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by gommm 1546 days ago
One of the first thing I do when I want to buy a product from a newish startup is check if they've had a kickstarter and see the comments. If there are a lot of negative comments left unanswered like in this campaign, it's a massive red flag
1 comments
ridehelix 1546 days ago
A good rule of thumb I use for Kickstarter and startups in general is: is the world a better place with or without this product? If it is, expect that the process of getting an idea to market is very difficult and can get messy. I try to keep that in perspective. Platforms like Kickstarter help ideas come to life and having it as an option is a net positive for innovation.
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gommm 1545 days ago
Oh, I am very forgiving of campaigns running into issues and do expect a percentage of campaigns I back to fail. I don't treat kickstarter as a preorder. In the past when some campaigns failed and I could see from the update that they made a clear effort, I didn't ask for a refund even if they offered one.

I'm not so forgiving of campaigns running into issues and not replying to comments. In this case, I see that this campaign had a last update in 2017 and people complaining in the comments with no response I can see in the last 4 years. And this kind of lack of communication that's shown in Kickstarter is not a good sign of the integrity of the company (and doesn't look good for prospective buyers).

Logistic problem are understandable, rising costs make sense but in that case, publicize it. I've seen some kickstarter campaigns that had such issues, had a lot of delays and had to sell retail in order to have enough money to deliver their backers reward but they were transparent, published the updates in kickstarter and even made it visible to everyone.

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ridehelix 1545 days ago
We do our updates on our own customer portal. Last update was about 3 months ago. Our portal has much better ui/ux, has a forum, access to the customers purchase history, one login vs two and some other benefits. Overall it's a far better experience for the customer.
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gommm 1545 days ago
You should comment then on the kickstarter page for any customers commenting there (who might not have realized that) and for people who are not connected to it who would be looking at your campaign...

And yes agreed, kickstarter's UI is really not great..

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