[jdietrich]

No. No. No.

Pen Type-A is a cautionary tale of overestimating your abilities, and of why Kickstarter is unlikely to have any sort of transformative impact.

Having read through the "updates" section of their Kickstarter page, it is clear to me that nobody on the team knows anything about manufacturing, least of all Chinese manufacturing. I am completely unsurprised by the fact that two amateurs end up making lots of amateurish mistakes.

This situation is no different from what happens when a non-technical manager tries to outsource a software development project. He doesn't know enough to spot good working practices or recognise when he's being fobbed off. He doesn't understand the myriad technical issues that could completely derail a project. He's a child in the big bad world, unaware of how little he knows, or how costly his naivety could be.

[yaix]

So what? They are starting and learning. Let them. Good thing, they actually seem to learn from mistakes, that's good.