I welcome these changes. They might seem draconian at first, but I think it could do wonders to protect project supporters.
It could also serve to protect neophyte project originators who have no clue as to what it takes to get a hardware project from a rendering or a garage prototype to a real finished product.
There are a myriad of technologies available today to produce very high quality prototypes that look like the finished product. Forcing project originators to show an actual product rather than a rendering will simply force them to make the time and financial investment to get the project to a far deeper level of completion and really think it all thorough.
If someone will not take the time and spend the money to put together a prototype that is a real representation of what it is they are proposing I don't think they belong on Kickstarter.
I would imagine that it would still be OK to show renderings and animations so long as the actual physical product is shown as well. The reason I think this is important is that this can also show supporters important details that may not be evident or easy to demonstrate with actual products. For example, animations could show internal mechanism and how they work. 3D renderings could show ideas on variants or configurations for backers to discuss and provide feedback for.
I have a couple of projects that have been slated for Kickstarter for months. I've been too busy with work to really get to them. In both cases my approach has been to fully develop the items to the point that they are basically ready to manufacture. The Kickstarter push would simply serve to gage interest and pay for tooling and other NRE's that would make it possible to fabricate the items in reasonable quantities at a decent cost. Of course, I've been in product design and manufacturing for a long, long time so I tend to be very realistic about what it takes to get something done. I've seen projects go on Kickstarter that would not have a chance in hell to be completed at the requested funding level. Not a good thing.
Above all, what this indicates is that Kickstarter is watching and listening, which is excellent.
Indeed. The implication here is that, generally, "Hardware and Product Design" projects always fail. But rather than ban them entirely, they are simply preventing anyone from "marketing" them. So you can still do a hardware project, you just have to sell it via the plan and specs only, without sexy adornment. That seems fair.
I wouldn't go as far as saying that they always fail. I think that there are a lot of people who don't quite understand the bridge that must be crossed from garage prototype to shippable product.
In many ways, they don't know what they don't know. They don't do enough work ahead of time, set their goals too low, don't understand the real business equation behind their project and then find themselves in the proverbial "be careful what you wish for" situation.
After all, getting a million dollars for a project that requires two million is not a good thing, is it?.
How would you suggest someone without any experience in physical products get that required knowledge? A friend and I have an idea for a physical product and we're in the process of building the garage prototype now. When that's finished and if we think it's a fit for Kickstarter, what resources should we find so we don't set goals too low, etc?
Good question. A lot of it really depends on the nature of the product. Is it purely mechanical or does it have electronics? Plastics? Metal? Any optics?
The set of disciplines to be mastered could be daunting. In such cases it is probably best to hire a product designer to help you get from a garage prototype to a manufacturable product or an interim product that is manufactured using an approach that is closest to production.
If you could provide a little more info as to the nature of the product I can certainly take the time to give you some pointers. I don't need to know what it is. What I need is an understanding of the technologies that you might require and if there's anything really critical in the design. For example, if it has lenses it might be critical to have them precisely aligned. Does it produce a lot of heat? What kind of power will it require? Batteries or powered off the wall?
The other important bit of data would be your current skill set (you and your friend).
Tools: For nearly all electro-mechanical products you will need specific industry-standard tools in order to be able to communicate with manufacturers and job shops. For example, I use Solidworks for mechanical design as well as thermal and flow simulation and Altium Designer for schematic and circuit board design. If the design involves programmable electronics you might be into tools such as Xilinx or Altera for FPGA's and Keil or other compilers for embedded stuff.
Lastly. Where are you? The approach might change a bit based on your geographic location and the locally available resources. You might, for example, be able to ping your local university for help.
If the point is to make sure that the backers do not make decisions uninformed, why not take time to add a curated risk score. This way, the projects will be responsible in providing proper evidence about how far they are in production, and you can help us figure out if they are really on track. For instance, a project which can provide a list of parts, is probably further in the process than one which only has CAD sketches; but that doesn't mean that people wouldn't be interested in backing the project in its infancy. It shouldn't be too hard for you to come up with an acceptable process of evaluation, and hire experts to do it. Heck, we pay a cut to KS anyway, why not throw in a better service in return.
If KS is serious in what they are doing, they shouldn't try patches like putting arbitrary rules, but take action to solve the problem directly. Project funding is their core business after all. Apple does it with their App Store, and without their curation, probably the store would have turned into a bigger garbage pile than it is now, to the point of being unusable.
> Apple does it with their App Store, and without their curation, probably the store would have turned into a bigger garbage pile than it is now, to the point of being unusable.
