Having done a hardware Kickstarter, I can tell you it's not as easy as just "increase the price". Hardware is hard. We did two crowdfunding campaigns: almost br

Having done a hardware Kickstarter, I can tell you it's not as easy as just "increase the price". Hardware is hard. We did two crowdfunding campaigns: almost broke even on the first one, and are still in massive debt from the second one. Although I'm glad we came through for our backers, I wish we had just refunded everyone. The aftermath has been incredibly stressful both mentally and fiscally. Hardware isn't really profitable or even sustainable until you are shipping millions of units. That's why you don't see many hardware startups succeeding without either massive amounts of VC funding, or a really cheap-to-make product that you can sell for much more than it's worth (e.g. Fitbit). That's why any investor will tell you that the subscription model is basically the only way to go if you're making hardware.