Dissecting the Massively Over-Subscribed Lockitron Launch | Hacker News Reader

Dissecting the Massively Over-Subscribed Lockitron Launch

danielodio.com

44 pointsdanielodio22 comments

Regarding the 'Kickstarter style', I think it's a bit disingenuous to refer to the people that preordered as 'backers'. The term connotes an investment, when this seems to be a cut-and-dried preorder - the production run is certain, and there is no risk of the project failing and taking all the money with it like there can be with Kickstarter.

I disagree. On a first production run of a new product, there's the very real possibility it won't work out. Now that they have over 1,000 pre-orders it's obvious that it's a hit, but if you're "backer" #1 you have no idea if it'll come to fruition or not.

What I would agree with is that since they're not collecting $$$ until they ship, there's no risk. But that doesn't mean the term "backer" is misleading. Any early adopter of a new product would be a "backer" of its adoption.

DROdio

I thought this was going to be a rant but was pleasantly surprised.

I really liked the product page breakdown – sort of rudimentary, but pretty helpful. I'd be really interested in seeing more launches/product pages dissected like this.

Anyone know of a blog/site/resource that does this type of thing on the regular?

Hey @joelrunyon, agreed that it'd be great to see this done on a more detailed basis. I just threw this one together because I was impressed with how they copied the Kickstarter approach, which I hadn't seen done in exactly this way before for a launch (an obvious approach, but effective).

If you want to add more detailed feedback in the comments section on my post (or here) I'll be happy to dig into it more.

Has anyone actually pre-ordered that might have more feedback?

DROdio

I liked it as well, it would be interesting to see the kickstarter 'style' get more common now that Kickstarter has banned it (the pre-order vs not-a-store issue). I see it as a way to gauge customer interest in a sort of viral way.

The dissection was nice as well.

Most interesting indeed is the Kickstarter approach outside of Kickstarter. Someone should launch a Kickstarter-as-a-Service startup.

Hey I know a great business plan for a kickstarter-as-a-service, you let businesses create campaigns using the service in trade for a percentage of their revenue. You could call it.. Kickstarter!

Yeah, but you need to remember that the new "Kickstarter is not a store" rule means that companies/projects need to host their own page like Lockitron. Basically the rule created a market opportunity.

I'm interested in the "white-labeled Kickstarter" style approach. As I recall, app.net did the same thing. Are there services out there that help do this?

yes its called a webpage with a payment processor like stripe.

It is nice to see that they've come so far from the days of "Lockitron (YC S09) Lets You Unlock Your Door With Your Phone"

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2546752

But how did they get oversubscribed in the first place?

Indeed. This is the most interestng question here.

BTW some great feedback in the post comments from Lockitron co-founder Paul with more detail on how & why they took this approach: http://danielodio.com/dissecting-the-massively-over-subscrib...

I heard about Lockitron via an email from a friend before I saw the article on HN. Perhaps the huge interest is due to the concept going viral?

Most of the techy articles I read on HN I wouldn't bother forwarding to my non-techy friends or family; this however I would share for the "Wow! The geeky future!" factor.

somewhat OT, but for those curious the blogging engine this guy is using is tynan's sett.com

Yeah I wrote a post about it and did a Skype interview with @tynan about SETT: http://danielodio.com/moving-from-wordpress-to-sett-a-social...

This is more 'dissecting the landing page'. Paul's comment there was by far the most interesting part.

I was looking for more of a how people got to the site etc.. but i suppose it was mostly just [YC] > [HN/Reddit] > [TechCrunch] > [Twitter].

After I saw the white-label Kickstarter thing on app.net I wondered if there was anyone out there offering an embedded service. Doesn't look like there is.

hey danielodio,

please stop removing my comment on your blog. im trying to ask a question and you keep deleting it.

thanks

Could you ask it here as well, for reference?

Hey @iamjason89, I'm not removing anything -- although I am using a new blogging platform that's still in beta. So maybe that's why it's not working for you. I'll ask @Tynan to reach out to you; he's the creator of the platform.

Sorry for the trouble. Bleeding edge :-/

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