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for people making physical products a cap would make sense. Printrbot was a pretty good example- order fulfillment took a lot longer than anticipated because o
by CompelTechnic 13y ago
for people making physical products a cap would make sense. Printrbot was a pretty good example- order fulfillment took a lot longer than anticipated because of the high volume.
On the other hand, delivering a desktop application is about equally difficult for 200 customers or 2000 customers, so the Macaw guys should just revel in their extra cash (aside from the stretch goals that they chose to take on as well, and printing a handful of extra t-shirts).
- dopamean 13y agoThis makes sense. The cases I was thinking of were actually for companies planning on making physical products.
- venomsnake 13y agoNot entirely convinced. Too much money that you are obliged to spend can sink a project just as well as underfunding. Due to some "Mythical man month" reasons adding more people and features can put you in quagmire easily unless you have very good project managers. I am not sure even those could bear the influx of order of magnitude more money than needed. Kickstarters are not preorders.
- wmf 13y agoStretch goals will extend the schedule (something that Kickstarter doesn't really explain), but you don't have to have stretch goals. If people give you more money than you need you can just keep it.
- georgemcbay 13y agoYou don't have to spend the extra money on things that will blow out the schedule. Anyone aware of the realities of software development enough to think about capping the max should be aware of the mythical man month and cognizant enough to realize they can just bank that extra money as a rainy day fund for when the product almost certainly goes over schedule even with the original plan (Hofstadter's law).
- jacobwcarlson 13y agoProviding support to the extra 1800 customers, however, can be much more difficult.