Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding | Hacker News Reader

Kickstarter suspends project 10 hours from successful funding

vintedgoods.com

150 pointsprbuckley79 comments

A little Googling finds the founders - Jason Sun [1] and Ben Yi [2] - both worked at KILLSPENCER [3] before starting Vinted Goods [4]. While it's true that both sites have a top nav, I couldn't find any pics of someone operating a sewing machine on either site. Either way, the products seem similar, but what would you expect from a mentor/protege relationship?

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-sun/20/84a/124

[2] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/benjamin-yi/16/662/662

[3] http://killspencer.com/

[4] http://vintedgoods.com/

Edit: The owner of KILLSPENCER, Spencer Nikosey [5] has a few interesting interview nuggets [6][7]:

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF? I'm most proud of the upcoming products and relationships I've built with the members of our SPECIAL PROJECTS INNOVATION TEAM. (This is the team Jason and Ben were on.)

WHO DO YOU BOUNCE IDEAS OFF AND/OR GET INSPIRED BY? I have a small group of mentors. These people are amazing at what they do. I give them products and they use them, and give me feedback on how to improve the designs, construction, etc. I'm so lucky to have such amazing people interested in supporting the vision.

TAKE US BRIEFLY THROUGH YOUR PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND. WHERE HAVE YOU WORKED BEFORE LAUNCHING YOUR OWN COMPANY? I launched my business straight out of school. While in school, I had the opportunity to intern for some great people. Scott Robertson (Design Studio Press) is where I got my first work experience. I spent so much time observing and picking his mind on the business of design and watched him build his business from the start.

[5] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/spencer-nikosey/12/5a6/866

[6] http://swipelife.com/2009/04/15/the-newcomer-an-intervew-wit...

[7] http://www.carryology.com/2012/04/12/interviews-spencer-niko...

Edit 2: Google Cache of the Kickstarter campaign page: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jQYA_YU...

"Either way, the products seem similar, but what would you expect from a mentor/protege relationship?"

Seem similar in the sense that they are both selling bags? Looking at the products they both look to have completely different designs and styles, I don't see how they seem similar.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who found it strange that the founders at Vinted Goods seem to leave their name off of everything. Whether or not it is fair, it makes me think that there is more to the story--particularly when their mentor shares so much about himself and his brand on his website.

Sure the complaint won't stand, but they do have a similar general look, they could have avoided it completely by just going for a different style. Should be common sense if you are leaving one company to start another.

tl;dr - Person who mentored these guys didn't realize they were going to compete, takes legal action, Kickstarter complies.

Since Kickstarter is walking into the same land mines that eBay did, albeit with a slightly different flavor, it will be interesting to see how this plays out. The Vinted Goods folks can show pretty clear economic harm from the action, the mentor clearly thinks there is some sort of trademark, trade dress, and/or copyright violation. The story reads like a DMCA takedown although Vinted didn't provide details or a copy of the DMCA filing that they must have received (they mention a counter claim).

So what happens if you decide to make a Kickstarter Movie about a couple of anthropomorphized robots who end up on a dessert planet only to discover one of the inhabitants is destined to overthrow a totalitarian dictator? Hollywood loves to throw those lawsuits around.

"So what happens if you decide to make a Kickstarter Movie about a couple of anthropomorphized robots who end up on a dessert planet only to discover one of the inhabitants is destined to overthrow a totalitarian dictator?"

That depends. Does the plot involve one of the robots taking a bite out of the dessert planet?

lol, gotta love spelling correctors. Ya know I did see one where the princess had a couple of sticky buns on the side of her head. So its entirely possible :-)

[1] http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkerspace/2828387761/

"gotta love spelling correctors"

Figure out a way to route all of your writing through your search engine, and have it flag phrases which do not occur in its database, or which occur much less frequently than similar ones. So, in this case, it would ask: "Did you mean 'desert planet'?"

Alternately, you could just have your secretary check everything before it goes out. You know, like they did in the old days. But then again, I still program in PL/I, and tie handwritten notes to the legs of pigeons.

