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Comment by aroman | Hacker News Reader

I agree strongly about #1. I can totally see where they were coming from (and frankly they are truly in uncharted waters with this funding campaign -- nobody has really ever attempted a crowd funding initiative quite like this one), but you're absolutely right. $600-800 is a lot of money for most people, and the constant fluctuation and uncertainty about pricing and the fundraising effort is definitely hurting their cause, I believe.

What they should have done, perhaps, was go to Bloomberg et al before going public with this. Starting out with $500k in the pot and strong corporate backing locking the price (or at least making the tiers predictable) would have gone a long way.

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Please note that the support both from Bloomberg and the industry (in terms of the price drop) are based on hindsight of how supporters and the press have been covering the case.

It's also hard to predict what having an initial perk of $500 would have meant to the campaign. The very strong reaction in the first day is also a result of supporters observing that there was a gap of $230 for the next price level. It's not easy to really tell what an entirely different price structure would have meant.

Quite true. Were it not for that I would have been in the "wait and see" group as well, and I suspect I'm not alone. Those "wait and see"ers wouldn't have jumped in and the whole campaign wouldn't have had such a newsworthy boost right of the gate.

Either way, very interesting to watch it unfold.

> $600-800 is a lot of money for most people, and the constant fluctuation and uncertainty about pricing and the fundraising effort is definitely hurting their cause, I believe.

On the other hand, they've always refunded any extra money that people have paid. Ultimately, if the price subsequently goes up, you have a good deal, if the price subsequently goes down, you get the extra money back. The re-adjustment does no harm to the consumer.

You should have read the submission. They say that the price is now fixed until the end of the campaign and anyone who paid more than $695 will get a refund of the difference. So, if anything, this alleviates any uncertainties about the price and no one should feel hurt.

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