Kickstarter is Not a Store
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kickstarter.com
It could also serve to protect neophyte project originators who have no clue as to what it takes to get a hardware project from a rendering or a garage prototype to a real finished product.
There are a myriad of technologies available today to produce very high quality prototypes that look like the finished product. Forcing project originators to show an actual product rather than a rendering will simply force them to make the time and financial investment to get the project to a far deeper level of completion and really think it all thorough.
If someone will not take the time and spend the money to put together a prototype that is a real representation of what it is they are proposing I don't think they belong on Kickstarter.
I would imagine that it would still be OK to show renderings and animations so long as the actual physical product is shown as well. The reason I think this is important is that this can also show supporters important details that may not be evident or easy to demonstrate with actual products. For example, animations could show internal mechanism and how they work. 3D renderings could show ideas on variants or configurations for backers to discuss and provide feedback for.
I have a couple of projects that have been slated for Kickstarter for months. I've been too busy with work to really get to them. In both cases my approach has been to fully develop the items to the point that they are basically ready to manufacture. The Kickstarter push would simply serve to gage interest and pay for tooling and other NRE's that would make it possible to fabricate the items in reasonable quantities at a decent cost. Of course, I've been in product design and manufacturing for a long, long time so I tend to be very realistic about what it takes to get something done. I've seen projects go on Kickstarter that would not have a chance in hell to be completed at the requested funding level. Not a good thing.
Above all, what this indicates is that Kickstarter is watching and listening, which is excellent.
In many ways, they don't know what they don't know. They don't do enough work ahead of time, set their goals too low, don't understand the real business equation behind their project and then find themselves in the proverbial "be careful what you wish for" situation.
After all, getting a million dollars for a project that requires two million is not a good thing, is it?.
The set of disciplines to be mastered could be daunting. In such cases it is probably best to hire a product designer to help you get from a garage prototype to a manufacturable product or an interim product that is manufactured using an approach that is closest to production.
If you could provide a little more info as to the nature of the product I can certainly take the time to give you some pointers. I don't need to know what it is. What I need is an understanding of the technologies that you might require and if there's anything really critical in the design. For example, if it has lenses it might be critical to have them precisely aligned. Does it produce a lot of heat? What kind of power will it require? Batteries or powered off the wall?
The other important bit of data would be your current skill set (you and your friend).
Tools: For nearly all electro-mechanical products you will need specific industry-standard tools in order to be able to communicate with manufacturers and job shops. For example, I use Solidworks for mechanical design as well as thermal and flow simulation and Altium Designer for schematic and circuit board design. If the design involves programmable electronics you might be into tools such as Xilinx or Altera for FPGA's and Keil or other compilers for embedded stuff.
Lastly. Where are you? The approach might change a bit based on your geographic location and the locally available resources. You might, for example, be able to ping your local university for help.
Ummm, I know its not your primary point, but I'm not entirely sure about this statement. Look at the android app store (Google play) in comparison. It doesn't have that same curation as the Apple version, and certainly there are a lot of useless apps on it, but it is by no standard "unusable". In fact, in my experience, I prefer looking for apps on the Google version than the Apple because for almost any purpose its easy to find an amateur low cost or free app. This generally isn't the case in the apple version
But the point is that they have to have something to show; the Ouya itself should have had some hardware/software going. As is they were funded without even proper prototypes or software and people think they'll be getting one in March?
If you actually get an Ouya in March 2013 that has an app store you can buy games from, I'll ask PG to give you all my karma.
From the page, this does not appear to be the case. It's stated very clearly:
"Product renderings are prohibited. Product images must be photos of the prototype as it currently exists."
It should be interesting to see though how people creatively get around this prohibition.
I'll certainly consult with the KS guys when ready and see what they say.
I really like the "you have to show what you have now" part of the requirement, but getting a look at where the creator wants to get to as a goal is also very useful for choosing projects. And your cutaway animation also sounds like a knock-down case for why renderings are needed sometimes.
They needed to make some sort of move, but banning simulations and renderings (Really?) seems to be terrible overkill.
If anything, this move makes it much more a store. You can only put up products that exist. There's no funding of development.
Not sure this is a good solution on their part.
EDIT: Fully in support of the "Risks and Challenges" section. Makes it like an investment prospectus.
I may be wrong. But can someone point to some concrete examples? Fraud is a pretty heavy charge to level against Kickstarter projects, and it's also an indirect accusation that Kickstarter is a hotbed of such activity.
True, Kickstarter should be trying to address the issue, regardless of its cause. But let's be careful before leaping to the conclusion that people have been acting in bad faith.
The skills, knowledge, and resources to produce 1k widgets is totally different than producing 1MM widgets. I might be able to brute-force manufacture 1k widgets from my garage and that would kickstart the business if that's my skill and scale estimate. I need staff, facilities and a different type of supplier if I need to make millions, and I may not have what it takes to deliver on that.
