"Our founder invested the initial capital in KANOA, which went primarily into market research and a feasibility study designed by a large engineering firm hired

"Our founder invested the initial capital in KANOA, which went primarily into market research and a feasibility study designed by a large engineering firm hired to develop the product." Founder immediately outsourced basic research and development - suspect at best. Working with an established engineering firm may be a good choice at some point, but my guess is that costs were 10x what they should have been, especially in the early stages where the product was going through iterations, bug fixes, etc.