Tindie says forget Kickstarter | Hacker News Reader

Tindie says forget Kickstarter

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100 pointsjewelia24 comments

I'd like it if one of these marketplaces emerged that was more careful about vetting sellers. I've ordered Raspberry Pi-related gear off of two unrelated e-com sites in the past month (one was Tindie) and have yet to receive the goods (or any indication they received my order) 3+ weeks after the funds changed hands.

This isn't kickstarter. When I pay for something, I expect to receive it in a reasonable amount of time, or at least receive an explanation of what's going on. A little transparency would go a long way.

Hi Eldavido,

Definitely not the norm. Email me directly with your info and I'll dig into it now.

Emile Founder of Tindie Emile{at}tindie[dot]com

Update: Emile got back to me and we're working it out. I haven't received anything definite yet, but he's at least trying to make it right.

Do they have a reputation system for sellers and buyers like eBay?

I think it's ridiculous that this comment got downvoted. I read hacker news every day and want to have a conversation about fulfillment, business models, and maybe learn about various marketplaces and how they're dealing with the problem of fulfillment and inventory management.

Sometimes conversations here can get a little sharp-elbowed, but I can't help but think I'm getting downvoted because I said something marginally negative about Tindie.

Is this what HN is becoming -- say something nice, or don't say anything at all?

I agree that your comment had value and didn't deserve to be downvoted. That being said, I think you're jumping to too big of a conclusion based on a single (assuming it was only one) downvote - that HN has become a place where contrary opinions are squashed. Chances are good that someone simply isn't aware of the community standards as to when they are and when they are not supposed to downvote - that downvotes are meant to be reserved for when a comment adds no value to the conversation, not when one simply disagrees with the opinion being shared. In that case, the person needs to be educated to the community's expectations. But we should also not rule out the possibility that someone meant to upvote you and instead pressed the downvote button, which are entirely too close to one another, and of which there is no ability to reverse.

Or someone simply thought that the comment was jumping to conclusions with no real data about the actual cause of the problem.

Shipping problems are common enough that two instances close in time does not say anything about either seller, and even if one is bad is does not mean the other is.

Only over the last month I've have one package I ordered from an Amazon Marketplace seller get lost... by Amazon Logistics (first time ever I've seen Amazon's tracking show "package lost by carrier"), and another, from a Kickstarter project, stuck in DHL-limbo for 3 weeks - neither problem had anything to do with the sellers.

I thought only long-time members could downvote?

HN has pretty much always been a creepy echo chamber where more or less all posts toe the line of "whatever startups do must be right, so don't question or criticize".

I've been a member of the maker community for several years now - buying purple PCBs, selling kits, going to Maker Faire's, etc.

I have a lot of friends, myself included, who started selling their items on Ebay, PayPal's button, or some variant of Magento. Nearly all of them have moved their shops to Tindie. When I was at PyCon, I happened to run into people I knew (independently!) at their booth.

I'm still not sure exactly how they'll reach profitability (they only take 5%) and I'd love to see better tools for sellers (a la shipping.) But I really like what these folks are doing!

thanks @memset!

Hey HN,

Just saw this was picking up steam so if you have any questions, happy to answer them! Some might remember me from my posts a few years ago when I quit my job to learn how to code. Happy to answer any of those questions as well...

Emile

Founder of Tindie

Some questions:

Tindie Fundraisers just seem to have disappeared; what happened to them?

How do you regulate the marketplace competition? Do you let overseas companies copy a maker's product and sell it for a lower price?

My dad and I have ordered all sorts of cool stuff off of Tindie, from Launchpad Boosterpacks to RGB LED matrices. I just wanted to say thanks for this cool service you've provided to sellers and buyers alike!

Sure thing! Glad we could help!

How was your experience teaching yourself how to code?

Saved up, took a year off, and just went at it. Having friends that knew Python definitely helped when Stackoverflow couldn't help. Usually that was because I was asking the question/thinking of the problem wrong.

What I like about this is that it doesn't leave the buyer -- here, explicitly a buyer -- in the twilight zone that Kickstarter does. Kickstarter calls you a "backer", and a bearer of risk to some extent, and for this some people in the Oculus case have come to feel like investors and felt seriously cheated. Seriously, search HN.

Actually pricing what a Kickstarter "backing" offer should cost like is a lot like pricing financial derivatives. By offering to back a project, you're swapping a call option for something like a CDO - there are tranches, there are levels of haircuts, etc. etc.

Tindie is just Etsy for Arduino hackers. Congratulations for cutting that Gordian knot!

Sounds like it is for already created products, so is for a different audience than kickstarter. Although, honestly, if I were a maker I'd just pick the one with more traffic and customize or V2 to qualify for kickstarter if I had to since it gets a lot more eyeballs and eyeballs are where the money is.

Oh, I don't know. I don't think I'm alone in enjoying making things and sharing them when feasible... but am not that interested in running a real business doing it.

I realize that I'll never make enough income to replace a normal job building this sort of stuff, so a way to make small runs of useful things and actually get them to people who are interested sounds pretty appealing.

As is, I just post stuff I'm making on blog.saikoled.com, but when I have some time I'll definitely look at putting up useful gadgets on something like this. I just don't have the interest to quit working on my real company, get enough investment/funding to make a serious product, and deal with the stress of pitching it to people on kickstarter =P

Tindie is an awesome service, if you're at all interested in (hobby) electronics. There's a nice spectrum of products available, and there's always something new.

I was sad the day the "Supplies" category of product was retired, since there was plenty of stuff available which is hard to find, or just way more expensive, but I understand the need to focus and try to find a clear niche.

Speaking of Kickstarter, it seems possible for the two to co-operate: there's at least one product (Nick Johnson's "Re:Load Pro" active DC load) that I've backed on Kickstarter, and on the day the funding was complete I noticed it's also available (as a pre-order) on Tindie.

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nickjohnson/re-load-pro..., and Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/arachnidlabs/reload-pro/.

I am wondering why I have yet to see this tindie mentioned on hackaday.com

To the founder, I would approach them for an advertising deal if at all possible.

They were the first to write about us :)

http://hackaday.com/2012/04/30/tindie-an-etsy-for-electronic... http://hackaday.com/2012/06/27/an-etsy-for-electronics/

As lnanek2 said below Kickstarter and Tindie are serving 2 different markets. Kickstarter allows projects that require things like tooling to be crowdfunded prior to launch. You cannot supply a plastic spoon product to customers before you have the spoons.

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