Ummm, I know its not your primary point, but I'm not entirely sure about this statement. Look at the android app store (Google play) in comparison. It doesn't have that same curation as the Apple version, and certainly there are a lot of useless apps on it, but it is by no standard "unusable". In fact, in my experience, I prefer looking for apps on the Google version than the Apple because for almost any purpose its easy to find an amateur low cost or free app. This generally isn't the case in the apple version
That's probably way more involvement than KS is willing to deal with. Also, no matter how many disclaimers they put, the curated score would put some of the liability on KickStarter's side, which I'm sure they definitely would not want.
But the point is that they have to have something to show; the Ouya itself should have had some hardware/software going. As is they were funded without even proper prototypes or software and people think they'll be getting one in March?
If you actually get an Ouya in March 2013 that has an app store you can buy games from, I'll ask PG to give you all my karma.
I'll find out soon enough. I think I might have the time to put up one hardware project on Kickstarter in about a month or so. The actual product will be shown in finished form. I'd like to use Solidworks animation to show some of the clever mechanical design that makes it work. Clearly there is no way to do this with the actual product as it would require aluminum to be transparent. There's also the case of some shots that are simply impossible to achieve any other way (animated cross sections). My guess is that the KS guys probably get this and are simply looking to host more legitimate, for lack of a better word, hardware projects. I can't see anyone who really knows how to execute on hardware projects have any issues with these restrictions.
I'll certainly consult with the KS guys when ready and see what they say.
Seems like they could get 100% of the ambiguity reduction they are probably going for with the "no renderings" rule by requiring that any renderings have a standard label. Some very noticeable and tasteful diagonal bar saying "Rendering" across the corner of the image would do nicely. Perhaps you could/should propose that to them as a sensible middle-ground position.
I really like the "you have to show what you have now" part of the requirement, but getting a look at where the creator wants to get to as a goal is also very useful for choosing projects. And your cutaway animation also sounds like a knock-down case for why renderings are needed sometimes.
I suspect that the real target is photo realistic renderings. I mean, one of the meanings of "rendering" is a drawing. I doubt they will have a problem with a patent-style sketch showing what the product is intended to be.
I agree, this is a good move on their part. I am working on a hardware project myself, and it has taken me a lot of effort to learn the ins and outs of manufacturing, machining, CAD, and so forth (I am just a software engineer). Ultimately, things almost are always more complex and expensive than you would initially anticipate.
The problems is skilled designers are starting to pull off big time scams fooling people for hundreds of thousands of dollars. People see realistic renderings of a hoverboard or whatever and they immediately open their wallets without realizing that their is very little chance that they will be able to pull it off. If people see a skateboard with some glued-on fans they will be much more skeptical.
Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though? I'm not saying it can't happen, or that it hasn't happened. But we should never attribute to malice what can be more readily attributed to stupidity. I'm more inclined to believe that a bunch of people got in over their heads than that a bunch of people intentionally scammed backers.
I may be wrong. But can someone point to some concrete examples? Fraud is a pretty heavy charge to level against Kickstarter projects, and it's also an indirect accusation that Kickstarter is a hotbed of such activity.
Wanting to prevent campaigns that will end in failure due to "stupidity", or even people who "got in over their heads" is just as valid as wanting to prevent fraud.
Kickstarter's image/brand will be hurt by poorly executed campaigns that fail for whatever reason, so it's in their best interest to keep those to a minimum.
I don't disagree, but the cause of an unshipped product matters. If people believe Kickstarter campaigners are naive, that's one thing; they'll proceed with a bit more caution. If people believe that Kickstarter campaigners are intentionally trying to screw them over and run off with their money, that's another thing entirely. The former erodes trust in individual Kickstarter camaigners; the latter erodes fundamental trust in the site itself.
True, Kickstarter should be trying to address the issue, regardless of its cause. But let's be careful before leaping to the conclusion that people have been acting in bad faith.
I've thought for a while now that Kickstarter should have upper bounds for funding to prevent people from unwittingly accepting too much money and forcing the scale and scope of their project to change. Once a project is 200% funded, stop allowing more backers.
I had a similar thought, that rewards should only be granted while you're under the funding target. If you want to pile on later to make sure the project has the best chance it can? Fine, but no reward - that goes to the people who actually made it possible at all.
Yes, but that doesn't stop people from adding more slots than they can realistically handle.
The skills, knowledge, and resources to produce 1k widgets is totally different than producing 1MM widgets. I might be able to brute-force manufacture 1k widgets from my garage and that would kickstart the business if that's my skill and scale estimate. I need staff, facilities and a different type of supplier if I need to make millions, and I may not have what it takes to deliver on that.
People suggesting something unethical need be illegal are part of the issue. In the USA there is a tradition of aggressive play within the rules. If we want to bend the rules [1] a bit -- and make no mistake, that is kickstarter and crowd-sourcing -- there needs to be some ethical nous in place. Both by the companies and the supporters.
