25 ms·

Kickstarter vaporware of the day, Lifx edition

226 points by justincormack 14y ago

braum 14y ago
that's what I thought when I watched the video and looked at the prices they wanted and the expected ship date. I've already been burned by two kickstarters for $300+.
- simias 14y ago
  May I ask which projects those were? Do we have any idea of the proportion of projects that get funded without any kind of result? I know that technically you make a donation, but some of those "projects" feel like borderline scam. Can't the donors or even kickstarter themselves turn back on the project owners if they receive a huge amount of money and fail to deliver anything? Especially when they say they have working prototypes in the introduction video. I'm really convinced that the average kickstarter donor sees their donation as a pre-order more than an "investment". I'm sure many of those who donated to a project that failed to deliver felt like they've been scammed, and that may hurt kickstarter in the long run.
  - calbear81 14y ago
    I absolutely agree that instead of investing, it's really a pre-order system with zero liability. If I pre-order a product from a vendor and it doesn't get delivered, I can get my money back or contest the charges but here, because you're donating to a project, it's not really on commercial terms so there's nothing you can do but give negative feedback on the project.
  - regularfry 14y ago
    It's not even an investment. It's patronage, pure and simple.
  - braum 14y ago
    here is the one I consider dead and the backer is just hoping everyone will forget. I posted it last week on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523753 The 2nd one I'm still hoping the backers will come through or at least refund the backers. So I'll hold that one for now. I have backed 16 projects and the first was TikTok Nano watch band which funded Dec 2010. Out of the 16 only 2 have me very concerned. I just backed two more projects one for $1,299 which is a 3D Printer and the other $99 for 3D printer software. I will continue to back things but I look carefully at their estimated ship date. It must be within 60 days, and I will dispute any charge from a project that doesn't deliver within that window.
    - simias 14y ago
      I remember there was a website that indexed the kickstarter projects that didn't get funded. Maybe there should be one for the projects that were funded but didn't deliver. That might get kickstarter's attention as well.
      - braum 14y ago
        Do you know the URL for that website that is tracking failed KS projects?
mtgx 14y ago
The best thing Kickstarter could do to stop people from being disappointed by getting a much worse product that they were expecting when they thought they "paid for it", is to not allow the people behind the project to say stuff like "for $99 you can get the product, too". Basically, they shouldn't mention on their page at all that they will be getting the product. So whether you're donating $1 or $100 or $1000, it's just that - a donation to the cause. You're not "buying" anything. That should make things a lot more clear, although I expect the project donations to drop, but probably better than for Kickstarter to get its reputation ruined forever because most projects "don't deliver" the products people were "expecting", when they thought they bought it or "pre-ordered" it.
- rjtavares 14y ago
  I would rather have them display a standard warning sign saying that Kickstarter can't guarantee the successful delivery of products, and there is no money back policy. I quite like the pre-order style Kickstarters (like the recent Project Eternity by Obsidian), and as long as people are aware that you effectively donating money I don't see the problem with it.
  - AndrewDucker 14y ago
    They do this. When you click to donate you get this (in the top right): Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. The claims and responsibilities of this project are solely its creator's.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Kickstarter would never do this, because this would virtually eliminate the largest incentives for donation. Many people would never reach the goals they need for production, and kickstarter themselves would be out millions as well.
  - Smerity 14y ago
    It's worse than that. Kickstarter have explicitly said they have no clue what they'd do that day. The fact they're either ignoring the (admittedly complicated) issue or are so naive as to think it's fine to only handle failed projects when they happen is disturbing. Kickstarter is an amazing concept but the coming wave of failed projects is going to mark the cumulative jumps of the shark. From an earlier interview with Kickstarter's founder[1], "I don't know. I mean, no, I don't think that we would. But certainly, the kind of thing you're talking about is not a bridge that has been crossed yet. Someday it will. And you know, I think if something did go awry, it would be — it wouldn't be my favorite day." [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472776 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472776
pierrend 14y ago
OK they may not ship it. If I give money to them it is because I would like to have this kind of light at home one day. Best scenario: they ship it! Worse scenario: the world will have more experience trying to build these things.
- reubensutton 14y ago
  I think this is a refreshing and sensible outlook on the matter, but I don't think it's one that's shared by many backers.
- shin_lao 14y ago
  What the article is saying is that they are either clueless or dishonnest. They will never ship the bulb and you cannot fund such project based on a video.
- jeremyjh 14y ago
  That is not the worst case
- dmbass 14y ago
  In the video, the guy literally says "For $69 dollars, you are essentially pre-ordering a LIFX smartbulb." (4:11) That's one of the major misconceptions people have about Kickstarter and these guys are playing right into it.
djt 14y ago
People buy an emotion, not a product. Some of my friends know these guys and by the sound of it this is a case of a "overnight sensation" that has been years in the making.
smoyer 14y ago
I think the problem is pretty clear ... Kickstarter optimizes reach so that the teams that are best at marketing win ... A team that's brilliant with engineering and design but can't produce slick photos and catchy videos doesn't stand a chance. I tend to think that kickstarter is a fad and that if it survives at all, it will be in a much reduced and much more controlled form. How long will it be before the authorities decide they're complicit in a fraud? EDIT: The ScanBox project looks like something I could make for $5 in parts and have fun doing over in an hour or so.
- alexchamberlain 14y ago
  Do we know if the ScanBoxes have shipped? Edit: The shipping date is October 12[1]. [1]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-portable-scann/posts http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-y...
  - robryan 14y ago
    October 12 according to the last kick starter update.
  - pothibo 14y ago
    What scares me is that they are starting a new kickstarter project when they didn't even finish the first one. I was backing this project but just ask for refund. This actually makes me wonder: If one would want to scam Kickstarters, one could just create new project and PR their way into millions of dollars without having to deliver a single thing.
    - regularfry 14y ago
      I can well believe that the scanbox is at a stage where there's simply not that much left for the guys to do except wait for the manufacturing to turn around. Why not start another project if they've got the time for it?
      - 14y ago
antr 14y ago
After backing two projects (MySaver cables and Elevation Dock), I've given up on Kickstarter: == MySaver == - Project was delayed for over 5 months. - When I got the product it wasn't the colour I had requested. - When I contacted the project leader he told me that they didn't have any more products of that colour, so he chose the one he thought convenient. - False statements: "The MySaver is the only cable protector that we know of and we fully-assemble it on a OEM quality replacement dock connector to USB cable". I can't insist how false this statement is. The cables I received where assembled using some kind of industrial glue gun - by no means "OEM quality" - and they are now falling apart. - Contacted Kickstarter about this issue and said that "if the project gets fully funded it must be a legit business/product" == Elevation Dock == - Backed in February 2012, still waiting for the product. - I will be changing my iPhone 3GS to iPhone 5, but guess what? It's a different dock connector. Yes, partly my fault, but its been 8 months since funding closed and 9 months since everybody knew this project was already 100% funded. == Conclusion == Many projects (primarily hardware) are very poorly managed. Project leaders, instead of being rational from a production capacity/constraint point of view, they simply want to "beat all records", and be at the top of the Kickstart funding list. This is just bad entrepreneurship and management skills. These guys are risking production, product quality and customer satisfaction over a "vanity" metric: How much is the maximum I can raise? I've given up, I'm not backing any more projects, I'm not going to be anyone's guinea pig. I'd rather wait for the products to be available in stores at a higher retail price, where I can see their "quality" finish. I'll judge then.
- speg 14y ago
  If it's any consolation, the Elevation dock guys planned for the new connector and you will be able to swap a new one in.
- forrestthewoods 14y ago
  I have many friends who backed and received their Elevation Docks. It's anything but vaporware. They asked for 75,000 and got 1,464,000. Scaling up that much and that fast is incredibly difficult and can't be done overnight. The system seems fine to me.
Alexx 14y ago
I spent some time a few months ago researching integrated smart technologies like this. (I've commented before on similar topics)[1] I very skeptical it's possible to deliver these at those price points. Just consider as a hacker the master bulb; They gloss over how you actually connect it to your home wifi network; it either has to interface with your laptop or phone via a cable for the initial setup, or it has to be able to create it's own wireless network you can hook onto, to then in turn tell it which is your home network, so it can hook onto that, and then relay to all other bulbs. That's a hell of a lot of technology to pack inside a groundbreaking lightbulb that's going to be running at high temperatures, at a $70 price point. The 'smart bulb' stuff aside, a decent plain white LED bulb sets you back around $30. Have you ever tried those colour-change LED light sets you get for garden decking or under the kitchen units? Even those cost more per unit that this, and they light they put out is harsh and well bellow 10 watts; hence why they're just used for ambient highlights. In my opinion the companies best positioned to deliver these kind of technologies are the likes of NEST[2]. They already have a constantly powered, integrated master device, it has a zigbee chip (which makes much more sense than wifi), an API, large processing power, and lots of data on the household. All they need to do is update their firmware (which they can do automatically already) and publish an API. Then any licensed 3rd party vendor from China can now deliver 'slave bulbs' using whatever technology and price points they desire. A ground up solution proposed here is short sighted, and realistically in the long run more expensive. [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3558304 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3558304 [2]http://www.nest.com/ http://www.nest.com/
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 14y ago
  Insteon is shipping $30 smart bulbs. They integrate with insteon's control stuff though, so the cost of using 1 of them is a minimum of ~$70-$80 (that's a bulb plus ~$45 for a simple switch pad). They don't seem to have much interest in pushing for wide adoption (at least, they seem to want to sell $400 controllers, not $50 controllers).
raverbashing 14y ago
Wifi on a lamp? Really? This screams "We have no idea what we are doing" (And those buying into the project certainly don't know a lot about it as well) This is like saying "We are building an electric car... with shiny paint", whereas the real problem is "building an electric car!" They probably tried to fit a RaspberryPi inside first
