Did you have any opinion on the guy's previous kickstarter which has slipped 6 months and consisted of a cardboard box?
Yes that is a bit uncharitable to call this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-y... a foldable cardboard box, but it is a whole lot simpler than putting together a light bulb that out performs every other bulb in the market for less money.
So when someone who knows how tough putting something like this together is, sees folks buying into it, they twitch. Seems like the author of this piece twitched pretty hard.
I don't think you read my entire post. I mention the folded cardboard project as a key indicator of just how unlikely it might be for this lightbulb to get off the ground. My immediate reaction is that Kickstarter ought to put the lightbulb project on hold until, at the very least, the other project sees completion.
Your right, I totally missed that bit. And I agree strongly that the execution risk here incredible. I'll add them to the Ouya and Pebble guys of people who've bitten off way more than they expected.
Say what you will about Ouya but I believe that Pebble will deliver. Allerta isn't a fly by night maker team. They are real company and have already made a smart watch product, the inPulse smart watch. I ordered one when they offered their special pricing here on HN and was pretty happy with it. Sure it has it's short comings but it seems like a good start and I feel that Pebble will deliver.
To be completely clear here, there will be Kickstarter successes, people who raise hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars and deliver brilliantly. If only one in 10 post funding million dollar projects blows up, that one will dominate the story people hear about Kickstarter. Three of four of those, especially if a couple of their big failures turn out to be fairly obviously scammy, and that will be the end of this grand experiment.
Couldn't agree more. I think this actually already occurring. I have funded 13 projects since January, 2012 and in the 9 months since I have funded those I have only received 2 of them. This already makes me hesitant to fund more projects. I think that the slow production cycle and constant push backs will cause people to fall off from funding lots of projects.
Reading the updates makes it seem like the issue had more to do with Kickstarter and Amazon than anything else. The project was "funded" on July 8th, but the funding wasn't released to them until August 16h. Once that happened they continued giving updates, put together the box and electronics (yes, this was a little more complicated than just a box), took pictures of the items being produced and then announced when they'd ship it.
I think delays with this type of thing are to be expected, and by themselves are not the worst sign.
Seems to me the guy should take a break from Kickstarter and start fielding offers from design/marketing shops. The combined funding to both projects is pretty impressive, even more so when you look at the first as just a foldable cardboard box.
Yes that is a bit uncharitable to call this: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/scanbox-turn-y... a foldable cardboard box, but it is a whole lot simpler than putting together a light bulb that out performs every other bulb in the market for less money.
So when someone who knows how tough putting something like this together is, sees folks buying into it, they twitch. Seems like the author of this piece twitched pretty hard.