[1] The reason US required QUIbs and the SEC and the related regulatory structure (re: financial investment contracts) is precisely to create such bright line playing fields. But these lines are sufficiently complex to require a "price of admission".
> But we should never attribute to malice what can be more readily attributed to stupidity.
I don't know. On the other hand, if you leave a loophole in a system, it will be exploited; that's a basic human law. So in this case I'd guess both scenarios occur - there are so many assholepreneurs out there trying to find a way to "creatively" earn money that I wouldn't be surprised if those design scams were occuring more and more often.
Yeah, this seems to be something of a gray area. Not quite fraud, but heading very pointedly in that direction. Perhaps someone more familiar with relevant law knows of a term? Or maybe we should start thinking about inventing one.
> Can we actually prove fraud in any of these cases, though?
Is this the standard we want?
If you used an investment service which said "we require proof beyond all reasonable doubt of criminal endeavors before taking down [some UGC]," how much would you trust those investments? What if the standard for takedowns was a bit higher?
The question is not, did X commit fraud. The question is, "can fraudsters abuse the system maliciously?", and "can incompetents unintentionally abuse it?".
Since the answer is clearly "yes" - then taking some steps to reduce the impact of these vulnerabilities seem reasonable. If you are selling a product, show us the product. If you do not have a product, we want to be sure the backers know this.
Proof beyond all reasonable doubt is a lovely standard for a criminal justice system. Note that it is not used in civil suits in America - only criminal cases.
We're not talking about taking away people's freedom here. We're talking about an investment website.
Some level of proof is still necessary, though. Not just an accusation.
In general with Kickstarter failures current and future, I think we'll find the evidence weighs heavily in favor of incompetence rather than malice. There's no shortage in the world of business ventures that are honest to goodness failures.
> Some level of proof is still necessary, though. Not just an accusation.
Is anyone arguing that mere accusations should result in kickstarter takedowns? You make a good point... just a sort of obvious one.
This is clearly a hard problem, and neither extreme of "proof beyond reasonable doubt" or "accusation = takedown" works. Maybe that's why this space is so unexplored! That doesn't absolve Kickstarter from having to discover the palatable middle ground.
Hard work is hard, and I think today's announcements are part of that hard work. So I say: keep it up, Kickstarter!
You seem to have misunderstood "mere accusations."
Takedowns due to "mere accusations" to me means that I can fire off an e-mail if I see a kickstarter project that looks sketchy and have it taken down post-haste.
Well if it's based on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4549792 then Kickstarter should take it down. It's a civil matter, so there's no "beyond reasonable doubt" required, and if Kickstarter are helping fund infringement, then they're on the hook too.
Is there actually a legal basis for this? As in, if Stripe was, in good faith, processing payments for a company which is selling (allegedly) infringing products, they're obligated to stop processing payments immediately? It seems like there'd be a clause in the TOS to indemnify them.
They didn't just take it down - they left no way for anyone to find out what had happened to the project by looking at the Kickstarter site. There's just a page saying the project doesn't exist anymore for some unspecified reason.
I asked this a while back and the answer was pretty much "no" -- but I'm curious if that's changed. Have there recently been any high profile examples of fraud through crowdfunding sites?
There is a world of difference between a physical working prototype and product that you can deliver in commercial quantities.
I guess Kickstarter is aiming to fund physical projects that already have a working prototype and require funding to deliver in large quantities.
It seems fair to me, as the person requesting funding should be required to have put in a fair amount of effort beyond a flashy 3 minute video promising the world. A working prototype seems to be a fair bar.
I think that Kickstarter is happiest with the things like ElevationDock - a fully functional prototype, that they just had to figure out how to manufacture in large quantities.
They certainly had their challenges - but would have had no chance without a big group of people ordering up front.
I don't think it says anywhere that the prototype has to work. I'm reading this in a way that says I have to show what I've already accomplished. It is ok if the prototype doesn't work yet, and I think it is ok to expect the project creators to do some of the work before they create a kickstarter project.
That's kind of the point. The fact that you have to show the prototype allows potential backers to make a judgement about whether they think you are likely to succeed or not.
I think they are right in being careful. It's about time.
I use Solidworks for mechanical design and Modo for photorealistic rendering. I assure you that, with enough skill and effort, one can make photorealistic renderings that, to the uninformed, look like the product is ready to go and that the funding is a mere formality. No, Kickstarter did the right thing here.
That said, I am hoping that they will allow 3D renderings and animations as added illustrations if and ONLY if one shows actual realized versions of the proposed hardware in the project. The reason I say this is that 3D renderings and animations are extremely useful tools for the communication of function and some ideas that might be hard or impossible to convey using actual hardware. A good example is a cross-sectional cut showing moving parts.