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  They could've OEM'd the lamp, for example, from Phillips. And a tiny-factor WiFi gadgets is hardly a rocket science, products like EyeFi has been around for several years. There's really nothing in the project that screams what you say it does. [0] http://www.eye.fi http://www.eye.fi
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    I reread their product description and I still stand by my opinion And even the article says (and they agree it's an OEM lamp): "The Lifx is priced at $49 per bulb, which means that you’re basically buying a basic WeMo switch and getting the LED bulb — and all the technology merging the two into one bulb-sized piece of hardware — for free. It just doesn’t seem likely." They can prove me wrong, sure, by shipping the product.
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      Yeah? So? The article is being disingenuous by picking a bulky and very high-priced wifi product.
      - raverbashing 14y ago
        Because surely a smaller and more complex device is going to cost less than a WeMo, sure It is not overpriced if you factor the cost of electronic control of the lamp
        Dylan16807 14y ago
shadowmint 14y ago
The problem here is that Kickstarter is complicity allowing this sort of scam-project* to run. They're not stupid. They know this is happening, and they're _hoping_ that it'll all magically sort itself out; that people will be smart enough _not_ to believe in the $50-you-get-a-lamborghini pledges. I mean, it's a great scam right? If you're a con artist, you make your money in one of two ways; 1) Steal someones money and make them too embarrassed to do anything about it (classic porn on the credit card) 2) Steal a little bit of money from a lot of people, all of whom can't be bothered to do anything about it. <--- Kickstarter. Realistically, this is going to continue until someone sues Kickstarter for being complicit in mail fraud. That'll be a sad day, but you can already see it coming on the horizon. * Actual project may not be a scam, but honestly there's not a huge difference between a poorly organised project that takes everyones money, tries to make something and fails, and an actual scam. If you're selling something, you're a merchant. There are laws around that.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Scam implies some sort of intent. There's actually a huge difference. When burned, you might call someone a dipshit. But to actually BE a dipshit, their intent matters.
  - shadowmint 14y ago
    Intent is difficult to measure. Money on the other hand, is very easy to measure. So are your legal obligation as a merchant. If you sell something online, and the person on the other side never receives it, that's mail fraud. No matter what your intensions were. caveat: As a merchant you also have legal protections in this case, which is where refunds, reshipping, etc. come in.
    - regularfry 14y ago
      The get-out, of course, is that neither the projects nor Kickstarter are actually selling anything.
      - 14y ago
sebbi 14y ago
The part about "your existing switches still work" strikes me as impossible. The switches here are on/off switches ... there is no current getting to the bulbs when in off position, so there is no way of controlling the LED-bulb. If they require to leave all switches turned on for the remote control to work, than I'd have to always turn the light off with the smartphone app. That sounds a little bit complicated ;-)
coffeeaddicted 14y ago
One of the first thing I do in Hacker News or Reddit when seeing sensational headlines (cancer can be cured!) is checking the posts to find out what's wrong with the claim. In most cases it's the highest voted comment. I think Kickstarter would profit from a similar moderation system. Posts where users can add flags like "will work" "won't work" and some voting system so you can easily see the highest voted comment(s) with one of those flags. Or alternatively a normal forum to allow real discussions about projects would also be a major improvement. Although there needs to be a careful decision then who can cleanup spam as you wouldn't want project moderators to allow removing all critics without any consequences. The currently used comment system there is just horribly insufficient - it's basically impossible to have any real discussion there.
tvon 14y ago
> So my feeling is that both Kickstarter and the tech blogosphere should start being a lot more skeptical about the claims made in Kickstarter videos, where anybody can say pretty much anything. Isn't the problem more along the lines of "amateur investors making amateur investments"? Is it Kickstarter's fault if people believe the "pretty much anything" that can be said in a video?
- saraid216 14y ago
  No, in this case it's actually the tech news journalists' fault for believing pretty much anything that can be said in a video. I didn't see anything asking Kickstarter to shape up; the call to action was for the reporters. And he's right. This article should have been written by, say, GigaOm. I'd want a Wired article to go into more technical depth than this one does. I'd guess that, if I found the articles that pointed to the Kickstarter, they don't.
rbellio 14y ago
I generally agree with everything in the article, but there was a statement that caught me up, "I can’t believe that Lifx has managed to solve the enormous problems that many huge companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying — and generally failing — to fix." I don't believe that large companies with hundreds of millions of dollars are always the right people to find the solution. Isn't this something we tackle a lot of the time? Being the small fish in the big pond? I do think that we should be wary of the snakewater salesmen of the world, but don't discount someone just because they don't have a large, bureaucratic organization backing them. That being said, it would be really nice for some sort of rating system to be put into place. Force these inventors to generate brand loyalty even if it is to them as a person.
EwanToo 14y ago
Kickstarter could significantly improve things by imposing a cap on the amount of money taken above the original request. This is similar to what Groupon have had to do, because it was killing their reputation. People are estimating "Well, we could make about 500 of these", then receiving orders (and the money) for 50,000 of them. Suddenly the predicted ship dates go out 2 or 3 times as long, and people get upset.
- Bakkot 14y ago
  They could, but honestly they should just be more insistent that project founders make more use of the existing tools. They provide a way to say there's a limited number of awards available at a given tier; if you're not going to be able to scale past ten thousand quickly, then don't let more than ten thousand people sign up to receive the product - at least not from the first round.
  - EwanToo 14y ago
    Perhaps yeah, it'd have a very similar effect. It would perhaps also drive up orders early in the cycle, as people can't wait until the last few minutes when they see a project has been funded. Personally I think the simplest option would be allowing a 10% "overshoot" fund, and beyond that the project automatically closes to new backers - this should ensure that despite the various reasons why the money wouldn't come through from individuals (credit card rejected, etc), a funded project would get it's full amount.
- forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
  "'Kickstarter could significantly improve things by imposing a cap on the amount of money taken above the original request." That is your opinion, in my opinion this would be bad for KS. I don't know why some grow ups people need someone else to put limits on the money the can spend on something, like they are dependent children who need to be controlled what they do with their own money. Or worse, they want to tell other people what they can spend. They are totalitarian in the inside.
  - 14y ago
ck2 14y ago
Kickstarter needs to have a rule that the rewards cannot be the item being proposed. This will perfectly enforce the realization that it's INVESTMENT with risk and not a purchase of the item.
timpeterson 14y ago
99 Kickstarter Problems but getting the product isn't one: Problem #1: NOT getting the product. Problems #2-#99) 98 emails updating you on the product you will never receive.
driverdan 14y ago
I'm really surprised there haven't been any class action law suits against Kickstarter projects and/or Kickstarter. For most projects Kickstarter isn't a feel-good donation system, it's a way of pre-purchasing a product. If you promise to provide an item for someone's money and don't deliver you've broken the law.
davidpayne11 14y ago
These people aren’t just being seduced by a clever sales pitch: they’re being shepherded there by lots of very high-profile blogs, such as Wired and TechCrunch and Mashable and GigaOm. Its funny that reuters is writing this, because, they were shepherding a lot of people on an inferior product too, The iPhone 5.
drats 14y ago
>so far there’s zero evidence that it’s a good way of providing startup capital for would-be businesses Flagged immediately for this statement. Troll journalism.
- cristianpascu 14y ago
  Yeah, my feeling exactly. Whenever I hear/read "there's absolutely/zero no evidence", it smell either ignorance or malevolence.
netcan 14y ago
Some old fella I knew who was a young professional as woman joined the ranks in the 60s & 70s had this useful saying: "toilet excuses" which was the whole laundry list of nonsense reasons why women couldn't be building inspectors or firemen or whatnot. "Every building site would need another toilet block and the costs would be tremendous, all to allow one dipshit 21 year old to work for 1 year, get pregnant then leave." There is something about Kickstarter that makes HN irritable, hoping for failure. I'm not sure what it is exactly and its out of character. I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt but I can smell toilet excuses. I'm sure that kickstarter has issues and maybe its not a big thing in the long term. But, its a nice idea. It seems to be working. Why is this mob so cranky?
- jdlshore 14y ago
  I agree. Something about Kickstarter seems to inspire a lot of negativity here on HN. Perhaps because it's an alternative to the VC funding model that's such a part of the HN identity? Personally, I love Kickstarter. I've funded a project with it myself. It's has great potential for an individual or small team with "1000 true fans" to make a living, and I think we'll see a lot of success stories come out of it. And some notable failures, of course. But I don't see that as an indictment of the Kickstarter model. Personally, I wouldn't back Lifx. It's expensive, I'm skeptical of its ability to ship, and I don't need color-changing light bulbs. But if someone wants to spend $70 to take a flyer on something cool, more power to them.
  - netcan 14y ago
    I agree. Occasional failures don't discredit the whole thing. Fraud might, but failure doesn't.
- prawn 14y ago
  Entrepreneurs using Kickstarter are pitching an idea and often getting money before they've executed more than a video and description. The typical entrepreneurs of Hacker News are consistently told that an idea has little value and that actual execution is so much more. You must almost always build out at least a basic product before you have a hope of money trickling in or gaining investment. I think any crankiness might be related to that.
rabidsnail 14y ago
I think a web-of-trust-style reputation system would work well here, since "votes" cost money. The reputation of a buyer is the mean of the reputations of the projects they've backed (times some confidence metric). The reputation of a project six months after it started is 1 if they kept their promises (as measured by confirmation emails sent to the backers) and -1 otherwise. The reputation of a project before six months is the mean of (the mean of the reputations of its backers (again times some confidence)) and the reputation of the person who started the project.
fmax30 14y ago
Seems as though the only thing one needs to earn money on the internet is to make a video with good cameras and be good at Computer generated 3D models of products that will never be completed. I too think that the kickstarter should stop project starters from giving out material things.
meiji 14y ago
