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This article confuses success with raising money. Success will be raising money, and then manufacturing and shipping 70,000-odd coolers to the satisfaction of

by ctz 12y ago

This article confuses success with raising money. Success will be raising money, and then manufacturing and shipping 70,000-odd coolers to the satisfaction of 60,000-odd people within the next 4 months. Crowdfunding projects in general don't have a sterling record of actually fulfilling shipments on time and to spec.

spiritplumber 12y ago
I know I was about two months late overall with mine, and people actually told me that I was doing better than most campaigns... http://igg.me/at/minilaser/ http://igg.me/at/minilaser/ Small scale stuff, but it was interesting to think in 100s of units rather than in 10s.
thegenius 12y ago
Exactly. Raising money is not the greatest accomplishment in the world. What if all that money came from a rich uncle? It's up to the founder to correctly allocate the capital once he/she has it. That's the real challenge. Getting a sizable return on assets, and furthermore, getting a large slice out of that for yourself is the goal of the owner of a for-profit business.
Padding 12y ago
I don't know about that. Isn't raising 13m $ the equivalent of receiving tenure? Even if this fails somehere along the way, it sure will be a success for the "inventor" .. and thus be a success-story for other hopeful wannabes.
- vecter 12y ago
  Not at all, unless the inventor runs away with the money, but that doesn't sound right. How is it a success if he burns through the money and fails to bring the product to market in a meaningful way? The world is littered with dead startups that have raised $10M+ (heck $100M+) rounds.
  - Padding 12y ago
    > How is it a success if he burns through the money and fails to bring the product to market in a meaningful way? A lot of regular people "burn through money" and fail to deliver any sort of value in the process of their daily job. We consider them successful to some extent, right? How is raising funds but failing to deliver any different compared to one of those more conventional members of society? And having raised $13m allows you to be one of those "less productive" workers for the rest of your live. > unless the inventor runs away with the money Well, he doesn't need to literally run away. There are more nuanced ways of failing to deliver, without being a criminal. After all, there's no guarantee on this sort of investement right? At the same time, this is money that'll be flowing into the economy one way or the other. So it's not all bad.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
While I agree with this statement vis-a-vis the value of the raise versus actually shipping, a lot of startups, all their press releases between birth and acqui-hire are how much they raised :-(. It looks like this guy has a lot of pre-made modules and so is really just on the hook for the injection molds. It will be interesting to watch. I have no idea what that Makerbot Replicator was doing in that last shot though, seemed a bit like a non-sequitor.
onion2k 12y ago
This article confuses success with raising money. And you're confusing a single event with the entire process of running a project. The fact is raising money is a success, because a success is simply a positive event. You need a lot of them to successfully complete a project. Equally, failure is an event - you can have lots of failures and still succeed.
- UVB-76 12y ago
  This is just a dispute over terminology, but to succeed is to achieve an aim or purpose; unless your aim is simply to raise money, you haven't achieved success at that stage. Even if, for the sake of argument, we take your definition of success as simply a positive event, I would dispute the implication that raising $13m in this manner is necessarily a positive event. The inventor hasn't accrued $13m with no strings attached; he has accepted the money in lieu of an obligation to deliver product. Whether entering into such an exchange is a "positive event" or not for the inventor depends on whether he can uphold his end of the bargain.
  - jmathai 12y ago
    I don't understand this line of thought at all. For this guy a step to get to whatever his goal is was to raise funding on Kickstarter. He was successful in that.
sandaru1 12y ago
I funded MicroView on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516846343/microview-chip-sized-arduino-with-built-in-oled-di https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516846343/microview-ch...). I think they also ran into problems with manufacturing a large quantity of devices. However, I got the device in a reasonable time frame and I'm very happy with the quality of the product. I'm not sure whether they are the rule or the exception. In the end, it's unfair to assume that this project will fail to deliver shipments based on unrelated failed crowdfunded projects.

by ctz 12y ago

spiritplumber 12y ago

I know I was about two months late overall with mine, and people actually told me that I was doing better than most campaigns... http://igg.me/at/minilaser/ http://igg.me/at/minilaser/ Small scale stuff, but it was interesting to think in 100s of units rather than in 10s.

thegenius 12y ago

Exactly. Raising money is not the greatest accomplishment in the world. What if all that money came from a rich uncle? It's up to the founder to correctly allocate the capital once he/she has it. That's the real challenge. Getting a sizable return on assets, and furthermore, getting a large slice out of that for yourself is the goal of the owner of a for-profit business.

Padding 12y ago

I don't know about that. Isn't raising 13m $ the equivalent of receiving tenure? Even if this fails somehere along the way, it sure will be a success for the "inventor" .. and thus be a success-story for other hopeful wannabes.

vecter 12y ago
Not at all, unless the inventor runs away with the money, but that doesn't sound right. How is it a success if he burns through the money and fails to bring the product to market in a meaningful way? The world is littered with dead startups that have raised $10M+ (heck $100M+) rounds.
- Padding 12y ago
  > How is it a success if he burns through the money and fails to bring the product to market in a meaningful way? A lot of regular people "burn through money" and fail to deliver any sort of value in the process of their daily job. We consider them successful to some extent, right? How is raising funds but failing to deliver any different compared to one of those more conventional members of society? And having raised $13m allows you to be one of those "less productive" workers for the rest of your live. > unless the inventor runs away with the money Well, he doesn't need to literally run away. There are more nuanced ways of failing to deliver, without being a criminal. After all, there's no guarantee on this sort of investement right? At the same time, this is money that'll be flowing into the economy one way or the other. So it's not all bad.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

While I agree with this statement vis-a-vis the value of the raise versus actually shipping, a lot of startups, all their press releases between birth and acqui-hire are how much they raised :-(. It looks like this guy has a lot of pre-made modules and so is really just on the hook for the injection molds. It will be interesting to watch. I have no idea what that Makerbot Replicator was doing in that last shot though, seemed a bit like a non-sequitor.

onion2k 12y ago

This article confuses success with raising money. And you're confusing a single event with the entire process of running a project. The fact is raising money is a success, because a success is simply a positive event. You need a lot of them to successfully complete a project. Equally, failure is an event - you can have lots of failures and still succeed.

UVB-76 12y ago
This is just a dispute over terminology, but to succeed is to achieve an aim or purpose; unless your aim is simply to raise money, you haven't achieved success at that stage. Even if, for the sake of argument, we take your definition of success as simply a positive event, I would dispute the implication that raising $13m in this manner is necessarily a positive event. The inventor hasn't accrued $13m with no strings attached; he has accepted the money in lieu of an obligation to deliver product. Whether entering into such an exchange is a "positive event" or not for the inventor depends on whether he can uphold his end of the bargain.
- jmathai 12y ago
  I don't understand this line of thought at all. For this guy a step to get to whatever his goal is was to raise funding on Kickstarter. He was successful in that.

sandaru1 12y ago

I funded MicroView on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516846343/microview-chip-sized-arduino-with-built-in-oled-di https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1516846343/microview-ch...). I think they also ran into problems with manufacturing a large quantity of devices. However, I got the device in a reasonable time frame and I'm very happy with the quality of the product. I'm not sure whether they are the rule or the exception. In the end, it's unfair to assume that this project will fail to deliver shipments based on unrelated failed crowdfunded projects.