Cynically, I wonder if this policy change was not prompted by Kickstarter's own doubts about the lifx team being able to deliver. After all, this is the same team that couldn't meet demand for their custom cardboard box project.
I wonder if in the future there will be a requirement to limit the number of backers on every project. Logically there seems to be a point where additional money from backers over what was asked for leads to difficulty delivering at all.
For instance, say I could make 10 custom widgets a month at $100 a piece. I might decide to launch a Kickstarter project asking for $1200 to gauge if at least 10 other people are interested in my fancy innovative widget. What happens if I end up raising $12000? My target of 20% profit on each widget is no longer possible unless the backers are willing to wait up to 10 months for me to deliver. The only other option is to invest money into producing widgets in larger volume to meet this initial demand. That investment would only make sense if there were some reasonable expectation that demand would stay at the same level after the Kickstarter project ended.
So back to my original cynicism, maybe Kickstarter sees signs that some very good marketers are having enormous success with Kickstarter projects whilst being in completely over their heads...
Your suggestion that there be a "limit to the number of backers on a project" would have probably saved the elevation dock guys some grief. On the other hand, I want the Planetary Annihilation guys (Digital Product) to have HUGE oversubscription - we got funding for Metal Worlds, Water Worlds, Galactic War, and an Orchestra Score through extra funding!
They could easily set up a bullpen of 5 projects to soak up extra funding. It is completely pointless to fund a project over its budget. The project can change its budget and plan/promise of they want to raise more.
Something must be done or their (kickstarter's) business may collapse. Banning renderings will probably cut down a bit on expectations not matching delivery, which presently is a problem. Quite a few projects seem to have underestimated the difficulties of quality control and mass production.
However, it is still pretty easy to get a nice milled or extruded aluminium block and call it a prototype so I don't think it will completely eliminate unscrupulous frauds.
Yeah but that "prototype" may not look nearly as amazing as a flashy 3D animation.
Is what kickstarter asking that unreasonable? (other than their lawyers probably told them do this now or suffer consequences that could mean no more business.) If someone can't produce a physical prototype of an item, do they really deserve hundreds of thousands or a million dollars?
I agree. I think a good compromise would be to ensure that anything that was a simulation or rendering was very obviously labeled as such, so that there would be absolutely no doubt in the viewer's mind.
I agree that they needed to do something. That something is totally not this. This feels like they want to do whatever is the least amount of work.
Kickstarter is supposed to be a service, for a share of the income they are supposed to facilitate the connection between creators and audience. Rubber stamping an increasingly bureaucratic set of rules is not the way to do this.
A better solution would have been to add the ability for prospective supporters to voice queries and concerns where they could be seen prominently on the page. Right now it seems the creators receive questions and pick the ones they want to answer and place an update answering the questions.
Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters. That would be a real service offering real value, it would also cost real money. Right now Kickstarter's revenue comes from the fact that Kickstarter is popular. The thing that makes creators choose Kickstarter over another platform is almost entirely due to prominence. That cannot be sustained. Eventually it will have to rest on quality of service. The current set of changes do not increase the quality of service.
Even better would be to have Kickstarter assess the creators claims on their ability to deliver and assess queries raised by prospective supporters.
I can't imagine that will ever happen. If they vetted projects or teams, it would probably put some liability on their shoulders. They are going to do everything they can to prevent that.
That's not true. You can demonstrate prototypes. What you can't do is just whip something up in Blender, do a nice rendering, and then start selling it with with the rewards being "1 widget, 2 widgets, 5 widgets, 10 widgets, 20 widgets", with no indication that you've actually done your homework to say if this is even possible.
They want people to actually have some sort of prototype, something to show for their work, rather than just a slick graphical presentation and reward system that implies that it's far closer to completion than it actually is.
I tend to agree with you. They just need to stop the project guys asking for "pre-order" types of donations. Or make them not send the product to the backers for that they're paying.
It should be 100% clear that it's just a donation, whether it's $10, $100 or $1000. But you're not getting any product for that donation, until the product launches, when you can go and buy it.
If the problem is that people who see realistic renderings feel that the product already exists, a hand-drawn (but still accurate) rendering would allow people to see that the owner sort of knows what they're doing without getting their hopes up. Maybe the same would apply to detailed plans, or other obviously-not-the-product visual design documentation.
I think we're just going to see a rise in more "architectural" styled development renderings, over fully polished marketing-style imagery. I welcome that.
When Ouya raised over a million dollars within 24 hours a few weeks ago, they specifically wrote: "In just 24 hours, 20,000 people bought an Ouya console"[0]. They should be more careful with their choice of words in the future if they really want to reflect that "Kickstarter is not a store".
The change in terminology would seem to imply that Kickstarter is now wising up to the fact that there will inevitably be a high profile failure to deliver in the near future and is now trying to preempt criticism against Kickstarter not laying out clearly enough the risks involved in backing a project.