[1] The reason US required QUIbs and the SEC and the related regulatory structure (re: financial investment contracts) is precisely to create such bright line playing fields. But these lines are sufficiently complex to require a "price of admission".
I don't know. On the other hand, if you leave a loophole in a system, it will be exploited; that's a basic human law. So in this case I'd guess both scenarios occur - there are so many assholepreneurs out there trying to find a way to "creatively" earn money that I wouldn't be surprised if those design scams were occuring more and more often.
Is this the standard we want?
If you used an investment service which said "we require proof beyond all reasonable doubt of criminal endeavors before taking down [some UGC]," how much would you trust those investments? What if the standard for takedowns was a bit higher?
I'd say so, yes. Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat
Since the answer is clearly "yes" - then taking some steps to reduce the impact of these vulnerabilities seem reasonable. If you are selling a product, show us the product. If you do not have a product, we want to be sure the backers know this.
Proof beyond all reasonable doubt is a lovely standard for a criminal justice system. Note that it is not used in civil suits in America - only criminal cases.
We're not talking about taking away people's freedom here. We're talking about an investment website.
In general with Kickstarter failures current and future, I think we'll find the evidence weighs heavily in favor of incompetence rather than malice. There's no shortage in the world of business ventures that are honest to goodness failures.
Is anyone arguing that mere accusations should result in kickstarter takedowns? You make a good point... just a sort of obvious one.
This is clearly a hard problem, and neither extreme of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" or "accusation = takedown" works. Maybe that's why this space is so unexplored! That doesn't absolve Kickstarter from having to discover the palatable middle ground.
Hard work is hard, and I think today's announcements are part of that hard work. So I say: keep it up, Kickstarter!
Yes, it should - if it's backed by a legal letter, Kickstarter might be liable too, if the suit is sucessful.
Takedowns due to "mere accusations" to me means that I can fire off an e-mail if I see a kickstarter project that looks sketchy and have it taken down post-haste.
To me, that is highly suboptimal.
http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-what-a-kickstarter-scam-...
I guess Kickstarter is aiming to fund physical projects that already have a working prototype and require funding to deliver in large quantities.
It seems fair to me, as the person requesting funding should be required to have put in a fair amount of effort beyond a flashy 3 minute video promising the world. A working prototype seems to be a fair bar.
They certainly had their challenges - but would have had no chance without a big group of people ordering up front.
I use Solidworks for mechanical design and Modo for photorealistic rendering. I assure you that, with enough skill and effort, one can make photorealistic renderings that, to the uninformed, look like the product is ready to go and that the funding is a mere formality. No, Kickstarter did the right thing here.
That said, I am hoping that they will allow 3D renderings and animations as added illustrations if and ONLY if one shows actual realized versions of the proposed hardware in the project. The reason I say this is that 3D renderings and animations are extremely useful tools for the communication of function and some ideas that might be hard or impossible to convey using actual hardware. A good example is a cross-sectional cut showing moving parts.
I wonder if in the future there will be a requirement to limit the number of backers on every project. Logically there seems to be a point where additional money from backers over what was asked for leads to difficulty delivering at all.
For instance, say I could make 10 custom widgets a month at $100 a piece. I might decide to launch a Kickstarter project asking for $1200 to gauge if at least 10 other people are interested in my fancy innovative widget. What happens if I end up raising $12000? My target of 20% profit on each widget is no longer possible unless the backers are willing to wait up to 10 months for me to deliver. The only other option is to invest money into producing widgets in larger volume to meet this initial demand. That investment would only make sense if there were some reasonable expectation that demand would stay at the same level after the Kickstarter project ended.
So back to my original cynicism, maybe Kickstarter sees signs that some very good marketers are having enormous success with Kickstarter projects whilst being in completely over their heads...
If all they do is port some small portion of Planetary Annihilation forward, then I'll be happy.
If they actually deliver on 50% of what they've promised + Orchestral Score - I'll be beyond happy.
I spent a good portion of 1997/1998 playing Total Annihilation.
However, it is still pretty easy to get a nice milled or extruded aluminium block and call it a prototype so I don't think it will completely eliminate unscrupulous frauds.
Is what kickstarter asking that unreasonable? (other than their lawyers probably told them do this now or suffer consequences that could mean no more business.) If someone can't produce a physical prototype of an item, do they really deserve hundreds of thousands or a million dollars?
Kickstarter is supposed to be a service, for a share of the income they are supposed to facilitate the connection between creators and audience. Rubber stamping an increasingly bureaucratic set of rules is not the way to do this.
A better solution would have been to add the ability for prospective supporters to voice queries and concerns where they could be seen prominently on the page. Right now it seems the creators receive questions and pick the ones they want to answer and place an update answering the questions.
Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. That would be a real service offering real value, it would also cost real money. Right now Kickstarter's revenue comes from the fact that Kickstarter is popular. The thing that makes creators choose Kickstarter over another platform is almost entirely due to prominence. That cannot be sustained. Eventually it will have to rest on quality of service. The current set of changes do not increase the quality of service.
I can't imagine that will ever happen. If they vetted projects or teams, it would probably put some liability on their shoulders. They are going to do everything they can to prevent that.
That's not true. You can demonstrate prototypes. What you can't do is just whip something up in Blender, do a nice rendering, and then start selling it with with the rewards being "1 widget, 2 widgets, 5 widgets, 10 widgets, 20 widgets", with no indication that you've actually done your homework to say if this is even possible.
They want people to actually have some sort of prototype, something to show for their work, rather than just a slick graphical presentation and reward system that implies that it's far closer to completion than it actually is.
It should be 100% clear that it's just a donation, whether it's $10, $100 or $1000. But you're not getting any product for that donation, until the product launches, when you can go and buy it.
I welcome this change and think that it will help in the long run.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-p...
Not saying they didn't succeed, just that there are similar lessons about expectations there.
It's an entirely different value proposition failure when they paid $100 expecting to receive a light bulb or gaming console only to end up empty-handed.
I'm sure kickstarter isn't liable even for the projects that explicitly promise delivery, so it's still not quite a store in those cases, but I assume that kickstarter doesn't prohibit projects from offering actual preorders.
I think they've been pretty clear about this.
As programmers, we often try and fix things with code, but it's cool to see Kickstarter improve their product by thinking about what questions the creators should be asking. I also agree that hardware makers do themselves and other a disservice by showing space age renderings of their products.
As a long time burner, it was interesting to me how year after year, the playa adopted many (but not all) of the rules, regulations, restrictions of the outside world. We had a DMV (Department of Mutan Vehicles), Building Regulations (for buildings over a certain height), developed clinics, and ambulance services - etc...
It will be interesting to see, over time, how kickstarter adopts many of the SEC mandated governance over new enterprises going to the market for funding.
Reading through all the regulations though - it feels like 90% (100%?) are in response to this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light...
I'm sure a LOT of people watched that video, and thought that the LIFX lightbulb exists (or almost exists) in it's current incarnation. Also, there are a lot of people supporting for $500 in the belief that they'll get 10 lightbulbs - I wonder how many of those backers don't realize their is a better than even chance that this project will come to nothing, and they'll get nothing but good feelings for their money?
I do hope that it doesn't keep products that are in a rough state from being able to be successful, though if somethings really that complex that you need to raise a lot of money to have a marketable prototype, let alone bring it to market, I don't think Kickstarter donations are the way to fund it.
Yes, the general tendency is for marginal cost to decrease as production quantity increases, but that does not mean that it's a smooth curve. Instead, the line is jagged, littered with points where large investments need to be made. For an open-ended product, you get investors, hire extra people, buy equipment, etc. You'll end up taking a short-term loss that will be earned back in the long term. For a close-ended project like Kickstarter allows, you'll have the short-term loss, but no long-term profit.
And that's if you have experience and connections to pull off manufacturing and courting investors. If you're hawking a project on Kickstarter, it's pretty likely that you have neither.
When something doesn't yet exist, you have to present speculative representations to communicate (or even rationally discuss!) the vision. That goes double for a wider audience, which may not be as accustomed to letting their imagination range over exotic possibilities.
Such mockups should be clearly labeled, and placed alongside current-best-prototype representations for comparison, and disclaimerized as with the new 'Risks and Challenges' requirement.
But before Kickstarter, more traditional investors and prepurchasers -- and indeed internal organization R&D and product-development processes -- would use and expect such representations for design communication. Why cripple the new model with this encumbrance?
This is how every company should operate. And this will definitely improve their long-term shape and revenues.
In the case of Lifx, article titles like "Australian re-invents the lightbulb" mislead the public and perpetuate the belief that people are purchasing actual products and not merely funding idea that may come into fruition.
I would like to see a separate (new) category for product&design projects at this stage. The projects would explicitly be looking for funding to create the prototype, with no promise to deliver a finished product. If a project is backed and delivers a working prototype, but now needs funding for the next step, they could return to Kickstarter for another round. Backers who want to fund product ideas could do so (likely with smaller pledges), and no one is tricked into a large backing thinking they will get a working product in the mail in three months.
Traditional startups get venture capital in rounds; why not crowd-sourced capital in rounds?
You're developing a spacefaring action game? By all means, show me that you want to have planets, stars, and space pirates--but if all you have right now is a spaceship object floating in an environment without a skybox, I want to see that, too.
The reason I felt comfortable backing guys is because you guys had already delivered a product to market. A description or early prototype demonstrating what you were trying to make - almost exactly what I had pictured as my ideal smartwatch before you launched - and my wallet would have been open.