I'm not sure why this is any sort of surprise. Ever since Kickstarter began there have been lots of great ideas, lots of awful ideas. Some of the great ideas have been clearly way too ambitious for small teams but people happily donate money. Given this isn't an investment and what you're doing is giving someone money to follow their dream, to my mind it's almost irrelevant if at the end you don't get your $30 lightbulb. You've lived vicariously through the Lifehacker in question and got to see something go to market or crash and burn.
mixmax 14y ago
Hardware development is hard, but if it's doable. Even on a budget. A Ten years ago I started a hardware company that developed an advertising sign based on LED's. It was basically a motor with a stick of RGB LED's attached like a propeller. When you spun the stick and modulated the LED's just right you could paint full color disc shaped picture seemingly in free air. An FPGA would control and modulate the LED's (at the time it was the only affordable thing that could modulate a LED 400.000 times a second) The whole thing was online via an OEM phone module and would automatically update with ads, weather, etc. from a server where customers could buy campaigns online. Campaigns could of course be customised wo that you could get your ad only on the displays you wanted. I was in charge of getting this whole bandoogle from an idea to a product, and while it was hard I managed develop and bring it to market for around $200.000. Remember this was ten years ago where you had to tap directly into the a carriers network and hack around just to get an IP address, and five years before the iphone. The point of the story is that sometimes small nimble companies that are set on doing something actually succeed. I'm not saying that these guys have solved all the problems, indeed it sounds from the article that there are some huge obstacles. I'm just saying that you should never underestimate the power of a small team whose only goal in life is to make something happen.
ajaimk 14y ago
First off, their goals are possible in the fact they are not hoping to build an energy efficient LED bulb but a wifi controllable one. Also it is a little too early to be calling this VaporWare. Give them a chance to prove themselves.
marklittlewood 14y ago
Is it just me or is there something very odd about the video presentation? Phil Bosua uses just about every trick in the NLP book to persuade and cajole. Even though the project is almost certainly impossible to deliver, I ended up wanting to believe it and thinking that if I did contribute, I would be making something amazing happen. I almost felt like I was being hypnotised. If they can deliver what they say with $100,000 then the fact that they now have 10x that probably means you don;t need to contribute to see the benefit. Mea culpa.
runako 14y ago
I don't know if the Lifx guys in particular are naive, deceptive, or six-sigma outliers. But I'm actually surprised that projects like Lifx are able to get any funding at all. A cursory thought in the direction of the project would reveal that the pitch is essentially a) others with tons of experience have invested lots of hard money in this space b) to no real success so far but c) we have the answer and only need a hundred grand to make it large. And d) actually, we don't even need $100k, it's more like $25k plus materials, so as you can see this project is really 99% done now. This is classic hucksterism; you will see it at any business meetup in any town. Somebody has built a better mousetrap in his garage, leaping over giants, and only needs $25k/$50k/$100k to get to market. The key is they never need large sums of money, only relatively small sums to get to market; a larger sum would indicate that the project is not 99% done, which I assure you it is. The obvious question: if you have built a better mousetrap and only need $100k to take over a major industry like lighting, why not go max out your credit cards and just build it? Or show a prototype to anyone over 50 who might be able to connect you with an angel investor? Occam's answer: because you haven't a clue how to make it work. Again, I don't know if the Lifx guys are hucksters. But their pitch follows a classic huckster pitch to the letter.
- lifeformed 14y ago
  Well, I don't think people turn to Kickstarter funding solely for the money. It's a pretty decent way to do some cheap marketing, too. If you can get $100,000 from a bank, or $100,000 from 1,000 people in your target market, it makes sense to do the latter. I have no idea if this is or isn't the case with Lifx, but I always viewed Kickstarter as a funding/marketing package.
DanBC 14y ago
They're using multicolour LEDs. That's weird. Most people don't want blue or green lights. That's a niche market for accent lighting. Most people want a nice bright light for lamps and spotlights. Spending money on getting that nice warm colour would be money well spent. Also, the video mentions photographers. I'm not sure, but I'd have thought that multiplexed LEDs would be a horrible idea for some photography.
- mbreese 14y ago
  In theory, by using RGB LEDs, you can mix the colors to produce a more pleasant color of light. I doubt they'll have only blue or green light.
- WildCat69 14y ago
  The color changing aspect of this bulb is a cool idea, but in reality would end up as a just something neat show off. On the other hand, if they can also accurately mimic the warmth and brightness of an incandescent using this approach, I'd buy it.
robomartin 14y ago
I've backed a number of technology as well as art projects on Kickstarter. So far all have delivered. Only one was a disappointment. Not because they did not deliver as promised but rather because the product really wasn't as good of an idea as I thought it would be. No big deal. Perhaps my results with tech have been good because I am an engineer with lots of experience designing and manufacturing hardware/software products. I have seen projects on Kickstarter that have me question whether or not the person fully understands what it takes to take a project from concept or prototype to a finished product. Needless to say, I don't back such projects. The article gives a sense that making hardware products is hard and expensive. The author is most-definitely correct. A product like this light bulb could easily burn-up above US $100K in regulatory testing (UL, FCC, CE, TUV, etc.). This is particularly true if the designer isn't well versed in this area. The article looses a little authority in my eyes when the author says things like: > The heat sink is crucial, especially if you want to put lots of wifi electronics into the bulb. Which is complete and utter nonsense. WiFi has nothing to do with the requirement for a massive heatsink. If it did, you iPhone would be a huge block of aluminum with fins. No, the heatsink is required because 80% (or more) of the energy going into an LED is converted into heat, not light. This data is from a few years ago, but I suspect it hasn't gotten much better than that. Most of the power you shove into an LED converts to heat that you have to manage, hence the large heat-sink. I did a project a while ago that managed more than one thousand one Watt LEDs in a very small space. I was personally responsible for the design of the electronics, mechanics, optics and thermal management. Thermal management alone took about six months of FEA simulations and validation through prototypes before converging on a solution. I had to design the thermal management system to handle over one thousand Watts. It was safer to assume that all input energy (and more) was converted into heat in order to have some operating margin for derating the cooling system. I went on reading the article and thinking that, while I agreed that multi-disciplinary hardware projects are hard, this guy was being a little mean-spirited. After all, he was right in that this project required having an understanding of electronic design, mechanical design, thermal management, optical design and the myriad of manufacturing and regulatory disciplines that come with bringing something like this to market. The author's incorrect statement about the reason for having a heatsink created a negative reaction in my mind that carried over as I continued reading the article. I knew I was biased. I tried to ignore that and continued reading. Then I came to the point in the article where he told us that the project originator was also behind another project that amounted to not much more than some folded carboard. A project that was supposed to ship in July and, as of four hours ago, hasn't started shipping yet. That was enough to change my mindset. I was, at that point, aligned with the author in sharing his skepticism. If this guy (or guys) can't deliver a cardboard box in nearly three months I can't see any hope of delivering a complex product such as the LED light bulb in six. Keep in mind that I have always been a believer that small motivated teams can run circles around large companies with lots of money and people. Projects like this don't cost ten million dollars at a large company because that's what it costs to design the product. They cost that much because such organizations burn a lot more cash per unit of time than a small team. They have a lot more people, resources and infrastructure to support. A large R&D organization could burn a million dollars a day whether they stand still or are working on something. In sharp contrast to that, a small focused team working out of a garage or a modest environment could do the same or very similar work for hundreds or thousands of dollars per day, depending on the nature of the project. This to say that I am not skeptical of their probability for success because the project is difficult. My skepticism comes simply from the fact that they/he have another fully funded project on Kickstarter, one that my teenage kid could probably --with some some help from dad-- execute on in a month, and they have not delivered yet. It's like proposing that you can build a house when you haven't even demonstrated that you can build a tent. The question here is more one of execution rather than anything else. I'll estimate that if you are really frugal and have to design this from scratch you are looking at a cost of about $500K. This means real design for manufacturing, thermal design, testing, testing, testing (did I say "testing") --which includes environmental testing-- tooling, certifications, procurement, etc. That means that, at the current funding level of $780K for a little more than 13,000 light bulbs, they have about $20 per bulb left over to manufacture, test, package and ship. Ouch. Even if my design cost estimate is off by 100% and they can get this ready for manufacturing for $250K, that means that you only have about $40 per bulb to manufacture, test, package and ship. I am not sure that's enough unless you commit to manufacturing tens of thousands of these per month. One thing is for sure, nobody is making a dime on this one. Remember, business costs and overhead don't stop at manufacturing. There's far more below the tip of that iceberg. EDIT: I could say a lot more about the nature of bringing such products to market. Here's an important point that I felt warranted an edit: A product like this can burn down your house. It is imperative that its design take no shortcuts. Testing before release must be extensive and thorough. This could take dozens of iterations until a solid and reliable design is converged upon. This, again, takes money and expertise.
armored_mammal 14y ago
Meh. I haven't had any major fails with the Kickstarters I've supported, though outside of the Ouya I don't think I've supported any hardware ones. Some of the hardware ones I thought were the neat and obviously producible (like weird light fixtures/shades) in a short a time frame also either had stupid reward tiers, or, I guess, just weren't interesting to anyone else. All that said, I don't really get the people who expect stuff in 6 months for hardware-based Kickstarters. Do you have any ideas about the product development lifecycle? Going from prototype to manufacturing can take quite a while, especially if you need to visit factories in China or some such. When I back something that's more complex than 'I'll draw a picture' or 'I'll sing a song' I assume it might take a couple years, and that's been borne out at least once, though that level of expectation has also allowed me to be pleasantly surprised. Despite the above, I'm not saying I think these LED lights are on the level - it seems like a very very poor idea to start a new project without finishing the first. But I also don't think they're as impossible to make as everyone is saying, though offhand I'd also think it'd make more sense to control the lamps with Bluetooth than with wifi. But if I have this right, and they get the bulbs from someone else in bulk and just pop on a really cheap controller/wireless interface, it seems like the price works out, especially if they aren't worrying about making them 'secure.' As for 'certifications' and such, I really don't expect they'll even get them, let alone know that they might need them or that they exist.