I welcome this change and think that it will help in the long run.
Destroying Facebook was never what they promised. They promised an alternative. What they delivered was in line with the amount of funding they received.
Not to mention active, ongoing development, including regularly adding new features and a several hundred thousand strong community. It's not a Facebook-killer, but it's a reasonable social network as-is.
People are used to big software budgets producing nothing.
It's an entirely different value proposition failure when they paid $100 expecting to receive a light bulb or gaming console only to end up empty-handed.
Isn't it the case that kickstarter isn't necessarily a store? Many projects explicitly guarantee that you will receive a certain item, and some are even already manufacturing and selling the items but appear to just be using kickstarter because of its prominence and trendiness.
I'm sure kickstarter isn't liable even for the projects that explicitly promise delivery, so it's still not quite a store in those cases, but I assume that kickstarter doesn't prohibit projects from offering actual preorders.
What a measured, interesting, and social response.
As programmers, we often try and fix things with code, but it's cool to see Kickstarter improve their product by thinking about what questions the creators should be asking. I also agree that hardware makers do themselves and other a disservice by showing space age renderings of their products.
I find it fascinating how Kickstarter is starting to adopt some of the same cautions that we see in an S1/Prospectus, "“What are the risks and challenges this project faces, and what qualifies you to overcome them?”"
As a long time burner, it was interesting to me how year after year, the playa adopted many (but not all) of the rules, regulations, restrictions of the outside world. We had a DMV (Department of Mutan Vehicles), Building Regulations (for buildings over a certain height), developed clinics, and ambulance services - etc...
It will be interesting to see, over time, how kickstarter adopts many of the SEC mandated governance over new enterprises going to the market for funding.
I'm sure a LOT of people watched that video, and thought that the LIFX lightbulb exists (or almost exists) in it's current incarnation. Also, there are a lot of people supporting for $500 in the belief that they'll get 10 lightbulbs - I wonder how many of those backers don't realize their is a better than even chance that this project will come to nothing, and they'll get nothing but good feelings for their money?
I think the move from product simulations/renderings to solely being able to show what the product can do now is a great change. I've been critical about some of the usages of Kickstarter in the past, but this addresses a big part of my concerns.
I do hope that it doesn't keep products that are in a rough state from being able to be successful, though if somethings really that complex that you need to raise a lot of money to have a marketable prototype, let alone bring it to market, I don't think Kickstarter donations are the way to fund it.
That's a start, but I still think that allowing hardware projects to offer arbitrary, open-ended numbers of end-product rewards is a mistake. Suddenly being expected to produce 100 times as many units as you planned is not, as people so often say "a good problem to have". It's just "a problem".
Yes, the general tendency is for marginal cost to decrease as production quantity increases, but that does not mean that it's a smooth curve. Instead, the line is jagged, littered with points where large investments need to be made. For an open-ended product, you get investors, hire extra people, buy equipment, etc. You'll end up taking a short-term loss that will be earned back in the long term. For a close-ended project like Kickstarter allows, you'll have the short-term loss, but no long-term profit.
And that's if you have experience and connections to pull off manufacturing and courting investors. If you're hawking a project on Kickstarter, it's pretty likely that you have neither.
I think "Product renderings are prohibited", and to a lesser extent "Product simulations are prohibited", run against the emphasized goal being "a new way for creators and audiences to work together to make things".
When something doesn't yet exist, you have to present speculative representations to communicate (or even rationally discuss!) the vision. That goes double for a wider audience, which may not be as accustomed to letting their imagination range over exotic possibilities.
Such mockups should be clearly labeled, and placed alongside current-best-prototype representations for comparison, and disclaimerized as with the new 'Risks and Challenges' requirement.
But before Kickstarter, more traditional investors and prepurchasers -- and indeed internal organization R&D and product-development processes -- would use and expect such representations for design communication. Why cripple the new model with this encumbrance?
These guys are New York, and it seems like their leagal-eagle's have raised some concerns. This does not smell like bus-dev, or pr, or typical CEO brainstorming at work. so, it would be very fascinating to see what they are seeing internally. we can speculate, but that's not likely going to get us the same look at the situation.
I disagree. If huge product failures/not-quite-scams-but-might-as-well-be keep happening, people will loose faith in the Kickstarter brand. This is them protecting themselves, and their community.
If the real motive is to prevent scams/failures-to-deliver, that's OK. But that's almost the opposite concern from the headline -- "not a store" -- about just using Kickstarter as a channel for moving already-developed, riskless product inventory.
It isn't just revenues: having people who think they are buying things (or probably worse: think they are selling things) but aren't really (as there are risks and this is all just contributing money to possible futures) has legal and accounting (eg. sales tax) ramifications that kickstarter was not previously, not seemed to have any signs of in the future, addressing.
