Crowdfunding hardware is often a dangerous mix of "get this amazing unsustainable discount over our future retail price" at a time when the per-unit costs are h

Crowdfunding hardware is often a dangerous mix of "get this amazing unsustainable discount over our future retail price" at a time when the per-unit costs are highest and the up-front engineering costs are still unpaid (and likely to grow from anyone's best estimates). This is an obvious recipe for trouble. That doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. But it does mean that project creators should build in sufficient margins to absorb all of that, and project backers should understand that asking a creator to deliver a not-yet-production-ready product with near-zero margins is likely to end in a total loss of their backing funds. It's possible that if you had paid more, you might be likely to lose less.