sequoia 14y ago
I wish someone from kickstarter would answer this question once and for all: Is it a donation or is it a purchase? This question comes up constantly ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506601 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506601 e.g.) when kickstarter projects are featured here, TFA is actually about this topic more-or-less specifically. At the risk of sounding cynical: I think it's in kickstarter's financial to not answer this question- they're better off with the confusion & everyone seeing the fee-paid/donation as they want it. That way it's a payment for a product when you have your wallet out- it's a "donation" when the project fails and you are left with nothing. :)
- bduerst 14y ago
  It's a donation, and you get a "prize" for donating a certain amount.
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  I would say the answer is "No.". You put in money. You get back one of the product if it succeeds in being produced. That is not a donation or a purchase. It's not exactly default-swap surgery; people can handle a hint of complexity in their trades.
jws 14y ago
Felix Salmon's screed is poorly informed about LED bulbs and the current state of the art in wifi. First let's go over the current marketplace: • There are very nice 60 watt equivalent bulbs available for <$25 in quantity one.[1] Without looking directly at the bulb you will not tell them from incandescent. Single color, using phosphors to shift blue LEDs down to nicer frequencies. • At quantities >500 LED bulbs which look like the illustration on the kickstarter page are under $10. [2] This gives a rough estimate of cost of materials assembled. • A thumbnail sized microcontroller module with wifi is <$30 in quantity one.[3] It certainly looks like there is room for a $50 that includes a light and a wifi enabled microcontroller. The cost model gets easier though. Each customer only needs one master bulb with the wifi, the rest only have the cheaper 802.15.4 mesh radios. Before we look at the article anymore, lets consider what is different about the Lifx than the $10 bulb above. • More efficient. It needs to be a bit brighter to meet the Lifx specs. This adds cost to the LEDs to run more current within the thermal limits. • Tri color. It is going to need at least three LED colors. Ideally the sum of them is going to be a pleasing white so you get a usable color at full brightness. The other colors are achieved by running some of the LEDs at lower duty cycle. Notice they chose a bulb with a diffuser. That keeps you from getting blotchy spot light effects. • More power switching FETs. Their total power handling will be the same, but it will be a higher component count. • A microcontroller and radio added to the circuit board. • Software, a couple weeks for the bulb innards. For that they get to roughly quintuple the sale price. Sounds doable to me. Most of the article is just an "On no! The sky is falling!" piece on Kickstarter feeling like a store. He uses some other company that took a run at the "just like incandescent" market and apparently got beaten by Philips. For some reason, he has a side-by-side set of photos which the Lifx illustration bulb and possibly the ugliest LED bulb I've ever seen. (Said ugly bulb is proclaimed indistinguishable from incandescent when inside a lamp shade, so it has a use case. Just don't let anyone see it naked.) As the article progresses it just gets embarrassing. He declares it impossible because other smart people haven't done it and confidently predicts every negative lightbulb attribute he can think of will afflict the bulb. He throws out some ridiculous straw men for the product and imagines a huge barrier for configuration of a UI free wifi device (hint: solved long ago by many products, e.g. Apple's Airport Express) and that somehow the 0.05 watts from the wifi will overheat the bulb which is dissipating ~10 watts already. At least it was run as "Opinion" instead of "Fact". Here's my opinion on Lifx: The masterbulb concept is a mistake. Too confusing. Have a controller that plugs in the wall. Keeps the confusion down but also keeps people from switching off the master bulb or having to have a battery in it. They may need to give a bit on the total brightness to keep the heat under control. If they try to grow to something large, they will probably be killed by a patent lawsuit. If they make it far enough to make a nice PAR20 version (diffusion is much harder), I will happily buy 30 of them. EOM [1] http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-Light-Bulbs-LED-Light-Bulbs/Philips/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbm79Z15b/R-203406583/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051#.UFiG1EI8D8s http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-Light-Bulbs-LED-Light-Bu... [2] http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/601830276/led_light_bulb_e27.html?s=p http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/601830276/led_light_bulb_e... For ballpark reference only. Never trust the specs. [3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11395 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11395
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jlgreco 14y ago
There is an interesting typo in the article: The bulb on the light is quite lovely Obviously meant to be "right", but I had to read that sentence 3 times before I read it correctly and not as "left". Seems my brain was expecting "left" or "right" and saw "left" since they start with the same letter, instead of seeing "right", the much closer word. Sorry to be offtopic, thought that was kind of interesting.
drumdance 14y ago
He's completely discounting the value of building a direct relationship to the customer that Kickstarter allows. For many startups that's at least as hard as the technology.
jdminhbg 14y ago
> so far there’s zero evidence that it’s a good way of providing startup capital for would-be businesses This drives me nuts. There may be insufficient evidence to say that Kickstarter is "a good way of providing startup capital...", but there's not zero evidence. If you're trying to come off as the measured, realistic alternative, flailing hyperbole doesn't help.
- TillE 14y ago
  It's also a statement that's qualified in an absurd way: "would-be businesses". Even then, there are at least a few very successful videogame projects that fit the bill, Al Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road being the most prominent. I think it's worth looking at Kickstarter for different industries in very very different ways. For hardware manufacturing (which seems to be the only thing discussed on HN), it's a huge risk. For just about everything else, it's well-established and fairly predictable.
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james33 14y ago
Every great achievement was once considered impossible.
cfesta9 14y ago
I created something like this over the past year. I should have started a kickstarter! :) I do have questions on how lifx will execute this light bulb. Very interesting stuff. Check out the Arduino/Wireless LED lamp here http://charlesfesta.com/post/31814601314/say-hello-to-the-john-hancock-building-living-room http://charlesfesta.com/post/31814601314/say-hello-to-the-jo...
jwatte 14y ago
You can buy a full Android 4.0 tablet for $35. It has Wifi, backlight, screen, CPU, battery and case. The BOM for this lamp is totally doable for a dozen dollars. It's productization that's the challenge. Sometimes, a smart scrappy start-up can hit it right. The heat sink may be a concern for WiFi in the sense that a grounded metal enclosure is a concern for an antenna. Or maybe they turn the heat sink into an antenna? (Hmm, should I go patent that now? :-)
jamesaguilar 14y ago
Here's a kickstarter that did very well (launched, great game): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than-light http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than... Personally I'm not worried about kickstarter being generally vaporware, although in some instances it will be.
bufferout 14y ago
The LiFX lead engineer had started answering questions here: http://tech.lifx.co/ http://tech.lifx.co/
tbull007 14y ago
I know three of the LiFX guys personally - they're all well connected and respected in the Melbourne startup scene. Are they naive to the challenges of deploying a hardware project? At least some of them are, but the lead engineer has been in this field for a long time. Are they trying to defraud anyone? Absolutely not. I hadn't heard of this project until I read this article, but knowing the team involved there's just no way these guys are putting their reputation on the line over something they don't personally believe can be done. Must have missed the memo where the Hacker News community collectively decided to stop seeking funding and shooting for the stars. Reading the tone of these comments, we should now only tackle the problems that we... sorry, you the commentator... 100% know can be solved.
- vosper 14y ago
  If they're "naive to the challenges" (even some of them) then the chances of success are even lower than for companies who have vast expertise in this area. That they're trying to do it on a shoestring makes it even less likely to succeed - people are right to be critical. Also, I think the major difference between funding in the usual HN startup sense and funding via Kickstarter is that startup funding is almost always classical investment whereby you get a share in the company and the rewards of their hopeful success - but Kickstart funding could well be money for nothing.
JumpCrisscross 14y ago
Felix Salmon is a noted writer in the financial world; it seems like the context is being missed. A few years ago the U.S. investment universe could have been stylised as two mutually exclusive sets: regulated securities available to everyone, e.g. exchange traded stocks, and loosely regulated products for sophisticated investors, e.g. hedge funds. Common to both sets is that the agent, e.g. public company CEO or hedge fund manager, has a fiduciary obligation to act in the best interests of the principal, i.e. the investor. The JOBS Act muddied the line between sophisticated and unsophisticated investors but maintained what constitutes an investor protected by their fiduciary rights and what constitutes someone giving money away. Enter Kickstarter. Kickstarter says its campaigns are donations and not investments. This is crucial as it keeps them from having to comply with securities regulations, which have a higher bar for fraud than consumer or donor regulation. For example, failing to deliver a promised product would be grounds for scrutiny into whether the company acted in "best interests" of its fiduciaries - presently, a Kickstarter campaign has loose to no fiduciary obligation to its donors. Felix Salmon argues that Kickstarter campaigns are closer to investments than not and so should be fiducially obligated to their donors/investors. The greater debate is about who should be protected by fiduciary rights, who should be allowed to participate in what kind of investment, and how we trade off inclusion in capital gains against the risk of fraud and public disillusionment in the capital markets. Whether WiFi circuitry can reliably survive 85 degrees Celsius is a side, albeit still interesting, concern.
pbreit 14y ago
Felix Salmon is an a-hole and a moron. First of all, if you're going to title the missive "...of the day" there should be more than one example per quarter and such example should actually be vapor. Beyond that, Salmon gets almost everything wrong about small teams building products and Kickstarter in general. Small teams can have huge advantages over big companies specifically because they don't need to build hug quantities fo product. And Kickstarter has a fairly well-known reputation for products from manufacturers who don't have all the answers before they are asking for money.