> Figure out a way to route all of your writing through your search engine, and have it flag phrases which do not occur in its database, or which occur much less frequently than similar ones. So, in this case, it would ask: "Did you mean 'desert planet'?"

Or, one could build a table of trigrams and bi-grams for English words and use that in the spell checker. It would be helpful to have some sort of approximate indexing, so you can catch things like 'dessert planet' which is just 1 edit step away from 'desert planet.'

My suggestion was for Blekko, where he works. It just occurred to me that there are interesting possibilities in connecting a search engine with a word processor. Anyway, even though your table/index thingy would work, it's availability and/or accuracy might suffer from whatever manual intervention which would be necessary for maintenance, but mostly, it would not have the advantage of constant updates from crawling new and updated sources. There is more to English than the OED. A while back, I saw an estimate of there being something like more than one million words in English, which included many terms that have come into normal usage, but which might take years to be included in any mainstream dictionary.

> There is more to English than the OED. A while back, I saw an estimate of there being something like more than one million words in English...

I can see the advantage of a cloud-hosted solution here. It's getting pretty compute/memory intensive. Still, "spell/grammar" check is something that we'll probably never get completely right. We'll just peck away and approach asymptotically. Desert/dessert and their ilk are a worthy target. (Words that "look" right.)

"We'll just peck away and approach asymptotically."

My pigeons like to peck at things, and they seem to have success with that approach. We could probably learn something from them.

I caught the reference, and have been idly thinking about ways to plug the generic AJAX style text edit box into an API that allows for spelling analysis. (this is more analysis than correction, as you point out). Not surprisingly if you get aggressive about the corrections folks complain.

"folks complain"

I wouldn't, as long as all of the extras can be toggled on/off. I'd actually pay a monthly fee for a search engine which has many features and is very customizable.

> gotta love spelling correctors

Even one that doesn't have "desert" in its dictionary?

Why can't the GP poster make an honest mistake, without others feeling the need to make excuses for them?

"Others"? It was the GP who said what you quote. :)

> Does the plot involve one of the robots taking a bite out of the dessert planet?

This puts the Candy Kingdom in the land of OOO in an entirely different perspective for me.

IANAL, but if the "mentor" is acting in as bad of faith as it appears, there may be grounds for a counter-claim of "tortious interference."

Great legal term. Makes me think of a tortoise chewing on ethernet cables or something.

Actually, a torte is a rich, usually multilayered, cake that is filled with buttercreams, mousses, jams.[1]

So, don't you interfere....=D

_____________

[1] Wikipedia: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torte Not to be confused with tart or tort. [FYI tortious interference, less ceremoniously, alludes to 'tort', a decidely less delicious variation of the word.]

"tortious interference." sounds like a disease a radio gets.... stolen from The Insider

It does feel like something fishy is going on, because we're only getting one side of the story. Regardless, VintedGoods is now getting a ton of free publicity.

> It does feel like something fishy is going on

I'd really like to see the letter.

Even if names and a few other bits are redacted, it would let me tell the difference between:

a) I've got a logo up top, they've got a logo up top [ clearly craziness ]

and

b) I was producing the same three designs two years ago. These kids stole my designs, made the handles 1mm narrower, and are producing the exact same objects that I worked for years to perfect.

Big difference.

It feels like there's got to be more to this story than is actually included in this post with regards to the mentor suddenly opposing the startup.

I agree:

> He laid claims to a number of our designs such as our website utilizing a top navigation bar, our photo of the designer operating a sewing machine, etc.

> In short, the claims are as outlandish as we perceived

If the claims are so ridiculous why haven't they posted the claim? Why are we supposed to trust what they have to say?

Also this line reads very curiously:

> the mentor gave them words of blessing for future success.

it's as if they're trying to say "he said it was okay to take the work we did there and use it in the future"? I don't get that sentence.

Something about the way this is written feels weird.

"Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off!"

"Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! Good luck! You'll need it!"

[Kids post to kickstarter and get tons of funding. Mentor decides that maybe he wants some of that action.]

