Kanoa won’t ship its $300 earphones to customers who pre-ordered them

So you want to use a part in a design. Maybe...I dunno...check how much stock you can purchase in a short period of time with little notice? If say, your core processor is on a 14-week lead time at every factory that makes them, maybe you'd want to do a limited run to start with?

It doesn't sound like this company made it that far, though. Did they even have a final product? I can't quite tell from the article, but it sounds like 'no.'

"Hi! We're making this change. Please email or call us <here> or <here> if you have any questions, concerns or feedback."

In this case:

"Hello. We thank our Kickstarer backers for being with us since day one. Unfortunately, we have run out of capital and will be shutting down by <date>. Those of you that pre-ordered can expect to get refunded within <period>. Please email or call us <here> or <here> with any questions, comments or concerns."

Simple English. Short, simple and easy to communicate with the company further for those that need to.

That said, there must be a reason why PR specialists craft these lengthy, emotional messages to their customers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Gw3tErUSM

Other than that I seem to have chosen my kickstarters pretty well and very happy with most of them.

The key is to ask yourself some common sense questions like: * Is this product possible in our current reality? * Does the business exist only for the purposes of this campaign? * Can the product realistically be made with the money raised so far?

The first is obviously a deal breaker, and the second can be a red flag. The third might be hard to gauge, but is probably the best filter. For example, raising $6MM to make 6 million milled titanium wallets obviously isn't going to work, even though it's a lot of money. OTOH, $6MM for pretty much any kind of software product is going to scale fine as long as it's not an ongoing service.

Note that that third point also means you basically can't back any electronics hardware project unless the answer to the question "Will this company make this product anyway, regardless of this Kickstarter?" is an unequivocal 'yes', since hardware development is so damn hard.

Just my 2 cents.

I am now very distrustful of kickstarter for physical products. With inexperienced creators, there are too many things that can go wrong.

I backed a PID-Controlled Espresso machine. It seemed like a very good idea but the project creators were clearly out of their depth.

They finally sold their company to decent espresso and the backers saw nothing of the finished product (or any real counterpart). If I remember correctly they offered a small discount on decent espresso machines but I don't think many backers falled for that.

Other than that, I backed many projects, mostly software.

Some were among the best games (or even media experience) I have ever seen, so I am happy to have been able to help make them a reality. Some were just ok or even failed but that was always a risk and never scummy.

I assume that this is sarcasm.

You'll find a bunch of them in the ICO space, where crowdfunding is even easier.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/vive-studios-releases-make...

"Sixense is still be best known for stringing along Kickstarter supporters of its STEM controllers, a project which raised more than $600k and has yet to ship to backers more than three years after its targeted ship date. Failed Kickstarter projects aren’t all that rare but Sixense has continued to post updates discussing supposed improvements or production issues while backers beg for refunds. All of this has been done while continuing to transition its efforts into software projects like MakeVR."

People who ordered from Kanoa's site directly didn't "crowdfund" anything, they "pre-ordered" the headphones. They weren't gambling on Kickstarter. So what risk are you talking about? It has nothing to do with risk, it is fraud.

> I'm amazed some unscrupulous company has't abused it to take money with no intention of ever delivering a product.

there are plenty of million dollar fraudulent projects on Kickstarter, they don't care, they have only their reputation to loose.

I've done it because of a product that seems to actually fit my needs or because it is neat. The one i'm waiting on right now is a 3D printer with laser engraving and carving abilities. If it does a little of what it says it does, it'll be well worth it. Worth it enough to risk the money. At this point, even if I don't get the product, I've had months of ideas pouring into my artsy head and will probably find other ways to do similar things, so I've already benefited.

And sure it is a risk, just by nature. I know I could lose the money, so I don't use money I need to live. It is the same rule I use for gambling, either at the rare casino visit or when playing lottery (the hope tax). The odds are better with this, though, and honestly my spouse and I would spend just as much going to a casino and blowing our money there. Not getting the stuff isn't happy, but in the end isn't a big deal.

If that sort of risk doesn't sit comfortably with you, then it is going to seem silly.

For me, I've never considered Kickstarter to be a pre-ordering platform. More of a platform for helping things get made, that otherwise would be developed.