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Comment by joosters | Hacker News Reader

What happened to 'Kickstarter is not a store' - https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-is-not-a-store ?

Offering multiple quantities of a reward is prohibited. Hardware and Product Design projects can only offer rewards in single quantities or a sensible set (some items only make sense as a pair or as a kit of several items, for instance). The development of new products can be especially complex for creators and offering multiple quantities feels premature, and can imply that products are shrink-wrapped and ready to ship.

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That's from 2012, and as someone mentioned, was in response to a lot of risky hardware projects. More recently, Kickstarter changed their rules to be a lot simpler. https://www.kickstarter.com/rules

Perhaps this campaign violates what you perceive as the spirit of Kickstarter, but Kickstarter itself has never had a problem with established companies/entertainers using the platform.

yeah, who would want to use kickstarter for a risky hardware project!

When you can use it as a store by a company that raised more than $10 million, and this time sell a fully completed product with no special rewards or community input. They didn't even try to come up with any rewards this time - at any price, or show any part of how it was designed. it blatantly has nothing to do with the kickstarter spirit whatsoever.

I'm pretty sure the Kickstarter spirit is defined as "whatever the people running Kickstarter want it to be".

In my experience services that don't change over time are the ones that go away. Kickstarter seems like a fluid concept that continues to evolve. As I look they're passing $5 million so it seems as though the community is responding.

yeah, you can see how outraged people are by how much they are refusing to support the offering

Well, there's risky and then there's risky. I believe that post was put up at the same time that the LIFX light bulb campaign was prematurely ended at ~$2 million. That project was from someone whose previous KS project was a cardboard lightbox that had missed its shipping date at that point, so I think the likelihood of collateral damage there made Kickstarter pause. (Credit to LIFX that they learned/hired quickly and managed to ship.)

Whatever you take the spirit of Kickstarter to mean, I think that Pebble has it. They're grateful for Kickstarter, and foster a user community — launching a new product this way just feels native.

This spirit is better for me. I'll never back another Kickstarter project in the old "spirit". One project failing and taking all my money with it is enough for me. I'm nearly certain that I'll get my watch, so I backed this one.

I really don't see the point of ordering a Pebble from Kickstarter myself, even if I had a desire for such a watch.

The nominal amount I might save by doing the pre-order is more than offset by the risk I'm assuming. I'd much rather wait until the product is released, and then read some independent reviews... especially ones where the reviewer has been wearing it for a month or so.

I've only funded two crowd-sourced projects. One was for a buddy of mine, the other was for Sandstorm.io, where they were already basically done, and just wanted some more funds for enhancements. And it was open-source, so its just the same in my mind as when I send money to Debian or OpenBSD (which is not often enough, but that's another discussion). And even with Sandstorm, one of the principals is also a friend of a friend, so I had confidence the money was going towards a good purpose.

For others the price isn't the important point, being along on the kickstarter is merely about being first in the queue for a new toy.

The upside of this is that Pebble get to rake in people's money for pre-orders - not a finished product - which means they manage to pre-empt Apple Watch stealing the show. The drive is going to run until ultimo March, with Apple Watch being ready in April.

The downside is that you eat a lot of fees by using Kickstarter, when you might have been able to run your own drive independently like Lockitron, so it's interesting to consider that they went with Kickstarter. I guess the idea of being a "big success on Kickstarter" would be good PR, when Apple is, well, Apple.

Maybe people are just much quicker on the draw with the credit cards there, which wouldn't surprise me. Especially after the Stripe payment system.

Kickstarter has other advantages. For one, everyone who backed the original Pebble watch already has a Kickstarter account.

I wouldn't be surprised if kickstarter worked out a deal with pebble with a lower fee. All this traffic and press is clearly good for them too.

Honestly, that seems like a completely arbitrary policy which serves no real purpose.

In general I'd stay the hell away from hardware projects on Kickstarter, but in this case Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame. I assume that gives them a little more leeway when Kickstarter is approving their campaign.

That Kickstarter policy update was in response to the rising levels of failed projects on the site. It was an attempt to fight off bad press. Of course, it turned out to be pretty toothless (Just take a look at the joke of a 'risks' section of almost any kickstarter project. That section was also introduced by this udpate).