How much funding had been pledged before Kickstarter pulled the plug?

They had reached $74,000 I believe.

Based on the conflicting statements the interns wrote, this is how I would put it:

"Thanks for all your help help, Mentor. We'll be off! [And we're taking your designs with us!]"

"Sure thing kids, go crazy. Do whatever you want! [I don't know that you're taking any of my designs to create competing products.] Good luck! You'll need it [because you don't have any designs and it will take you a while to come up with good ones]!"

Kids post to kickstarter using their mentor's proprietary designs, and get tons of funding to make products based on their mentor's designs.

Mentor sees them stealing the designs he spent months/years working on and sues.

A admittedly cursory look at both websites doesn't show any obvious copying (unless there is some sort if internal structural magic you can't see in pictures). Besides, the article only mentioned things like the website navigation and promo pictures. Not product infringement. Although as others have mentioned, we are only getting one side of the story.

It's an attempt at a web 2.0 'serious reply' while being very concerned about coming across as reasonable. If there's more to this story the people behind Vinted Goods are in for a rude shock that good PR isn't about a reasonable sounding blog post with a community outreach angle. That's a tactic for taking on faceless multinationals who move slowly.

The way it's written feels weird because English is not their first language.

More likely -

"Mentor" was training (grooming) these interns so that they would eventually work at his company.

Interns decided to move out on their own (nothing wrong there),

Interns signed some kind of overly general internship / employment contract that included some form of non-compete which he's leveraging to strengthen his lawsuit.

If I'm mistaken and the mentor's lawsuit really is as weak as the founders exclaim - this should be thrown out fairly quickly - the increase in PR will probably lead to a larger Kickstarter round - all will end well.

>Interns signed some kind of overly general internship / employment contract that included some form of non-compete which he's leveraging to strengthen his lawsuit.

That doesn't seem to be the case here, from TFA. It seems that it's more of a general IP infringement claim.

And regarding their website at that, not their products. A cursory look at the products on both companies websites doesn't show any obvious copying of products designs. And if killspenser thinks they own the idea of a top navigation bar...

I will agree though, we have heard only one side of the story.

The interns note that they were accused of stealing designs in the mentor's complaint. They never address this, and talk instead about website infringement issues.

If the suit relates to the misappropriation of their mentor's designs, they are in hot water. If the suit is merely about them copying the website, then it may blow over fairly quickly.

If the suit is merely about them copying the website, then it may blow over fairly quickly.

If it turns out that these interns copy/pasted a few lines of CSS, then they will be righteously raked over the coals.

I am curious how much of the employment contract would be enforceable considering that the internships were unpaid.

To go off on a moralistic tangent; if the "Mentor" didn't want to create competitors he should have paid the people doing work for him.

It's worth noting that their campaign page has been reduced to a simple "Sorry, this project is no longer available" message.

This, despite Kickstarter's claim that projects are kept on their site forever. Their FAQ states that "Projects are not closed or taken down, they remain on site for reference and transparency.

I blogged more about this here:

http://misener.org/despite-claiming-otherwise-kickstarter-qu...

If anyone is curious about what they raised, here's a graph I made:

http://canhekick.it/projects/446805249/vinted-bags-and-leath...

There's a competing site that has more information, but my graph is much nicer:

http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/446805249/vinted-bags-and-l...

Your graph is nicer! Out of curiosity, how do you make graphs like that?

Thanks! It's an SVG image that is built with C2[1], a ClojureScript library that provides some handy tools for working with svg.

After the image is done rendering, there is a callback that draws a hidden tooltip next to each of the points. The callback also puts all of the points into a kd-tree for efficient nearest neighbor searches. When a mouse hovers over the graph, the point nearest the mouse tells its tooltip to display itself.

Other people have made really excellent graphs using d3.js. Check out their examples if you want to be impressed: https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Gallery

I've also seen a lot of people using HighCharts. You can probably get these out a lot faster than building one using a library like d3 or C2. You'll also get support for browsers that don't render svg for free. Here's a good example: https://coinbase.com/charts

[1] https://github.com/lynaghk/c2

It's true that it's a lot quicker to get started with HighCharts than d3, but you're left with almost infinitely less power. Plus, a high-level API for d3 now exists called nvd3[1], which is more on the level of abstraction of a visualization framework like HighCharts (also, unlike HighCharts, it's free and open source under the Apache license).