226 points by justincormack 14y ago

braum 14y ago

that's what I thought when I watched the video and looked at the prices they wanted and the expected ship date. I've already been burned by two kickstarters for $300+.

simias 14y ago
May I ask which projects those were? Do we have any idea of the proportion of projects that get funded without any kind of result? I know that technically you make a donation, but some of those "projects" feel like borderline scam. Can't the donors or even kickstarter themselves turn back on the project owners if they receive a huge amount of money and fail to deliver anything? Especially when they say they have working prototypes in the introduction video. I'm really convinced that the average kickstarter donor sees their donation as a pre-order more than an "investment". I'm sure many of those who donated to a project that failed to deliver felt like they've been scammed, and that may hurt kickstarter in the long run.
- calbear81 14y ago
  I absolutely agree that instead of investing, it's really a pre-order system with zero liability. If I pre-order a product from a vendor and it doesn't get delivered, I can get my money back or contest the charges but here, because you're donating to a project, it's not really on commercial terms so there's nothing you can do but give negative feedback on the project.
- regularfry 14y ago
  It's not even an investment. It's patronage, pure and simple.
- braum 14y ago
  here is the one I consider dead and the backer is just hoping everyone will forget. I posted it last week on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523753 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4523753 The 2nd one I'm still hoping the backers will come through or at least refund the backers. So I'll hold that one for now. I have backed 16 projects and the first was TikTok Nano watch band which funded Dec 2010. Out of the 16 only 2 have me very concerned. I just backed two more projects one for $1,299 which is a 3D Printer and the other $99 for 3D printer software. I will continue to back things but I look carefully at their estimated ship date. It must be within 60 days, and I will dispute any charge from a project that doesn't deliver within that window.
  - simias 14y ago
    I remember there was a website that indexed the kickstarter projects that didn't get funded. Maybe there should be one for the projects that were funded but didn't deliver. That might get kickstarter's attention as well.
    - braum 14y ago
      Do you know the URL for that website that is tracking failed KS projects?

mtgx 14y ago

The best thing Kickstarter could do to stop people from being disappointed by getting a much worse product that they were expecting when they thought they "paid for it", is to not allow the people behind the project to say stuff like "for $99 you can get the product, too". Basically, they shouldn't mention on their page at all that they will be getting the product. So whether you're donating $1 or $100 or $1000, it's just that - a donation to the cause. You're not "buying" anything. That should make things a lot more clear, although I expect the project donations to drop, but probably better than for Kickstarter to get its reputation ruined forever because most projects "don't deliver" the products people were "expecting", when they thought they bought it or "pre-ordered" it.

rjtavares 14y ago
I would rather have them display a standard warning sign saying that Kickstarter can't guarantee the successful delivery of products, and there is no money back policy. I quite like the pre-order style Kickstarters (like the recent Project Eternity by Obsidian), and as long as people are aware that you effectively donating money I don't see the problem with it.
- AndrewDucker 14y ago
  They do this. When you click to donate you get this (in the top right): Kickstarter does not investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. The claims and responsibilities of this project are solely its creator's.
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Kickstarter would never do this, because this would virtually eliminate the largest incentives for donation. Many people would never reach the goals they need for production, and kickstarter themselves would be out millions as well.
- Smerity 14y ago
  It's worse than that. Kickstarter have explicitly said they have no clue what they'd do that day. The fact they're either ignoring the (admittedly complicated) issue or are so naive as to think it's fine to only handle failed projects when they happen is disturbing. Kickstarter is an amazing concept but the coming wave of failed projects is going to mark the cumulative jumps of the shark. From an earlier interview with Kickstarter's founder[1], "I don't know. I mean, no, I don't think that we would. But certainly, the kind of thing you're talking about is not a bridge that has been crossed yet. Someday it will. And you know, I think if something did go awry, it would be — it wouldn't be my favorite day." [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472776 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4472776

pierrend 14y ago

OK they may not ship it. If I give money to them it is because I would like to have this kind of light at home one day. Best scenario: they ship it! Worse scenario: the world will have more experience trying to build these things.

reubensutton 14y ago
I think this is a refreshing and sensible outlook on the matter, but I don't think it's one that's shared by many backers.
shin_lao 14y ago
What the article is saying is that they are either clueless or dishonnest. They will never ship the bulb and you cannot fund such project based on a video.
jeremyjh 14y ago
That is not the worst case
dmbass 14y ago
In the video, the guy literally says "For $69 dollars, you are essentially pre-ordering a LIFX smartbulb." (4:11) That's one of the major misconceptions people have about Kickstarter and these guys are playing right into it.

djt 14y ago

People buy an emotion, not a product. Some of my friends know these guys and by the sound of it this is a case of a "overnight sensation" that has been years in the making.

smoyer 14y ago

I think the problem is pretty clear ... Kickstarter optimizes reach so that the teams that are best at marketing win ... A team that's brilliant with engineering and design but can't produce slick photos and catchy videos doesn't stand a chance. I tend to think that kickstarter is a fad and that if it survives at all, it will be in a much reduced and much more controlled form. How long will it be before the authorities decide they're complicit in a fraud? EDIT: The ScanBox project looks like something I could make for $5 in parts and have fun doing over in an hour or so.

alexchamberlain 14y ago
Do we know if the ScanBoxes have shipped? Edit: The shipping date is October 12[1]. [1]: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-your-smartphone-into-a-portable-scann/posts http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-y...
- robryan 14y ago
  October 12 according to the last kick starter update.
- pothibo 14y ago
  What scares me is that they are starting a new kickstarter project when they didn't even finish the first one. I was backing this project but just ask for refund. This actually makes me wonder: If one would want to scam Kickstarters, one could just create new project and PR their way into millions of dollars without having to deliver a single thing.
  - regularfry 14y ago
    I can well believe that the scanbox is at a stage where there's simply not that much left for the guys to do except wait for the manufacturing to turn around. Why not start another project if they've got the time for it?
    - 14y ago

antr 14y ago

After backing two projects (MySaver cables and Elevation Dock), I've given up on Kickstarter: == MySaver == - Project was delayed for over 5 months. - When I got the product it wasn't the colour I had requested. - When I contacted the project leader he told me that they didn't have any more products of that colour, so he chose the one he thought convenient. - False statements: "The MySaver is the only cable protector that we know of and we fully-assemble it on a OEM quality replacement dock connector to USB cable". I can't insist how false this statement is. The cables I received where assembled using some kind of industrial glue gun - by no means "OEM quality" - and they are now falling apart. - Contacted Kickstarter about this issue and said that "if the project gets fully funded it must be a legit business/product" == Elevation Dock == - Backed in February 2012, still waiting for the product. - I will be changing my iPhone 3GS to iPhone 5, but guess what? It's a different dock connector. Yes, partly my fault, but its been 8 months since funding closed and 9 months since everybody knew this project was already 100% funded. == Conclusion == Many projects (primarily hardware) are very poorly managed. Project leaders, instead of being rational from a production capacity/constraint point of view, they simply want to "beat all records", and be at the top of the Kickstart funding list. This is just bad entrepreneurship and management skills. These guys are risking production, product quality and customer satisfaction over a "vanity" metric: How much is the maximum I can raise? I've given up, I'm not backing any more projects, I'm not going to be anyone's guinea pig. I'd rather wait for the products to be available in stores at a higher retail price, where I can see their "quality" finish. I'll judge then.

speg 14y ago
If it's any consolation, the Elevation dock guys planned for the new connector and you will be able to swap a new one in.
forrestthewoods 14y ago
I have many friends who backed and received their Elevation Docks. It's anything but vaporware. They asked for 75,000 and got 1,464,000. Scaling up that much and that fast is incredibly difficult and can't be done overnight. The system seems fine to me.

Alexx 14y ago

I spent some time a few months ago researching integrated smart technologies like this. (I've commented before on similar topics)[1] I very skeptical it's possible to deliver these at those price points. Just consider as a hacker the master bulb; They gloss over how you actually connect it to your home wifi network; it either has to interface with your laptop or phone via a cable for the initial setup, or it has to be able to create it's own wireless network you can hook onto, to then in turn tell it which is your home network, so it can hook onto that, and then relay to all other bulbs. That's a hell of a lot of technology to pack inside a groundbreaking lightbulb that's going to be running at high temperatures, at a $70 price point. The 'smart bulb' stuff aside, a decent plain white LED bulb sets you back around $30. Have you ever tried those colour-change LED light sets you get for garden decking or under the kitchen units? Even those cost more per unit that this, and they light they put out is harsh and well bellow 10 watts; hence why they're just used for ambient highlights. In my opinion the companies best positioned to deliver these kind of technologies are the likes of NEST[2]. They already have a constantly powered, integrated master device, it has a zigbee chip (which makes much more sense than wifi), an API, large processing power, and lots of data on the household. All they need to do is update their firmware (which they can do automatically already) and publish an API. Then any licensed 3rd party vendor from China can now deliver 'slave bulbs' using whatever technology and price points they desire. A ground up solution proposed here is short sighted, and realistically in the long run more expensive. [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3558304 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3558304 [2]http://www.nest.com/ http://www.nest.com/

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maxerickson 14y ago
Insteon is shipping $30 smart bulbs. They integrate with insteon's control stuff though, so the cost of using 1 of them is a minimum of ~$70-$80 (that's a bulb plus ~$45 for a simple switch pad). They don't seem to have much interest in pushing for wide adoption (at least, they seem to want to sell $400 controllers, not $50 controllers).

