[polshaw]

> We won’t charge your card until your Lockitron is ready

Interesting.. so you don't even need the money for the first production run, pure crowd-hype marketing. Also very ballsy of YC to sidestep kickstarter like this.. although i suppose 1000 pre-sales isn't huge.

As for the product, some nice feature improvements over v1.0, although i'm not a fan of the new plasticy design-- i would not want to see that thing on my door unless I had to, for any price.

[arkonaut]

i think this is quite smart. it's not just the hype, but similar to app.net, it's guaranteeing there is a minimum threshold of demand.

what do you mean by 'ballsy to sidestep kickstarter.' has kickstarter become some kind of sole-arbiter of product development? FWIW, if this style of e-commerce continues, someone should develop the API for this/app.net type of sales instead of each building the billing system from scratch.

[polshaw]

Kickstarter is definitely the existing sole-arbiter of crowd sourcing funding. They have brought massive crowds to YC companies so i think it is a significant move to walk away from that to save 5%.