Kickstarter Project Pebble Leaves Backers Hanging
inc.com
inc.com
1. It's a new product and a new team. Delays are a normal part of any ambitious project and don't necessarily mean the product won't ship.
2. For instance, consider that forecasted sales determine forecasted timelines
Their original shipping dates are based on raising a projected $100,000. At $99 for the cheapest Pebble, one can imagine that their worst case scenario was to ship roughly 1,000 Pebbles within their original timelines. Their Kickstarter actually raised over $10.25 million and consequently they are supposed to ship 85x more Pebbles than that. It's not hard to understand that such a dramatic difference in actuals vs. forecasts will result in a dramatic change in shipping time frames.
3. More importantly, constant communication from the Pebble team shows they are making steady progress (current backers have until the end of the month to make their colour selections, and in the past month their team took advantage of their 70k backers to perform free market research into desired Pebble colours, which is a wise business decision); I really don't see much to objectively worry about.
4. Backers of the project weren't ordering anything, and are naive if they think they were. Anybody know the Latin for "backer beware"?
Kickstartus misleadum.
Kickstarter does not make it clear that the users are "backing" and that it's not guaranteed they will deliver. As you can see from the comments mentioned in the article (and the comments on the Kickstarter "comments" section of the pebble project) it seems a lot of people think they're pre-ordering and not "backing".
This is all that Kickstarter includes on the backing page: http://i.imgur.com/WQlBU.png
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...
I can find some from like 3 weeks ago, mainly one guy 'Graeme' who seems to have changed his name to 'Grrr' while everyone else is saying, 'no, Graeme, they said it was best case'. All the other comments seem upbeat and excited.
Also it's not really comments in the article, it's a singular comment and a singular cherry-picked quote from the kickstarter comments, as in two. With no mention of the encouragement comments.
The quote is from one guy Joshua Hernandez who seems to have been featured in this author's articles before.
Seems it was a slow news day for the author and he picked a story out of his back pocket. I wouldn't call this a balanced piece. And no quote from the company.
Also check the recent AMA, is there major outrage there? Is perhaps the shipping date drama the most u/ved question?
http://www.reddit.com/r/pebble/comments/y7pki/august_ama_ask...
No.
I'm not a backer or affiliated in any way what so ever. But are lots of people blowing their lid over this as the article suggests?
No.
Are people upvoting this story out of some sort of weird Schadenfreude.
Probably.
This story kinda has a smell to it. It's a bit like code smell. One guy quoted over and over. Check. No company quote. Check. No real evidence. Check.
Stinky!
From the page: How do I pledge? (It doesn't say: How do I buy?)
You pledge because you'd like to see the project exist, not because you need a watch. It just so happens that if you pledged enough, they would also send you a watch. I personally never look at the deadlines for Kickstarter projects - they are at best estimates. I don't know when my Pebble will arrive, but I know that it will eventually.
All of this hype is way overblown. We're not talking Duke Nukem Forever here.
In this modern world of litigation, they have to say it.
But come on, do they really have to say it??
A single ounce of common sense would tell you that this is inherently a risky proposition. I really can't sympathize with backers who did not prepare themselves for the possibility that not all business ventures are successful and deliver on time, regardless of their prior experience.
It would be very hard work to actually enforce this but Kickstarter does at least set the expectation that payment == reward.
The most likely scenario for a project that cannot deliver is that they ran out of funds before that had fulfilled all of the orders. By that time there is no money left to refund.
The same team made the inPulse watch: http://www.getinpulse.com/
I'd ask that person to talk to the folks at the big projects on a very regular basis (at least weekly) and help them manage the expectations of the backers. I'd advise them on how to update and to keep the communication lines very very open. I'd use this to apply very light pressure to the projects to keep things moving and to tell the backers what's happening.
Heck, I'd try to help the big projects hook up with experienced mentors to help solve their problems.
I'd do this because the entire success of Kickstarter depends on it happening, and I would under no circumstances leave it to people who hit the KS lottery to figure it out on their own.
Going from 1000 watches to 100,000 watches is a huge undertaking, and requires a lot of special skillsets. 1000 watches you could probably do by yourself with some friends that you hire, but 100,000 requires a factory, and a whole different set of skills.