raverbashing 14y ago

Wifi on a lamp? Really? This screams "We have no idea what we are doing" (And those buying into the project certainly don't know a lot about it as well) This is like saying "We are building an electric car... with shiny paint", whereas the real problem is "building an electric car!" They probably tried to fit a RaspberryPi inside first

huhtenberg 14y ago
They could've OEM'd the lamp, for example, from Phillips. And a tiny-factor WiFi gadgets is hardly a rocket science, products like EyeFi has been around for several years. There's really nothing in the project that screams what you say it does. [0] http://www.eye.fi http://www.eye.fi
- raverbashing 14y ago
  I reread their product description and I still stand by my opinion And even the article says (and they agree it's an OEM lamp): "The Lifx is priced at $49 per bulb, which means that you’re basically buying a basic WeMo switch and getting the LED bulb — and all the technology merging the two into one bulb-sized piece of hardware — for free. It just doesn’t seem likely." They can prove me wrong, sure, by shipping the product.
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    Yeah? So? The article is being disingenuous by picking a bulky and very high-priced wifi product.
    - raverbashing 14y ago
      Because surely a smaller and more complex device is going to cost less than a WeMo, sure It is not overpriced if you factor the cost of electronic control of the lamp
      - Dylan16807 14y ago

shadowmint 14y ago

The problem here is that Kickstarter is complicity allowing this sort of scam-project* to run. They're not stupid. They know this is happening, and they're _hoping_ that it'll all magically sort itself out; that people will be smart enough _not_ to believe in the $50-you-get-a-lamborghini pledges. I mean, it's a great scam right? If you're a con artist, you make your money in one of two ways; 1) Steal someones money and make them too embarrassed to do anything about it (classic porn on the credit card) 2) Steal a little bit of money from a lot of people, all of whom can't be bothered to do anything about it. <--- Kickstarter. Realistically, this is going to continue until someone sues Kickstarter for being complicit in mail fraud. That'll be a sad day, but you can already see it coming on the horizon. * Actual project may not be a scam, but honestly there's not a huge difference between a poorly organised project that takes everyones money, tries to make something and fails, and an actual scam. If you're selling something, you're a merchant. There are laws around that.

JoeAltmaier 14y ago
Scam implies some sort of intent. There's actually a huge difference. When burned, you might call someone a dipshit. But to actually BE a dipshit, their intent matters.
- shadowmint 14y ago
  Intent is difficult to measure. Money on the other hand, is very easy to measure. So are your legal obligation as a merchant. If you sell something online, and the person on the other side never receives it, that's mail fraud. No matter what your intensions were. caveat: As a merchant you also have legal protections in this case, which is where refunds, reshipping, etc. come in.
  - regularfry 14y ago
    The get-out, of course, is that neither the projects nor Kickstarter are actually selling anything.
    - 14y ago

sebbi 14y ago

The part about "your existing switches still work" strikes me as impossible. The switches here are on/off switches ... there is no current getting to the bulbs when in off position, so there is no way of controlling the LED-bulb. If they require to leave all switches turned on for the remote control to work, than I'd have to always turn the light off with the smartphone app. That sounds a little bit complicated ;-)

coffeeaddicted 14y ago

One of the first thing I do in Hacker News or Reddit when seeing sensational headlines (cancer can be cured!) is checking the posts to find out what's wrong with the claim. In most cases it's the highest voted comment. I think Kickstarter would profit from a similar moderation system. Posts where users can add flags like "will work" "won't work" and some voting system so you can easily see the highest voted comment(s) with one of those flags. Or alternatively a normal forum to allow real discussions about projects would also be a major improvement. Although there needs to be a careful decision then who can cleanup spam as you wouldn't want project moderators to allow removing all critics without any consequences. The currently used comment system there is just horribly insufficient - it's basically impossible to have any real discussion there.

tvon 14y ago

> So my feeling is that both Kickstarter and the tech blogosphere should start being a lot more skeptical about the claims made in Kickstarter videos, where anybody can say pretty much anything. Isn't the problem more along the lines of "amateur investors making amateur investments"? Is it Kickstarter's fault if people believe the "pretty much anything" that can be said in a video?

saraid216 14y ago
No, in this case it's actually the tech news journalists' fault for believing pretty much anything that can be said in a video. I didn't see anything asking Kickstarter to shape up; the call to action was for the reporters. And he's right. This article should have been written by, say, GigaOm. I'd want a Wired article to go into more technical depth than this one does. I'd guess that, if I found the articles that pointed to the Kickstarter, they don't.

rbellio 14y ago

I generally agree with everything in the article, but there was a statement that caught me up, "I can’t believe that Lifx has managed to solve the enormous problems that many huge companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying — and generally failing — to fix." I don't believe that large companies with hundreds of millions of dollars are always the right people to find the solution. Isn't this something we tackle a lot of the time? Being the small fish in the big pond? I do think that we should be wary of the snakewater salesmen of the world, but don't discount someone just because they don't have a large, bureaucratic organization backing them. That being said, it would be really nice for some sort of rating system to be put into place. Force these inventors to generate brand loyalty even if it is to them as a person.

EwanToo 14y ago

Kickstarter could significantly improve things by imposing a cap on the amount of money taken above the original request. This is similar to what Groupon have had to do, because it was killing their reputation. People are estimating "Well, we could make about 500 of these", then receiving orders (and the money) for 50,000 of them. Suddenly the predicted ship dates go out 2 or 3 times as long, and people get upset.

Bakkot 14y ago
They could, but honestly they should just be more insistent that project founders make more use of the existing tools. They provide a way to say there's a limited number of awards available at a given tier; if you're not going to be able to scale past ten thousand quickly, then don't let more than ten thousand people sign up to receive the product - at least not from the first round.
- EwanToo 14y ago
  Perhaps yeah, it'd have a very similar effect. It would perhaps also drive up orders early in the cycle, as people can't wait until the last few minutes when they see a project has been funded. Personally I think the simplest option would be allowing a 10% "overshoot" fund, and beyond that the project automatically closes to new backers - this should ensure that despite the various reasons why the money wouldn't come through from individuals (credit card rejected, etc), a funded project would get it's full amount.
forgottenpaswrd 14y ago
"'Kickstarter could significantly improve things by imposing a cap on the amount of money taken above the original request." That is your opinion, in my opinion this would be bad for KS. I don't know why some grow ups people need someone else to put limits on the money the can spend on something, like they are dependent children who need to be controlled what they do with their own money. Or worse, they want to tell other people what they can spend. They are totalitarian in the inside.
- 14y ago

ck2 14y ago

Kickstarter needs to have a rule that the rewards cannot be the item being proposed. This will perfectly enforce the realization that it's INVESTMENT with risk and not a purchase of the item.

timpeterson 14y ago

99 Kickstarter Problems but getting the product isn't one: Problem #1: NOT getting the product. Problems #2-#99) 98 emails updating you on the product you will never receive.

driverdan 14y ago

I'm really surprised there haven't been any class action law suits against Kickstarter projects and/or Kickstarter. For most projects Kickstarter isn't a feel-good donation system, it's a way of pre-purchasing a product. If you promise to provide an item for someone's money and don't deliver you've broken the law.

davidpayne11 14y ago

These people aren’t just being seduced by a clever sales pitch: they’re being shepherded there by lots of very high-profile blogs, such as Wired and TechCrunch and Mashable and GigaOm. Its funny that reuters is writing this, because, they were shepherding a lot of people on an inferior product too, The iPhone 5.

drats 14y ago

>so far there’s zero evidence that it’s a good way of providing startup capital for would-be businesses Flagged immediately for this statement. Troll journalism.

cristianpascu 14y ago
Yeah, my feeling exactly. Whenever I hear/read "there's absolutely/zero no evidence", it smell either ignorance or malevolence.

netcan 14y ago

Some old fella I knew who was a young professional as woman joined the ranks in the 60s & 70s had this useful saying: "toilet excuses" which was the whole laundry list of nonsense reasons why women couldn't be building inspectors or firemen or whatnot. "Every building site would need another toilet block and the costs would be tremendous, all to allow one dipshit 21 year old to work for 1 year, get pregnant then leave." There is something about Kickstarter that makes HN irritable, hoping for failure. I'm not sure what it is exactly and its out of character. I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt but I can smell toilet excuses. I'm sure that kickstarter has issues and maybe its not a big thing in the long term. But, its a nice idea. It seems to be working. Why is this mob so cranky?

jdlshore 14y ago
I agree. Something about Kickstarter seems to inspire a lot of negativity here on HN. Perhaps because it's an alternative to the VC funding model that's such a part of the HN identity? Personally, I love Kickstarter. I've funded a project with it myself. It's has great potential for an individual or small team with "1000 true fans" to make a living, and I think we'll see a lot of success stories come out of it. And some notable failures, of course. But I don't see that as an indictment of the Kickstarter model. Personally, I wouldn't back Lifx. It's expensive, I'm skeptical of its ability to ship, and I don't need color-changing light bulbs. But if someone wants to spend $70 to take a flyer on something cool, more power to them.
- netcan 14y ago
  I agree. Occasional failures don't discredit the whole thing. Fraud might, but failure doesn't.
prawn 14y ago
Entrepreneurs using Kickstarter are pitching an idea and often getting money before they've executed more than a video and description. The typical entrepreneurs of Hacker News are consistently told that an idea has little value and that actual execution is so much more. You must almost always build out at least a basic product before you have a hope of money trickling in or gaining investment. I think any crankiness might be related to that.

rabidsnail 14y ago

I think a web-of-trust-style reputation system would work well here, since "votes" cost money. The reputation of a buyer is the mean of the reputations of the projects they've backed (times some confidence metric). The reputation of a project six months after it started is 1 if they kept their promises (as measured by confirmation emails sent to the backers) and -1 otherwise. The reputation of a project before six months is the mean of (the mean of the reputations of its backers (again times some confidence)) and the reputation of the person who started the project.

fmax30 14y ago

Seems as though the only thing one needs to earn money on the internet is to make a video with good cameras and be good at Computer generated 3D models of products that will never be completed. I too think that the kickstarter should stop project starters from giving out material things.