But if you're interested learning a visualization framework that gives you the power to make literally any kind of data visualization you could imagine, and you feel at home doing intermediate to advanced programming in JavaScript and and are familiar with the svg spec(or willing to learn it), then d3 is an incredibly well-designed and flexible tool. It's one of only two software projects I've used in the past few years that makes me want to rave and carry on like this[2].

[1] http://nvd3.com/ [2] http://d3js.org

If I can come with a critique, your graph would look even nicer (at least to me) than it does now if you labeled your Y axis with nice round numbers rather than simply dividing your current max by 5 and using that as a step size. Round max up to some nice multiple of 5 first and then divide.

The underlying problem here is that the legal system is 2 orders of magnitude too slow. A court should decide such disputes, but they take months or years. Kickstarter has to pull the trigger one way or the other in hours.

RFS: disrupt the legal system by offering 4-hour dispute resolution.

I don't feel that it's too slow right now, mostly because I don't feel we've built up enough case law and precedent to trust faster feedback. That puts us in a painful transitionary period. Hopefully, it won't last too long.

The time it takes for case law to build up depends on the speed of the courts (usually involving multiple appeals). If we had 4-hour justice, we could probably have solid precedents in 4-days.

Tsk, it stings that the timing is so poor. It's almost malicious to pull the rug in the eleventh hour like that. I agree that the story is pretty one-sided here. The posts reeks of PC, sanitized writing which is to be expected, considering they will be going to court soon. Motives are well hidden and the overall tone of how each interaction between the Vinted and their mentors sounds way too congenial.

It's certainly better to pull it before the money is distributed. It sucks but the money going to the bank account of Vinted Goods is only going to make the situation messier.

Right, I agree with that. I will clarify stating that the order should have probably been done earlier rather than just before all the plans are in place.

> It's hard to know how many people feel like they're shopping at a store when they're backing projects on Kickstarter.

I'm feeling more like dumping money in the toilet and thinking "Hey. Maybe magic fairy will bring me some cool gifts next year in some vague relation to this act of me dumping money in the toilet."

I keep my fingers crossed for Ouya and new Total Annihilation.

How can they still respect their "mentor" when he sued them and ruined their entire Kickstarter project?

If everything they have said is true, it's an unfortunate situation and seems to be the result of the mentor saying, 'Fuck, why did I not take it to this level?'

However this is only one side of the story and it definitely seems like there might be more behind the scenes. Interested to see how this plays out and it means interesting things for how Kickstarter handles issues like this.

Agree with ChuckMcM about how it reads like a DMCA takedown, but just with much more serious consequences than the average DMCA.

Kickstarter should rather simply put projects on 'hold' and have a dispute ticket of sorts similar to that of ebay for people to sort it out and figure it out.

In the end of the day it has to be black and white however.. one or the other... the question now is who that side will be? The kickstarter raiser or an outside third party?

It is a great shame to see such a project go down like this and I hope kickstarter is taking notice and not let something slip like this.

How long does a dispute take to resolve? Is it fair to funders if their money is held for 6 months while lawyers argue?

Thats true. It is.. a rather complicated situation. I suppose it has to go one way or another especially with such a disruptive idea like kickstarter

I don't understand why a company with such a fan base doesn't just add a "Donate" widget to their page and directly solicit donations rather than go through Kickstarter and give up 5-10%?

The power of Kickstarter is attracting fans you couldn't otherwise, but they take a nice big chunk. I always wonder why companies with a great story and fan base just don't solicit their fans directly instead of going through Kickstarter -- am I missing something here?

And how will they take payments?

Stripe? Paypal? Lots of options -- especially for a company that will be selling a physical product -- they'll need to figure it out sooner than later.