This was becoming a real issue for Kickstarter. Many of the recent high profile 'projects' were companies (particularly game developers/publishers and consumer products manufacturers) effectively taking pre-orders through Kickstarter and using those funds to develop the product. As the channel through which the orders were placed (and the party that that receives the money and takes a cut), I think a good legal argument could be made that Kickstarter is a store, and thus would have to comply with the UCC and other laws (including the various Deceptive Trade Practices acts across the country) applying to retail.
There's also an issue with the media talking about Kickstarter products like they already exist.
In the case of Lifx, article titles like "Australian re-invents the lightbulb" mislead the public and perpetuate the belief that people are purchasing actual products and not merely funding idea that may come into fruition.
As others have said, it seems like KS is preferring projects which, already having functional prototypes, just need the capital to produce a commercially viable product in quantity. But, I think some projects need funding to even be able produce a prototype. To be able to show the mock-up is essential to describe the product potential backers.
I would like to see a separate (new) category for product&design projects at this stage. The projects would explicitly be looking for funding to create the prototype, with no promise to deliver a finished product. If a project is backed and delivers a working prototype, but now needs funding for the next step, they could return to Kickstarter for another round. Backers who want to fund product ideas could do so (likely with smaller pledges), and no one is tricked into a large backing thinking they will get a working product in the mail in three months.
Traditional startups get venture capital in rounds; why not crowd-sourced capital in rounds?
Personally, I would prefer a hybrid approach--projects cannot show only simulations/rendering. If a project presents these things, it must also present the current state of the ideas being rendered.
You're developing a spacefaring action game? By all means, show me that you want to have planets, stars, and space pirates--but if all you have right now is a spaceship object floating in an environment without a skybox, I want to see that, too.
You think so? My mind went to your project when I saw the OP. I heard second-hand that you guys were showing off a prototype at Google I/O which consisted of the watch casing with a display connected to external (not yet miniaturized) electronics. This seems to fit Kickstarter's new regulations. Would something like this not have been possible before you got funded?
The reason I felt comfortable backing guys is because you guys had already delivered a product to market. A description or early prototype demonstrating what you were trying to make - almost exactly what I had pictured as my ideal smartwatch before you launched - and my wallet would have been open.
I was thinking the same thing. If you limit rewards to '1' of the product you won't have any $1,000 or $5,000 backers. Hard to get to $1M at $100 a throw.
Backing a project and pre-ordering a product are two different things - and kickstarter doesn't want to get involved in the second part.
If you're mature enough to really start accepting preorders with a guarantee of delivery, then put up your product for sale. If you don't yet have a product to sell - that's what kickstarter is for, but then it is not a sale/preorder with a volume discount, but backing of a venture that might deliver something else, or nothing at all - i.e., you get to be an investor, not a customer.
I understand the problem that the Kickstarter founders are facing, but I don't think this is the right (or even close to the correct) solution. Despite saying "kickstarter is not a store" in the title, their rules basically force project creators to physically show exactly what they're planning to deliver...making it even more of a store.
Thanks! Working 24-7 to get these watches out, blogging here: kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper-watch-for-iphone-and-android/posts/
Congrats on Pebble so far. Sorry, I can't see what would prohibit the project here? Maybe the language would need to be more restrained, but I doubt that would harm the funding too much.
I see this as a very welcome addition to the public stance of Kickstarter with regards to physical products (which it's been relatively quiet about). One of the reasons we chose Kickstarter as a platform to get our product off the ground was the fact that it would allow us flexibility and freedom to get our prototypes to full scale manufacturing, which were already relatively mature in their stage of production (tooling already complete, near final hardware etc).
Lots of things can go wrong at every stage after you have a final production sample. You still need to get the sample certified by a number of governing bodies, set up QC and shipping, and in the case of overseas manufacturing deal with the freight/customs and finally fulfillment of the product.
I'm happy that Kickstarter is taking more of stance on the subject, as we've had to in many cases provide "returns" to people or deal with "customer service" style requests, which we've done in good faith but it really misses the point of launching a product on Kickstarter.
I think this stance will really help back up projects when they need to make an adjustment, or have to deal with something unexpected. Also, it should improve the quality of projects moving forward by making people more skeptical and aware of the time/cost-instability of the manufacturing process. We were lucky to hit a pretty happy medium with regards to initial volume, and unlike some of the blockbuster projects when we have to change things we don't end up on TechCrunch for it, only the Guardian :)
Though I completely understand where kickstarter is coming from with their decision, I have a bit of a gripe with their choice to prevent projects from showing renderings and requiring actual photos.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time I checked the purpose of kickstarter was to help people get their ideas off the ground. Some types of products, especially hardware, can cost a lot of money to produce at a prototype stage. Not everyone has the cash lying around to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to build a functional prototype. So normally what that person would do is put together some renderings and a video and go to kickstarter to raise the funds to expand into prototypes and production. Now what are they to do?
