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There's an interesting subtlety here: "We won’t charge your card until your Lockitron is ready." The Kickstarter model has a few appealing characteristics for
by skdoo 14y ago
There's an interesting subtlety here: "We won’t charge your card until your Lockitron is ready."
The Kickstarter model has a few appealing characteristics for hardware: evaluate product-market fit, gauge initial order size, and get upfront capital.
By giving up the upfront capital (presumably because they don't need it), they can allow refunds or cancellations, unlike Kickstarter. This is great for customer confidence and relationships. But they keep the other incredibly valuable parts of the Kickstarter model, which are crucial for hardware startups.
- netcan 14y agoI agree. Pre-order vs pre-buy is a subtle difference that might make riskier projects workable. Projects get a lot of the benefits but the risk of customers & kickstarter getting burned is much smaller. Some projects may not need the funding so there's no reason to introduce that risk. Others might be able to live without it. I imagine that having 500k of pre-orders could be leveraged for financing via another route (investment, loans, credit lines). If Kickstarter is watching learning, maybe they can fix problematic categories by tweaking the model rather than banning them entirely.