[joshstrange]

So this pisses me off more than a little. I've had multiple ideas that would be good for crowdfunding projects but never executed on them because I never mapped out enough of what I would do with said money. It felt wrong to ask for money without a solid plan of how to move forward. Just saying "this sucks give me money to fix it, and oh yeah, I have no plan but money + no plan = success right?" felt wrong (and I think it IS wrong). Also losing 30K is not small amount of money and the fact it got a single sentence is really weird.

People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else, they played on emotions to raise a significant amount of money (whether or not that amount was enough to complete the project at hand does not matter) and have nothing to show for it. Sure "We have apps but they are bad so we don't want to release them" is "something" but by not OS'ing them or releasing them as-is they have effectively nothing that they delivered on.

If they realised they were in over their head at the start then they should have sat down and planned it out instead of throwing money at the problem till it is all gone. They should have turned around and refunded at least a partial amount of each pledge (sans fees/processing) once they realized this was beyond what they could do.

This "Give me money" and then "Yeah... about that money, it's all gone..." is akin to theft in my mind. If I pay into a crowdfunding campaign I am buying into the idea you sold me. If you didn't think through your idea all the way then that's your fault. It's little better than ponzi scheme with the difference being intent to defraud customers in my opinion...

Lastly I've seen some comments about how crowdfunding is not a certain thing and some things fail. I don't disagree but if a project goes silent then that's theft in my eyes, not just failing. If a refund is not possible then at a very least donate what is left to the EFF (publically) or similar because to keep that money is just dead wrong in my book.

[Confusion]

  People like this ruin crowdfunding for everyone else [..]

People like this will cause crowdfunding to mature. It would be good if we got to the point where you will only get funded if you first demonstrate you have a reasonable chance of succeeding. There's currently a lot of money going to doomed projects, initiated by people with only an idea. That money would be better spent on similar projects by people with a concrete plan and relevant skills and experience in addition to ideas.

It's not that people are malicious: they are just unprepared. Which is why many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into. At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning through free money hurts a lot less.

[Touche]

The problem is that you can't reasonably estimate what it costs/takes to achieve some very-lofty goal.

The goals are simply too pie-in-the-sky. Set some very simple goal like getting an app with xmpp working first. Then do another campaign to add some security features. And so on.

[mhomde]

Couldn't you have a kickstarter where you only get part of a lump sum in the beginning for investments, and then minimum-wage for each employee each month? Keep the start-up lean and hungry and perhaps intrinsically motivated. I guess there's many problems and ideas that couldn't be funded this way but for those that can maybe they'd stand a higher chance of succeeding.

Even better was if you had a startup mentor that approved expenses.

[derefr]

I presume that the kind of people needed to do most of these things won't work for minimum wage. And, make no mistake, Kickstarter is mostly about hiring people to do the things promised using the money, not about the people pitching the idea doing it themselves.

[joshstrange]

> Which is why many startups fail: people have no idea what they are getting themselves into. At least burning through your own money teaches a harsh lesson. Burning through free money hurts a lot less.

Couldn't agree more. I agree crowdfunding should require a little more upfront from the project managers (or rather we as a community should refuse to fund projects that don't) which will no doubt turn some people away from seeking crowdfunded money but that's probably for the best.