Ultimately I think this decision by kickstarter gives a tremendous advantage to design shops with the budgets to build prototypes, while leaving the little guy behind.
Well, if people think it's a store, then it might be a store. Sign of a successful platform that it goes in directions that you have not expected. Though it is also a sign of failed communication.
The question is now whether you want to bring the project back onto the originally envisioned path, or figure out how to ride the waves of these unexpected changes?
After reading the news, I keep thinking "aren't they missing something?". Can't they seize this audience that come to the site to buy stuff? Maybe a spin-off from the original kickstarter, specially tailored as a sales platform.
Maybe they don't want to? They seem to like their knitted scarves, art-house films and interpretative dance about marine life quite a lot. Going for high-profile store-like projects doesn't actually guarantee success (they may get whacked by litigation, or people may become disillusioned) and puts their primary goal at risk.
Smart move. AirBnB waited until scandal broke out and then tried to put out the fire. We were/are dangerously close to a major scandal happening on Kickstarter.
Agreed, what annoys me more in kickstarter are projects that use it as a way to get preorders. Existing a finished product or not to me seems to go away from funding the project its just a way to buy and sell
Two recent things come to mind, Ouya and the Tesla museum. Both offered items with purchase, but the Ouya items included the Ouya itself. That presents a problem that I didn't realize until now, which is that a store has to do a lot of things relating to paying taxes, etc., when being a store was not the intent of kickstarter, so... I get it. They are not a store.
However, with the Tesla thing and related projects, I think that this gets into a really grey area- and from past experience with helping with a large site that took donations- you have to subtract the items that have value from the donation, so they have to do this if anything is given away, or at least the recipient does if they are a charity/non-profit. Was the Tesla thing a non-profit?
And not allowing 3D renderings of hardware is a bad idea. For example, if you have a valid design for something and need the money to have it fabricated, then the sponsor should be able to see the design. Not being able to do so is lame. Sometimes the design is the hard part. That is a valuable asset. It should be rewarded with money to see it through. Why place someone with no design and someone with a design on equal footing. They aren't. It's not just about fairness, it is about being able to invest in something with a future. No design- no future. Good design- possible future.
The kickstarter rules only limit the content on the kickstarter website. I don't see anything that precludes them from showing design concepts on a different website.
So if you want to impress people with your project on the kickstarter website, you'll have to stick to actual content.
I still don't understand how Kickstarter is different from Pledgie, from which has been around for much longer. At first I thought that Kickstarter would hold the funds for the backers and return the funds if the project fails, but that appears not to be the case. How is Kickstarter anything more than a Donate button, a donation counter and a mailing list?
The hold the funds until the funding round is over. If the goal is met, it's a success, otherwise it's a failure and everyone gets their money back. It'd be much harder to determine what exactly constitutes a "failure" of a project.
With Kickstarter, if you get the money you said you needed you actually get it. It sounds like what you're talking about, you'd have to still completely finance the project yourself with the understanding that you get that money if it works out. Completely different (and pointless?) thing.
Renderings seem useful in helping viewers visualize what the goal is. Maybe instead they should enforce that renders have to have an accompanying text disclaimer? Kind of like medicine commercials and their side effects.
I for one would be more interested in general success rate. I'm not talking return on investment, but more so on how many projects actually come to fruition and deliver at any level.
This is outside the fraudulent activity. It's more out of my sheer, selfish interest in rate of success.
I could see such data publication helping and hurting Kickstarter. It could be inspiring and generate even more interest (aka revenue), but also expose the lack of completion and high failure rate turning off investors.
I find it funny how the Oculus Rift's front image is a rendering, and not because they can't do it. But because they want you to see the final design that they have created.
For software products, it's pretty hard for them to tell the difference between a simulation/rendering and the real thing. If I show a finished UI, it will appear to be fully functional and polished, but there may not be any back-end at all. I often create a fake persistence layer to allow for faster development of the UI. How would they be able to tell the difference? And it's actually not violating the rules at all right?
I also think that delivered software is a product. I doubt kickstarter would allow SaaS at all (it would be interesting to see what kind of products get rejected during the submission reviews).
There are a bunch of obvious technical mistakes in that, not least of which is that you're not effectively buying a WeMo and getting the bulb for free; only the more expensive master bulb will have WiFi support and the rest will talk to it over much cheaper 802.15.4 mesh networking.
From the comments in the linked blog, there was this comment "The new guideline prohibiting renderings applies only to projects categorized as Product Design or Hardware. Other categories, including Games, are not affected."