I think the "pledge drive" kind of mechanics that Kickstarter uses can encourage people to donate more than they otherwise would. Sure, you can replicate this yourself (see app.net), but it's not free. Also, the Kickstarter brand.

I guess we're going to have to live in a world where there's a SEVERE shortage of leather bags.

rolls eyes

Somebody you mentored looks like their going to be more successful then you are. Sue them and get a settlement for part of their company. Would have been easier to invest int he company instead of paying the lawyers, but that's not the American way.

Any interest I might have had in their problem was lost when I could not read their complaint. The lines are too wide for the screen on my mobile device, and they are blocking resizing so I can not shrink it to fit.

My iPhone has a reader button in the browser that makes the page nice readable plain text with proper margins.

The headline is misleading. It's not really Kickstarters fault. If they get legal threats concerning one of the people using their site it's quite normal to take it down, at least until everything is settled.

Isn't that a 'guilty until proven innocent' mentality? This way, any random person who can pen down some legalese can take down a project. They should only respond to court issued judgments.

It might be in their TOS, but they definitely aren't obligated to stop supporting these guys because of legal action. In fact, without a formal process in place they open themselves up to more risk by making judgement calls about whose funding to pull. I'd like to see these guys take Kickstarter to court, if only to get a better definition of KS' legal role and responsibilities

Considering how many unemployed lawyers there are these days, I don't know why any startup wouldn't automatically bring in an attorney as part of the founding team; such a person may not be able to handle all the legal challenges a startup faces, but they'll be able to spot them coming and will know when and how to engage outside counsel. At least in the US, we live in a very legalistic and litigous society: law is not something that gets in the way, it's our society's operating system and a company's legal officer works to ensure the business operates smoothly in that environment, just like the CIO works to keep the business accessible and operable via the internet.

At least for engineers, part of your professional obligation is not to dilute the value of your services by offering them for free. The equation is obviously a bit different for lawyers, who may work pro bono (only in criminal cases, perhaps?). My point being, it is probably against their professional code to be on retainer for a price far below market value.

Quite true, but I was thinking more of a founder role.

> professional obligation is not to dilute the value of your services by offering them for free.

So all of the volunteers who work on open-source projects in their spare time are in violation of their professional obligations?

Guys with the guts to quit their jobs and try to bootstrap a company totally on spec are in violation of their professional obligations?

People who volunteer to provide free technical skills to schools, hospitals, libraries and orphanages in desperately poor Third World countries are in violation of their professional obligations?

Bloggers who write about cool programming ideas for people to read, for free, are in violation of their professional obligations?

This "obligation" simply doesn't make sense.

And besides, the "market value" you cite only exists because buyers and sellers of services are able to freely negotiate with each other to decide on a price.

There is a definite obligation, as a licensed professional engineer, to protect the reputation, and to an extent the scarcity, of engineering knowledge as a resource. I know for sure that, as an architect, it is unethical to do architecture work for friends, family, etc. for free. The examples you gave are straw men, though, except open source.

- Open Source is a really interesting problem, and I'm not involved in that community very much. I suspect a licensed engineer would be averse to writing code for an OS project in their spare time, if it wasn't part of their job.

- Quitting your job and working for yourself isn't the same as offering your services to a third party for free / cheap. If a lawyer was actually an equity partner in a firm, they could set their own salary, certainly it could be less than usual. This is different than what I saw as a contracting/retainer relationship where the lawyer is an independent third-party providing services because they have some free time. Of course, there is probably a lot of red tape involved in creating an in-hour legal department versus contracting this out.

- Providing services to charity, inarguably, provides a net benefit to the profession. Most professional organizations allow for this, provided you're acting in an advisory role. Arguably, actually getting involved in litigation is no longer 'advisory'.

- Writing about cool things and implementing them are two different ideas. Some lawyers provide commentary as a hobby, but this is not interchangeable with the actual service they provide. As a software engineer, writing about a concept isn't the same as implementing that concept for a client.

Remember, this only applies to licensed engineers who belong to a self-regulating professional organization. Just because your job title has 'Engineer' in it, if you didn't take an oath, you aren't really an Engineer.

