
Some of you are going to hell. – Was this another scam on kickstarter? - koalalorenzo
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ispaul/intelligent-security-camera-cover-webcam-privacy-c/posts/2154643?ref=ksr_email_backer_project_update_registered_users
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bigiain
FWIW, I got the 10 I ordered. About 14 months late (and by which time I'd
already ordered practically identical camera covers for less money on Amazon).
So it wasn't an outright scam.

All up - this guy got ~$200k(usd) - about 25 times his initial goal, then
totally blew the fulfullment - with many people still screaming for delivery
or refunds while he's got them for sale on through his new company (set up
with the Kickstarter money presumably) on their website, leaving some (most?
many? a few?) backers angrily waiting.

Pretty much what I'm expecting to be a 50% likely outcome every time I back
something there, and set my expectations accordingly.

I've been burnt there before, and will be again, and haven't actually
regretted any of them. My biggest fail was the ZPM Espresso machine, about
$300 which never succeeded. Again a stupidly over subscribed Kickstarter, and
at least they had the grace and transparency to fail publicly in their
attempts to manufacture 50 or 100 times as many as they'd planned...

My take away is to never do a Kickstarter-like physical good project and
accept 10x or more "orders" that your initial plan had in it. Sure, if you're
making software or art which can be duplicated at tu=iny fractional costs, let
the orders go wild. If you have to hammer things together (or even put easy-
to-reproduce things into boxes and ship them), stick to your initial small
batch size and defer new orders when you hit that for a future run. Don't
commit to making 100,000 when you'd done your planning/pricing around being
realistically capable of making and shipping 1000.

