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I remember when I first about all of the buzz about this Kickstarter project, I knew it was going to be trouble. Hardware is a notoriously expensive business to

I remember when I first about all of the buzz about this Kickstarter project, I knew it was going to be trouble. Hardware is a notoriously expensive business to get into. As the company learned you can easily burn through a few million in cash just putting out a prototype. Once you have something ready for production, until you're manufacturing at a decent scale, your costs are incredibly high: economies of scale 101. Call me crazy, but how about Kickstarter clamps down on ambitious hardware products like this? I don't think they are doing enough and it's tarnishing their image as a credible crowdfunding platform (at least to me anyway). It's obvious that there are very few exceptions here that a hardware Kickstarter campaign will not fail (Oculus Rift comes to mind and a few other smaller ones).

famousactress 12y ago
Don't forget Pebble :) Definitely hardware failures are a PR challenge but kickstarter's margins aren't affected by COGs and hardware projects tend to require more money (as you pointed out). They've got lots of motivation to make it work.
- DigitalSea 12y ago
  Pebble is definitely a success, OUYA is another success, the Neil Young endorsed Pono player and service seems to be well underway and looking like another success and of course, the LIFX wifi enabled multi light-bulb as well. When you run the numbers, the percentage of success for hardware projects is quite small. But as you point out, Kickstarter get their fees regardless of success or failure. I think Kickstarter does care, the problem is just a lot bigger than they currently know how to fairly solve.