I'd agree with you that Pebble probably have a better chance than most at delivering on their promises, but as people have commented elsewhere, Pebble are only really back on KS as a promotional exercise. This is not really comparable to most other KS projects.

Still, it's one rule for them, another for everyone else. KS are doing well out of this promo too.

Perhaps someone should go and report Pebble for their other rule-breaking? Those watch pictures at the top of the page are clearly computer renderings. "If a simulation or photorealistic rendering is discovered after a project launches, that project will be canceled." :)

The risks section is great because you can tell very quickly if they've put some thought into logistics or not. No need to enforce that it's properly filled out.

> Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame

Perhaps I'm remembering this incorrectly, but wasn't the Pebble a textbook example of significant production delays for a Kickstarter hardware project? I'm pretty sure I knew someone who hadn't received his watch from Kickstarter many months after the supposed delivery date, while at the same time he could have gone to Best Buy and bought one.

> but in this case Pebble has a proven track record of delivering a quality product in a reasonable time frame.

Hardly.

http://readwrite.com/2013/07/09/why-i-cancelled-my-pebble-sm...

$3,956,662 (as of this post) happened.

I wonder if they are getting the usual 5% or if there's some sort of partnership based on the two companies' histories together.

If Pebble have any sense they'll have negotiated some kind of better deal with Kickstarter, in return for the guaranteed revenue and publicity.

I suspect that the reason to continue using Kickstarter even with the 5% fee is that it comes included with publicity from not just Kickstarter, but the media outlets that will relay this story.

I think it's highly unlikely that Pebble didn't negotiate that 5% way down. While it's a symbiotic relationship, I think that at this point it's safe to say that it benefits Kickstarter more than Pebble.

Pebble is getting a very cheap line of credit with theoretically no obligation to repay (hence why any money you give in a KS is a 'donation' or 'pledge').

There's a contract to deliver on the promises made:

https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use#section4

The language isn't real strong though:

If a creator is unable to complete their project and fulfill rewards, they’ve failed to live up to the basic obligations of this agreement. To right this, they must make every reasonable effort to find another way of bringing the project to the best possible conclusion for backers.

I was burnt by Kickstarter when a project didn't deliver. In this case, it was obvious fraud -- the guy walked away with about $15k. There was an article written about it:

http://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2013/02/9807-kickstarter-fra...

The response that I got from Kickstarter was basically "Sorry, that sucks" and "Try contacting the creator through Kickstarter or through Facebook". They wouldn't provide any other contact information for the product creator.

I understand that they're responsible for the production of the product, but they do profit from the transaction. The right thing to do would have been to at least refund the 5% that they collect as a gesture of goodwill. I understand that projects fail, but they should be at least partially responsible for outright fraud.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/500095192/md-pen-minima...

"partially responsible for outright fraud" gets them into the business of deciding when outright fraud has occurred. I can see why they don't want to do that.

I also think that encouraging skeptical backers is going to be better for the ecosystem in the long term than doing more and more to make it 'safe'.

$4,970,378 and climbing

$5.2 million with 31 days to go. Damn.

120 $ per seconds between your two comments ! 5,490,313 now. Impressive.

$7,000,000

If it quacks like a preorder...

I was thinking the same thing. Whatever, if they adjusted the rules someone would find a way around it. It's pretty smart marketing.

$250k+ in fees (and growing!) for a product by an established company, that's what. KS isn't going to turn that down.

Indiegogo started making a lot of money due to that differentiation, because you could sell many items on Indiegogo.

My understanding is that the Kickstarter policy came in BECAUSE of the original Pebble selling packs of several devices. It's ironic that the policy was reversed and the same company is using that same "multiple products" trick to make a new record on the platform.

Ultimately it DOES change the Kickstarter brand. New projects use "Kickstarter" in their press releases and they're set to the same bar of selling millions of items. I feel like the whole concept of "a kickstarter" is no longer what it used to mean.

They should have stuck with the "Kickstarter is not a store" policy.

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