pay for quality.
A rigorously-designed dock can address not only iPhones, but iPods as well.

That's the Apple platform strength - the weakness is changes are sometimes
sudden and can eliminate or subsume 3rd party product markets entirely.

------
shocks
I want one, and I don't even own an iPhone.

------
gerggerg
What was the previous record? Diaspora?

~~~
james33
The TikTok+LunaTik multi-touch watch kit raised over $942,000.
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-
lunati...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1104350651/tiktok-lunatik-
multi-touch-watch-kits?ref=most-funded)