Kuddos on the Pebble project. It's an amazing product, and I can't wait to see you guys release to market. Cheers!
Thanks! Working 24-7 to get these watches out, blogging here: kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts/
Lots of things can go wrong at every stage after you have a final production sample. You still need to get the sample certified by a number of governing bodies, set up QC and shipping, and in the case of overseas manufacturing deal with the freight/customs and finally fulfillment of the product.
I'm happy that Kickstarter is taking more of stance on the subject, as we've had to in many cases provide "returns" to people or deal with "customer service" style requests, which we've done in good faith but it really misses the point of launching a product on Kickstarter.
I think this stance will really help back up projects when they need to make an adjustment, or have to deal with something unexpected. Also, it should improve the quality of projects moving forward by making people more skeptical and aware of the time/cost-instability of the manufacturing process. We were lucky to hit a pretty happy medium with regards to initial volume, and unlike some of the blockbuster projects when we have to change things we don't end up on TechCrunch for it, only the Guardian :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked the purpose of kickstarter was to help people get their ideas off the ground. Some types of products, especially hardware, can cost a lot of money to produce at a prototype stage. Not everyone has the cash lying around to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to build a functional prototype. So normally what that person would do is put together some renderings and a video and go to kickstarter to raise the funds to expand into prototypes and production. Now what are they to do?
Ultimately I think this decision by kickstarter gives a tremendous advantage to design shops with the budgets to build prototypes, while leaving the little guy behind.
The question is now whether you want to bring the project back onto the originally envisioned path, or figure out how to ride the waves of these unexpected changes?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/the-moment-of-truth-for-air...
DO NOT ALLOW listings to offer the product described as a reward.
Will solve the problem entirely, guaranteed.
Rewards: $180 A new Android-based game console.
If someone is really behind the concept for a product, they can just buy the product after it's available in an online store.
I could easily see this becoming a legal requirement if it gets visible to legislature.
The way Kickstarter presents itself, it's neither - it's not an investment; it's a way for creators and consumers to collaborate on a project.
That's subtly different from an investment per se,
(Whether you agree with that is a different question, but it's important to note how Kickstarter intends to portray itself).
However, with the Tesla thing and related projects, I think that this gets into a really grey area- and from past experience with helping with a large site that took donations- you have to subtract the items that have value from the donation, so they have to do this if anything is given away, or at least the recipient does if they are a charity/non-profit. Was the Tesla thing a non-profit?
And not allowing 3D renderings of hardware is a bad idea. For example, if you have a valid design for something and need the money to have it fabricated, then the sponsor should be able to see the design. Not being able to do so is lame. Sometimes the design is the hard part. That is a valuable asset. It should be rewarded with money to see it through. Why place someone with no design and someone with a design on equal footing. They aren't. It's not just about fairness, it is about being able to invest in something with a future. No design- no future. Good design- possible future.
So if you want to impress people with your project on the kickstarter website, you'll have to stick to actual content.
The GoldieBlox are in violation of this bizarre rule. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4550707
Why not just say "The developer must declare their planned production run, and not accept excess backers"?
This is outside the fraudulent activity. It's more out of my sheer, selfish interest in rate of success.
I could see such data publication helping and hurting Kickstarter. It could be inspiring and generate even more interest (aka revenue), but also expose the lack of completion and high failure rate turning off investors.
It seems fairly clear to me that they are just trying to prevent these kind of shenanigans: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/files/2012/09/bulbs.jp...
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/09/18/kickstarter...
which came from Kickstarter's community manager.
It needs to be understood that there is risk associated with this, no guarantees, and that it isn't a straight up purchase transaction like going to the store or preordering an iPhone.
I think what they need to do is have milestones for their project that can get vetted by Kickstarter. For each milestone they hit, more funds get released to them. This will allow funders to get out if they keep missing their milestones, and the project looks like it's going downhill.
I don't think you can call them a traditional store, but you can definitely call them a Futures Store.
Terrible move. Require renders and sims to be clearly labeled as such, but this? FFS.
1. Projects are over-promising and under-delivering
2. Kickstarter isn't a store and was never meant to be one. People have turned it into one, leading to all sorts of issues, including point #1
I think when you are asking for examples of abuse you are thinking of the first point, but the 'no multiple products' rule addresses #2. You aren't buying a product, you are backing a project. If you want multiple lightbulbs, presumably you can purchase them after the project is funded.
In other words, I don't think the rule is to prevent abuse, it's to bring kickstarter back to its roots and remind people what kickstarter is all about. It may hurt some projects but hopefully it will revert kickstarter to its original niche where it was adding a lot of value.
eg Scanbox: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-y...
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I'd speculate that it's probably a requirement driven by lawyers worried about failed projects conferring some kind of liability onto Kickstarter itself.