| > Yeah, I don't understand the craze with all the kickstarters. It used to be they were a cool way to get access to products that were otherwise unavailable. 1. I got some amazing desserts from around the world that no way would have been able to try otherwise
2. Limited production run clothing using experimental materials
3. Stick on Cell phone microscope lens! The ones I got were before they became a common thing, and they were a small batch production run
4. Board games that are only ever sold through kickstarter. Now days kickstarter is a lot less fun, it used to be I could go browse local projects and find a ton of local creators to support, lots of kids out of school trying to make their first video game, local board game designer wanting to release his/her dream, that sort of thing. Now days I find a lot less of those quirky fun projects, which is sad. I never expected anything to arrive on time (software!) and it is pretty easy to spot a hardware project that is going to fail, e.g. if the amount of $ a team wants to raise to make a smartwatch is less than a single run of tooling to make a smartwatch, it is obvious the team doesn't know much about manufacturing! (Though now days outside investors are pulled in after a successful Kickstarter demonstrates interest). I also got one of those cool track-belts before they became easily available in the US, and I got this obscenely overpowered LED light bulb that I can't actually use anywhere because it is too bright! Still sad I never got my glow in the dark plants though, that project is what first got signed up for Kickstarter. |
This was happening probably since the very beginning. Around 2013, I did independent technical evaluation of a certain hardware startup on behalf of a local accelerator, and one of the things I've learned is that the startup in question had some funding that was conditioned on the success of their Kickstarter campaign, which was meant to feel out the market.