Actually I'm kind of glad the software industry doesn't fall into this category. I don't want a "professional organization" telling me what I can or can't charge for my work!

You're mistaken, there are people in the industry who are engineers. In some lines of work (architecture, law) membership in a professional organization is required. But if you went to school in an accredited program (most university Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, etc.), you can become a professional engineer. It's required to join the IEEE, in fact. The point of the professional organization is to hold it's members to a high standard; part of this is not offering 'bargain basement' services. The reason you don't see a lot of discount medical practitioners and lawyers is arguably because their organization would disbar them. Likewise, hiring a consulting software engineer who is a P. Eng. brings the benefit that if they act unethically, they can lose their certification.

Because this would be incredibly expensive and the lawyer would end up doing nothing like 70% of the time.

Hiring an experienced lawyer away from a job as general counsel or from an established law firm would be incredibly expensive. Hiring a more junior one (or bringing a moderately experienced lawyer onto the board), not so much.

As for the workload, that's a bit like saying there's no point in having a CIO because all the computers work fine 95% of the time.

>As for the workload, that's a bit like saying there's no point in having a CIO because all the computers work fine 95% of the time.

So you are suggesting having a /desktop IT/ guy as a founder, because computers break? really?

I mean, yeah, lawyers are important. But if you need more than ten grand in lawyer time while you are still three people in the garage, not getting paid? you are doing it wrong.

In fact, I would say that nearly always, if you are spending more money on lawyers than accountants, you are doing it wrong. The IRS is way bigger and scarier than any DMCA take down, and the best way to protect yourself is with an accountant. (I mean, yes, when the IRS comes knocking, yeah, maybe you want a lawyer, too. But you want the accountant all the time.)

Even so, personally? I'd spend cash on the accountant, rather than making them a founder.

Desktop IT people are important, too- but again, when you are still three people in the garage, do it yourself, or pay the neighbour's kid to do it.

Really, I think having /too much/ lawyer involvement too early can be a problem, too- in many of the ways that having too much desktop IT too early can be a problem. I mean, as your company grows, yes, you will want rules. It's reasonable to then tell people that they need to keep their data on the network drive, and that the desktops will get wiped when they have problems, and in some cases, even, to say that only IT can install programs.

Just like later on, yeah, you want some sort of hiring process to make sure you aren't, you know, discriminating, or just hiring the manager's kid brother or something. But early on? Hell yes, I'm going to give my brother a call when I need something he can do. I trust him; I know what he can do. And yeah, that's not really acceptable once you get going and are a big company. But using your personal network (which is inherently discriminatory) is a pretty big advantage when you are small.

Or hiring contractors. Yeah, at a big company you need to make sure they are on the 'preferred vendor' list or whatever, and that they have this and that certification and insurance. A lawyer will give you 20 good reasons why this is important (and I'm sure those are good reasons.) but when you are small? that will kill you. No; when you are small? yeah, I know someone that knows about ARM-based embedded systems. Let me give her a call, and hire her if she's free.

I mean, yeah, I'm sure there are good reasons for following all the rules all the time, and those become important when you are big. That's what lawyers are for. But, that kind of friction at the beginning? that's going to kill your company.

And I'm not saying lawyers aren't important, either. they can really save your ass. I do think it makes sense to have some sort of relationship with a lawyer, so you have someone to ask questions of, and to go to when you get in trouble. But, personally? I just see so much more risk from screwing up my taxes than from getting sued (I know several people in debt for life because they thought they could do their business taxes themselves. I don't know anyone that has gotten sued that badly, or even if it's possible to get sued that badly.) so I'd spend more on the accountant.

But either way? I don't want the lawyer /or/ the accountant involved in my day to day operations, at least not until I'm a whole lot larger.

Every single time I see someone try to use an analogy lately I just stare in bewilderment.

Actually, it might be worse if he found things to do.

The "mentor" here is risking destroying himself and his business over this because Vinted has their own unique look and customers are generally not going to approve of his actions.

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