meiji 14y ago

I'm not sure why this is any sort of surprise. Ever since Kickstarter began there have been lots of great ideas, lots of awful ideas. Some of the great ideas have been clearly way too ambitious for small teams but people happily donate money. Given this isn't an investment and what you're doing is giving someone money to follow their dream, to my mind it's almost irrelevant if at the end you don't get your $30 lightbulb. You've lived vicariously through the Lifehacker in question and got to see something go to market or crash and burn.

mixmax 14y ago

Hardware development is hard, but if it's doable. Even on a budget. A Ten years ago I started a hardware company that developed an advertising sign based on LED's. It was basically a motor with a stick of RGB LED's attached like a propeller. When you spun the stick and modulated the LED's just right you could paint full color disc shaped picture seemingly in free air. An FPGA would control and modulate the LED's (at the time it was the only affordable thing that could modulate a LED 400.000 times a second) The whole thing was online via an OEM phone module and would automatically update with ads, weather, etc. from a server where customers could buy campaigns online. Campaigns could of course be customised wo that you could get your ad only on the displays you wanted. I was in charge of getting this whole bandoogle from an idea to a product, and while it was hard I managed develop and bring it to market for around $200.000. Remember this was ten years ago where you had to tap directly into the a carriers network and hack around just to get an IP address, and five years before the iphone. The point of the story is that sometimes small nimble companies that are set on doing something actually succeed. I'm not saying that these guys have solved all the problems, indeed it sounds from the article that there are some huge obstacles. I'm just saying that you should never underestimate the power of a small team whose only goal in life is to make something happen.

ajaimk 14y ago

First off, their goals are possible in the fact they are not hoping to build an energy efficient LED bulb but a wifi controllable one. Also it is a little too early to be calling this VaporWare. Give them a chance to prove themselves.

marklittlewood 14y ago

Is it just me or is there something very odd about the video presentation? Phil Bosua uses just about every trick in the NLP book to persuade and cajole. Even though the project is almost certainly impossible to deliver, I ended up wanting to believe it and thinking that if I did contribute, I would be making something amazing happen. I almost felt like I was being hypnotised. If they can deliver what they say with $100,000 then the fact that they now have 10x that probably means you don;t need to contribute to see the benefit. Mea culpa.

runako 14y ago

I don't know if the Lifx guys in particular are naive, deceptive, or six-sigma outliers. But I'm actually surprised that projects like Lifx are able to get any funding at all. A cursory thought in the direction of the project would reveal that the pitch is essentially a) others with tons of experience have invested lots of hard money in this space b) to no real success so far but c) we have the answer and only need a hundred grand to make it large. And d) actually, we don't even need $100k, it's more like $25k plus materials, so as you can see this project is really 99% done now. This is classic hucksterism; you will see it at any business meetup in any town. Somebody has built a better mousetrap in his garage, leaping over giants, and only needs $25k/$50k/$100k to get to market. The key is they never need large sums of money, only relatively small sums to get to market; a larger sum would indicate that the project is not 99% done, which I assure you it is. The obvious question: if you have built a better mousetrap and only need $100k to take over a major industry like lighting, why not go max out your credit cards and just build it? Or show a prototype to anyone over 50 who might be able to connect you with an angel investor? Occam's answer: because you haven't a clue how to make it work. Again, I don't know if the Lifx guys are hucksters. But their pitch follows a classic huckster pitch to the letter.

lifeformed 14y ago
Well, I don't think people turn to Kickstarter funding solely for the money. It's a pretty decent way to do some cheap marketing, too. If you can get $100,000 from a bank, or $100,000 from 1,000 people in your target market, it makes sense to do the latter. I have no idea if this is or isn't the case with Lifx, but I always viewed Kickstarter as a funding/marketing package.

DanBC 14y ago

They're using multicolour LEDs. That's weird. Most people don't want blue or green lights. That's a niche market for accent lighting. Most people want a nice bright light for lamps and spotlights. Spending money on getting that nice warm colour would be money well spent. Also, the video mentions photographers. I'm not sure, but I'd have thought that multiplexed LEDs would be a horrible idea for some photography.

mbreese 14y ago
In theory, by using RGB LEDs, you can mix the colors to produce a more pleasant color of light. I doubt they'll have only blue or green light.
WildCat69 14y ago
The color changing aspect of this bulb is a cool idea, but in reality would end up as a just something neat show off. On the other hand, if they can also accurately mimic the warmth and brightness of an incandescent using this approach, I'd buy it.

robomartin 14y ago

I've backed a number of technology as well as art projects on Kickstarter. So far all have delivered. Only one was a disappointment. Not because they did not deliver as promised but rather because the product really wasn't as good of an idea as I thought it would be. No big deal. Perhaps my results with tech have been good because I am an engineer with lots of experience designing and manufacturing hardware/software products. I have seen projects on Kickstarter that have me question whether or not the person fully understands what it takes to take a project from concept or prototype to a finished product. Needless to say, I don't back such projects. The article gives a sense that making hardware products is hard and expensive. The author is most-definitely correct. A product like this light bulb could easily burn-up above US $100K in regulatory testing (UL, FCC, CE, TUV, etc.). This is particularly true if the designer isn't well versed in this area. The article looses a little authority in my eyes when the author says things like: > The heat sink is crucial, especially if you want to put lots of wifi electronics into the bulb. Which is complete and utter nonsense. WiFi has nothing to do with the requirement for a massive heatsink. If it did, you iPhone would be a huge block of aluminum with fins. No, the heatsink is required because 80% (or more) of the energy going into an LED is converted into heat, not light. This data is from a few years ago, but I suspect it hasn't gotten much better than that. Most of the power you shove into an LED converts to heat that you have to manage, hence the large heat-sink. I did a project a while ago that managed more than one thousand one Watt LEDs in a very small space. I was personally responsible for the design of the electronics, mechanics, optics and thermal management. Thermal management alone took about six months of FEA simulations and validation through prototypes before converging on a solution. I had to design the thermal management system to handle over one thousand Watts. It was safer to assume that all input energy (and more) was converted into heat in order to have some operating margin for derating the cooling system. I went on reading the article and thinking that, while I agreed that multi-disciplinary hardware projects are hard, this guy was being a little mean-spirited. After all, he was right in that this project required having an understanding of electronic design, mechanical design, thermal management, optical design and the myriad of manufacturing and regulatory disciplines that come with bringing something like this to market. The author's incorrect statement about the reason for having a heatsink created a negative reaction in my mind that carried over as I continued reading the article. I knew I was biased. I tried to ignore that and continued reading. Then I came to the point in the article where he told us that the project originator was also behind another project that amounted to not much more than some folded carboard. A project that was supposed to ship in July and, as of four hours ago, hasn't started shipping yet. That was enough to change my mindset. I was, at that point, aligned with the author in sharing his skepticism. If this guy (or guys) can't deliver a cardboard box in nearly three months I can't see any hope of delivering a complex product such as the LED light bulb in six. Keep in mind that I have always been a believer that small motivated teams can run circles around large companies with lots of money and people. Projects like this don't cost ten million dollars at a large company because that's what it costs to design the product. They cost that much because such organizations burn a lot more cash per unit of time than a small team. They have a lot more people, resources and infrastructure to support. A large R&D organization could burn a million dollars a day whether they stand still or are working on something. In sharp contrast to that, a small focused team working out of a garage or a modest environment could do the same or very similar work for hundreds or thousands of dollars per day, depending on the nature of the project. This to say that I am not skeptical of their probability for success because the project is difficult. My skepticism comes simply from the fact that they/he have another fully funded project on Kickstarter, one that my teenage kid could probably --with some some help from dad-- execute on in a month, and they have not delivered yet. It's like proposing that you can build a house when you haven't even demonstrated that you can build a tent. The question here is more one of execution rather than anything else. I'll estimate that if you are really frugal and have to design this from scratch you are looking at a cost of about $500K. This means real design for manufacturing, thermal design, testing, testing, testing (did I say "testing") --which includes environmental testing-- tooling, certifications, procurement, etc. That means that, at the current funding level of $780K for a little more than 13,000 light bulbs, they have about $20 per bulb left over to manufacture, test, package and ship. Ouch. Even if my design cost estimate is off by 100% and they can get this ready for manufacturing for $250K, that means that you only have about $40 per bulb to manufacture, test, package and ship. I am not sure that's enough unless you commit to manufacturing tens of thousands of these per month. One thing is for sure, nobody is making a dime on this one. Remember, business costs and overhead don't stop at manufacturing. There's far more below the tip of that iceberg. EDIT: I could say a lot more about the nature of bringing such products to market. Here's an important point that I felt warranted an edit: A product like this can burn down your house. It is imperative that its design take no shortcuts. Testing before release must be extensive and thorough. This could take dozens of iterations until a solid and reliable design is converged upon. This, again, takes money and expertise.

armored_mammal 14y ago

Meh. I haven't had any major fails with the Kickstarters I've supported, though outside of the Ouya I don't think I've supported any hardware ones. Some of the hardware ones I thought were the neat and obviously producible (like weird light fixtures/shades) in a short a time frame also either had stupid reward tiers, or, I guess, just weren't interesting to anyone else. All that said, I don't really get the people who expect stuff in 6 months for hardware-based Kickstarters. Do you have any ideas about the product development lifecycle? Going from prototype to manufacturing can take quite a while, especially if you need to visit factories in China or some such. When I back something that's more complex than 'I'll draw a picture' or 'I'll sing a song' I assume it might take a couple years, and that's been borne out at least once, though that level of expectation has also allowed me to be pleasantly surprised. Despite the above, I'm not saying I think these LED lights are on the level - it seems like a very very poor idea to start a new project without finishing the first. But I also don't think they're as impossible to make as everyone is saying, though offhand I'd also think it'd make more sense to control the lamps with Bluetooth than with wifi. But if I have this right, and they get the bulbs from someone else in bulk and just pop on a really cheap controller/wireless interface, it seems like the price works out, especially if they aren't worrying about making them 'secure.' As for 'certifications' and such, I really don't expect they'll even get them, let alone know that they might need them or that they exist.