Their product looks really cool and I hope that they succeed, but my speculation to my friends was that they might be the victim of their own success. It might be the case that maybe they should have capped their first set of orders at 1000, and then slowly build out their capacity while learning from their mistakes, but now with their high-profile Kickstarter campaign and $12M, people might not give them a second chance if they encounter big problems.
That's not true. In Kickstarter's terms of service it states:
Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.
Now, the tricky part is I don't believe there's a time limitation placed on this, but jumping up and down the very same month they expected to release is far from practical. In a year? There's a serious case to answer.
Successful in September 2010. Still no product shipped. Very unhappy backers, and actually a sad story for entrepreneur.
- no idea why people can get worked up that much
- the general impression that your case sucks, it's late but _even now_ in hands that try to fulfill all promises
But yeah, the 'backers' are really disgusting in that project.
1: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schuyler/lockpicks-by-op...
Kickstarter is under no obligation to become involved in disputes between any Users, or between Users and any third party. This includes, but is not limited to, delivery of goods and services, and any other terms, conditions, warranties, or representations associated with campaigns on the Site.
I don't know about the US, but here in the UK it's not difficult to take someone to small claims court and this TOS would work pretty well in the claimant's favor.
Ok, so Kickstarter says the creators are required to refund upon failure. This provides legal recourse. So what? You can't take money from someone who has none. What are the chances that the project creator is sitting on the $10 million, or even a fraction of it?
The problem for Kickstarter today is the same as it was on day one. Many of their customers believe that they are pre-ordering a product, not investing in a start-up. The Kickstarter ecosystem operates on confidence. I'm not sure anyone can accurately model that confidence economy, because Kickstarter is a very new idea.
I can say this though: failed projects will erode confidence that must be rebuilt in order to obtain new backers. The rate of erosion versus build-up of new confidence levels will define the success or failure of Kickstarter over the long term, and I don't think it would be overstating to say that confidence tends to erode far more quickly than it can be built.
Maybe that's how people should approach Kickstarted, but that's certainly not how the majority of Kickstarters projects are presented to their backers.
Almost every funding level I've seen for any project on Kickstarter says, "If you give $X and we reach the funding goal, you get Y. If you give $X and we don't reach the funding goal, you get $X back." None of them say, "If you give $X and we reach the funding goal, you might get Y if it turns out we can come up with a business plan that fits the amount of money raised."
I agree that Kickstarter isn't Amazon, but they (and the project creators) do a generally piss poor job of making sure the customers (backers) understand that going into the project.
In fact, Kickstarter is most easily compared to pre-ordering a product that is under development. It's not even similar to investing since you are not getting ownership in the company. In your case, I suppose you could liken it to philanthropy which also sounds incorrect.
Anyone who has worked in hardware knows how incredibly difficult it is. Your manufacturers will constantly make mistakes which cause unexpected delays. Give these guys a break.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/832784035/orbit-a-swivel...
I backed a failed project, where the creator indicated they'd spent the money on something else (!), and that they weren't going to issue refunds. A 5-minute call to American Express later and I had my money back.
When you back a project on KickStarter, you are taking a risk on a team, and you can't go in with the expectation that all will go according to plan. If you don;t have the appetite for risk, wait for the post-kickstarter retail launch.
Doesn't that highlight a pretty broad dichotomy between what users are paying for and what they think they're paying for? As far as my understanding go, you fund something in the hope for an outcome (a clock, say), you don't place an order.
Kickstarter's T&Cs clearly set the expectation that you are placing an order. For example:
Project Creators are required to fulfill all rewards of their successful fundraising campaigns or refund any Backer whose reward they do not or cannot fulfill.
However, the issue is between the customer and the project creator as Kickstarter conveniently extricates themselves from the situation in the T&Cs (and chargebacks could be difficult since the payment is going through Amazon and Kickstarter who may not have violated the contract).
But if backers start feeling like KS is a place to take money and never deliver while KS itself turns a blind eye, they'll just slowly bleed credibility.
But what do I know. People still buy laptops on eBay, they still get scammed, eBay still refuses to do much about it. eBay still exists.
Suggests that there's going to be no Pebbles, while in reality the watches are seriously delayed.
Cheap link bait.