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Comment by bbx | Hacker News Reader

Genuine off-topic question: why didn't they go through Kickstarter, to potentially reach more users (although a $32M goal is huge)?

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I believe Kickstarter requires more upfront for hardware projects (prototype, etc)

They had a design prototype, that might have been enough. I suspect pricing might have been a part of it, after all, on $32m, even a 1% price difference is a very large amount.

I'm sure these 1% can be negotiated when you bring a 32M$ project.

kickstarter takes a 5% cut, and indiegogo takes a 4% cut. the difference is $320,000, no small amount!

i don't think kickstarter would've brought in anymore investors than putting it on indiegogo -- atleast not 320k worth. the edge probably already saturated to the set of users that would have crowdfunded for it.

I think they get to keep the money they raised even though they didn't meet the goal.

They don't, the campaign is Fixed Funding - once it failed to meet the target all backers got a full refund http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

No they don't, it was marked as "fixed funding" which is explained here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/how-pricing-works-on-indiegogo

They announced all payments will be refunded by PayPal within 5 days.

> "We’ve been assured by Paypal that all refunds will be processed within five working days."[1]

[1] http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ubuntu-edge?c=activity#act...

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