sequoia 14y ago

I wish someone from kickstarter would answer this question once and for all: Is it a donation or is it a purchase? This question comes up constantly ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506601 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4506601 e.g.) when kickstarter projects are featured here, TFA is actually about this topic more-or-less specifically. At the risk of sounding cynical: I think it's in kickstarter's financial to not answer this question- they're better off with the confusion & everyone seeing the fee-paid/donation as they want it. That way it's a payment for a product when you have your wallet out- it's a "donation" when the project fails and you are left with nothing. :)

bduerst 14y ago
It's a donation, and you get a "prize" for donating a certain amount.
Dylan16807 14y ago
I would say the answer is "No.". You put in money. You get back one of the product if it succeeds in being produced. That is not a donation or a purchase. It's not exactly default-swap surgery; people can handle a hint of complexity in their trades.

jws 14y ago

Felix Salmon's screed is poorly informed about LED bulbs and the current state of the art in wifi. First let's go over the current marketplace: • There are very nice 60 watt equivalent bulbs available for <$25 in quantity one.[1] Without looking directly at the bulb you will not tell them from incandescent. Single color, using phosphors to shift blue LEDs down to nicer frequencies. • At quantities >500 LED bulbs which look like the illustration on the kickstarter page are under $10. [2] This gives a rough estimate of cost of materials assembled. • A thumbnail sized microcontroller module with wifi is <$30 in quantity one.[3] It certainly looks like there is room for a $50 that includes a light and a wifi enabled microcontroller. The cost model gets easier though. Each customer only needs one master bulb with the wifi, the rest only have the cheaper 802.15.4 mesh radios. Before we look at the article anymore, lets consider what is different about the Lifx than the $10 bulb above. • More efficient. It needs to be a bit brighter to meet the Lifx specs. This adds cost to the LEDs to run more current within the thermal limits. • Tri color. It is going to need at least three LED colors. Ideally the sum of them is going to be a pleasing white so you get a usable color at full brightness. The other colors are achieved by running some of the LEDs at lower duty cycle. Notice they chose a bulb with a diffuser. That keeps you from getting blotchy spot light effects. • More power switching FETs. Their total power handling will be the same, but it will be a higher component count. • A microcontroller and radio added to the circuit board. • Software, a couple weeks for the bulb innards. For that they get to roughly quintuple the sale price. Sounds doable to me. Most of the article is just an "On no! The sky is falling!" piece on Kickstarter feeling like a store. He uses some other company that took a run at the "just like incandescent" market and apparently got beaten by Philips. For some reason, he has a side-by-side set of photos which the Lifx illustration bulb and possibly the ugliest LED bulb I've ever seen. (Said ugly bulb is proclaimed indistinguishable from incandescent when inside a lamp shade, so it has a use case. Just don't let anyone see it naked.) As the article progresses it just gets embarrassing. He declares it impossible because other smart people haven't done it and confidently predicts every negative lightbulb attribute he can think of will afflict the bulb. He throws out some ridiculous straw men for the product and imagines a huge barrier for configuration of a UI free wifi device (hint: solved long ago by many products, e.g. Apple's Airport Express) and that somehow the 0.05 watts from the wifi will overheat the bulb which is dissipating ~10 watts already. At least it was run as "Opinion" instead of "Fact". Here's my opinion on Lifx: The masterbulb concept is a mistake. Too confusing. Have a controller that plugs in the wall. Keeps the confusion down but also keeps people from switching off the master bulb or having to have a battery in it. They may need to give a bit on the total brightness to keep the heat under control. If they try to grow to something large, they will probably be killed by a patent lawsuit. If they make it far enough to make a nice PAR20 version (diffusion is much harder), I will happily buy 30 of them. EOM [1] http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-Light-Bulbs-LED-Light-Bulbs/Philips/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbm79Z15b/R-203406583/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&langId=-1&storeId=10051#.UFiG1EI8D8s http://www.homedepot.com/Electrical-Light-Bulbs-LED-Light-Bu... [2] http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/601830276/led_light_bulb_e27.html?s=p http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/601830276/led_light_bulb_e... For ballpark reference only. Never trust the specs. [3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11395 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11395

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jlgreco 14y ago

There is an interesting typo in the article: The bulb on the light is quite lovely Obviously meant to be "right", but I had to read that sentence 3 times before I read it correctly and not as "left". Seems my brain was expecting "left" or "right" and saw "left" since they start with the same letter, instead of seeing "right", the much closer word. Sorry to be offtopic, thought that was kind of interesting.

drumdance 14y ago

He's completely discounting the value of building a direct relationship to the customer that Kickstarter allows. For many startups that's at least as hard as the technology.

jdminhbg 14y ago

> so far there’s zero evidence that it’s a good way of providing startup capital for would-be businesses This drives me nuts. There may be insufficient evidence to say that Kickstarter is "a good way of providing startup capital...", but there's not zero evidence. If you're trying to come off as the measured, realistic alternative, flailing hyperbole doesn't help.

TillE 14y ago
It's also a statement that's qualified in an absurd way: "would-be businesses". Even then, there are at least a few very successful videogame projects that fit the bill, Al Lowe's Leisure Suit Larry and Jane Jensen's Pinkerton Road being the most prominent. I think it's worth looking at Kickstarter for different industries in very very different ways. For hardware manufacturing (which seems to be the only thing discussed on HN), it's a huge risk. For just about everything else, it's well-established and fairly predictable.

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james33 14y ago

Every great achievement was once considered impossible.

cfesta9 14y ago

I created something like this over the past year. I should have started a kickstarter! :) I do have questions on how lifx will execute this light bulb. Very interesting stuff. Check out the Arduino/Wireless LED lamp here http://charlesfesta.com/post/31814601314/say-hello-to-the-john-hancock-building-living-room http://charlesfesta.com/post/31814601314/say-hello-to-the-jo...

jwatte 14y ago

You can buy a full Android 4.0 tablet for $35. It has Wifi, backlight, screen, CPU, battery and case. The BOM for this lamp is totally doable for a dozen dollars. It's productization that's the challenge. Sometimes, a smart scrappy start-up can hit it right. The heat sink may be a concern for WiFi in the sense that a grounded metal enclosure is a concern for an antenna. Or maybe they turn the heat sink into an antenna? (Hmm, should I go patent that now? :-)

jamesaguilar 14y ago

Here's a kickstarter that did very well (launched, great game): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than-light http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/64409699/ftl-faster-than... Personally I'm not worried about kickstarter being generally vaporware, although in some instances it will be.

bufferout 14y ago

The LiFX lead engineer had started answering questions here: http://tech.lifx.co/ http://tech.lifx.co/

tbull007 14y ago

I know three of the LiFX guys personally - they're all well connected and respected in the Melbourne startup scene. Are they naive to the challenges of deploying a hardware project? At least some of them are, but the lead engineer has been in this field for a long time. Are they trying to defraud anyone? Absolutely not. I hadn't heard of this project until I read this article, but knowing the team involved there's just no way these guys are putting their reputation on the line over something they don't personally believe can be done. Must have missed the memo where the Hacker News community collectively decided to stop seeking funding and shooting for the stars. Reading the tone of these comments, we should now only tackle the problems that we... sorry, you the commentator... 100% know can be solved.

vosper 14y ago
If they're "naive to the challenges" (even some of them) then the chances of success are even lower than for companies who have vast expertise in this area. That they're trying to do it on a shoestring makes it even less likely to succeed - people are right to be critical. Also, I think the major difference between funding in the usual HN startup sense and funding via Kickstarter is that startup funding is almost always classical investment whereby you get a share in the company and the rewards of their hopeful success - but Kickstart funding could well be money for nothing.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago

Felix Salmon is a noted writer in the financial world; it seems like the context is being missed. A few years ago the U.S. investment universe could have been stylised as two mutually exclusive sets: regulated securities available to everyone, e.g. exchange traded stocks, and loosely regulated products for sophisticated investors, e.g. hedge funds. Common to both sets is that the agent, e.g. public company CEO or hedge fund manager, has a fiduciary obligation to act in the best interests of the principal, i.e. the investor. The JOBS Act muddied the line between sophisticated and unsophisticated investors but maintained what constitutes an investor protected by their fiduciary rights and what constitutes someone giving money away. Enter Kickstarter. Kickstarter says its campaigns are donations and not investments. This is crucial as it keeps them from having to comply with securities regulations, which have a higher bar for fraud than consumer or donor regulation. For example, failing to deliver a promised product would be grounds for scrutiny into whether the company acted in "best interests" of its fiduciaries - presently, a Kickstarter campaign has loose to no fiduciary obligation to its donors. Felix Salmon argues that Kickstarter campaigns are closer to investments than not and so should be fiducially obligated to their donors/investors. The greater debate is about who should be protected by fiduciary rights, who should be allowed to participate in what kind of investment, and how we trade off inclusion in capital gains against the risk of fraud and public disillusionment in the capital markets. Whether WiFi circuitry can reliably survive 85 degrees Celsius is a side, albeit still interesting, concern.

pbreit 14y ago

Felix Salmon is an a-hole and a moron. First of all, if you're going to title the missive "...of the day" there should be more than one example per quarter and such example should actually be vapor. Beyond that, Salmon gets almost everything wrong about small teams building products and Kickstarter in general. Small teams can have huge advantages over big companies specifically because they don't need to build hug quantities fo product. And Kickstarter has a fairly well-known reputation for products from manufacturers who don't have all the answers before they are asking for money.