I've been saying this for a while, and I'm glad they are working on clarification. Yes, this will lower some of the astronomical numbers that some projects are seeing- but I'm not sure if hitting 10mm is to anyone's benefit really.
It needs to be understood that there is risk associated with this, no guarantees, and that it isn't a straight up purchase transaction like going to the store or preordering an iPhone.
This is a good idea, kudos to them for making this move to help alleviate a lot confusion on behalf of funders.
I think what they need to do is have milestones for their project that can get vetted by Kickstarter. For each milestone they hit, more funds get released to them. This will allow funders to get out if they keep missing their milestones, and the project looks like it's going downhill.
In my opinion, Kickstarter is just a futures market for Goods/Services. When they come out and say, "What are the risks and challenges this project faces, and what qualifies you to overcome them?", it just sounds like Futures are dangerous, risky, and you might loose your money.
I don't think you can call them a traditional store, but you can definitely call them a Futures Store.
The rule against showing a render seems just a little rough. In some cases I think a render of a product is important and it seems like really crippling a hardware project if they can't show the design of the product. I get why, but that seems like the toughest of the restrictions to me.
This is a sensible list of new rules. This is a quintessential exercise in changing user expectations and behavior. This is great UX, especially in a platform-type environment in which the platform managers aren’t always able to curate the content created by the platform users.
I wonder why they disallowed selling vapor hardware but still allow equally vapor software? Of course I wouldn't be surprised if vapor software would bring significant portion of kickstarters income, so banning it would harm significantly their bottom line.
Not going to lie, I backed my first kickstarter project the other day with Boosted Boards. When I decided to back it my thought process was "Oh, get it in May, perfect timing for my brothers birthday"... now I understand, it might never come.
1. Projects are over-promising and under-delivering
2. Kickstarter isn't a store and was never meant to be one. People have turned it into one, leading to all sorts of issues, including point #1
I think when you are asking for examples of abuse you are thinking of the first point, but the 'no multiple products' rule addresses #2. You aren't buying a product, you are backing a project. If you want multiple lightbulbs, presumably you can purchase them after the project is funded.
In other words, I don't think the rule is to prevent abuse, it's to bring kickstarter back to its roots and remind people what kickstarter is all about. It may hurt some projects but hopefully it will revert kickstarter to its original niche where it was adding a lot of value.
Of course, since LIFX is planned as a networked bulb you can't actually get the full functionality of it if you just order one. Also, for some of the smaller Kickstarter hardware projects the creator actually has no intention of launching them as a commercial product at all - they're essentially group buys allowing hobbyists to offer something they've designed to other hobbyists for less than the cost of building it themselves.
something I noticed with some of the more "store-like" products (things that only use Kickstarter for money to mass produce and not development) is they have bulk options: $10 for 1, $100 for 15 "for retail distribution".
The ban on mutliple rewards is interesting. While there have been no tears shed over ~$1000 going to finance the Makey Makey project, there's a mildly awkward silence every time we try to figure out what we're going to do with 30 of them. It's also true that cannibalizing a old keyboard would have delivered the same functionality...
No simulations or renderings to show the vision that's being pursued? Beyond stupid. It's insane.
I'd speculate that it's probably a requirement driven by lawyers worried about failed projects conferring some kind of liability onto Kickstarter itself.
It could also serve to protect neophyte project originators who have no clue as to what it takes to get a hardware project from a rendering or a garage prototype to a real finished product.
There are a myriad of technologies available today to produce very high quality prototypes that look like the finished product. Forcing project originators to show an actual product rather than a rendering will simply force them to make the time and financial investment to get the project to a far deeper level of completion and really think it all thorough.
If someone will not take the time and spend the money to put together a prototype that is a real representation of what it is they are proposing I don't think they belong on Kickstarter.
I would imagine that it would still be OK to show renderings and animations so long as the actual physical product is shown as well. The reason I think this is important is that this can also show supporters important details that may not be evident or easy to demonstrate with actual products. For example, animations could show internal mechanism and how they work. 3D renderings could show ideas on variants or configurations for backers to discuss and provide feedback for.
I have a couple of projects that have been slated for Kickstarter for months. I've been too busy with work to really get to them. In both cases my approach has been to fully develop the items to the point that they are basically ready to manufacture. The Kickstarter push would simply serve to gage interest and pay for tooling and other NRE's that would make it possible to fabricate the items in reasonable quantities at a decent cost. Of course, I've been in product design and manufacturing for a long, long time so I tend to be very realistic about what it takes to get something done. I've seen projects go on Kickstarter that would not have a chance in hell to be completed at the requested funding level. Not a good thing.
Above all, what this indicates is that Kickstarter is watching and listening, which is excellent.