Diaspora’s Upfront Costs

I agree with the figures for the most part, the scary bit in their proposed 'gifts' is the 'free phone support', they have 700 people in that bin and I really wonder how they expect other people to pay for phone support in the first place.

Their product shouldn't need any phone support.

Manning a phone for 3 months with just a single person would already set them back another 6 grand, and will probably lead to a pretty overworked person. Since their donations were accepted from all over the globe the general public may expect that phone to be manned 24 hours per day.

I think you over estimated the cost of the stickers by a bit, but that's fine, it will probably be offset by underestimating something else.

Taxes have already been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, probably this will fall under 'gift tax', which is owed by the giver not the recipient so diaspora may luck out there.

I also don't think Diaspora gets that money tax-free. How do they report that at the end of the year? Were people donating to a company? Do they even have a legal structure?

The site times out for me.

Yes but if people actually put the stickers up, wear the shirts, etc, isn't it helping get the word out?

Eh, Not sure what the point of this post is. If they have $190,000 and they wanted $10,000, who cares if they have to spend $50,000 up front? They still have a few years of run way.