Pebble smartwatch breaks record for Kickstarter funding

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17740574

by anons2011 • 14 years ago

38 27 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

rollypolly• 14 years ago

I love Kickstarter, but I hope these kinds of success stories don't start attracting fraudsters.

victork2• 14 years ago

It might only be me but I think more or less everybody is (or will be) a fraudster on Kickstarter. Before downvoting me, please read below...

I don't mean that people willingly steal the money / promise impossible things but the very nature of Kickstarter pushes you to do that. Think about an election, what's the biggest problem of politicians nowadays and why people are very angry at them ? Answer: broken promises. Because you need to attract votes you will need to make strong, nearly impossible claims in order to be seen, no matter if they are truthful or not. That's one of the weakness of a democratic election. If you transpose that to Kickstarter people have to "editorialize" their propositions and product features because they need to be seen. A funding pledge is like a vote and will very likely create the same dynamic as in an democratic elective system.

I don't buy the Kickstarter Kool Aid from a consumer point of view, because I think there is a lot of deceptions ahead and it has a "mob-like" mentality that typically develops around websites like Reddit or Hacker News (and you can see here just how strong kickstarter resonates in minds with a post every other day). From a developer point of view that's way better because you can fund your projects on (almost) thin air, however I can foresee that honest developers that will try to follow their claims will have a hard time completing their projects.

The benefit of funding via VC or other non-democratic mean is you have HARD deadlines, business plans, your money is on the table, it's not just an idea thrown in the air which you hope the wind will catch. I strongly believe that product innovation and creation will remain an aristocratic process.

I would be delighted if somebody can prove me wrong!

mcantor• 14 years ago

Isn't every successful Kickstarter project a counterexample to your point?

sturob• 14 years ago

Conventional wisdom circa 1770: "State governance will remain an aristocratic process".

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

The thing is, you're discounting how often "properly" funded projects fail. How often do little startups who have had tons of VC poured into them fail? How often do even publicly traded companies fail?

The advantage of being small is increased openness and a smaller level of risk if a single project fails. There are lots of properly vetted VC funded startups who are beholden to "hard" deadlines who are burning through $3 million per week, or maybe even per day and yet will ultimately end in failure.

marshallp• 14 years ago

These are early days. What will probably happen is that a m"middle layer", such as consumer reports, or more modern recommendation engines such as amazon will develop that will evaluate the risks.

"Quantification" of kickstarter and indiegogo etc. is a great opportunity for startups.

TillE• 14 years ago

Only support people with a proven track record. Simple. They can still fail, but it won't be because of fraud.

If you contribute to a project with nothing to show, where nobody involved is a known industry name, then of course you're taking a gamble.

nextparadigms• 14 years ago

I'm more worried about VC's lobbying against it once it becomes too popular. But is this legal with Pebble? Kickstarter has a donation system right? Isn't Pebble like a start-up? Are you allowed to "donate" money to companies like this?

pyoung• 14 years ago

I don't see any reason why donating money to a company would be illegal, and I am sure Kickstarter did it;s due diligence. Also, keep in mind, many people are 'donating' money, but they are getting a functional product delivered to them. In essence, Kickstarter is just a method to get pre-sales for a product, with the understanding that their is risk that the product might not get delivered.

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

Clearly there are fraudsters already there, you can see it in projects which get 'funded' but don't deliver. And of course the folks like the 'Pen Type A' people who take a lot longer than you might expect given that they can be learning just as much as everyone else about the joys (or heart breaks) of manufacturing something.

That being said, the model as a disruption in the production of goods is really interesting.

polyfractal• 14 years ago

I think it is only a matter of time before there is a big, public fraud funded by Kickstarter. Not that it should change anything about Kickstarter...that potential is implicitly embedded into the whole idea.

But the cynical side of me says that someone is going to pull a fast one soon =(

mikenon• 14 years ago

Adding to the problem, I think, is Kickstarter's TOS that absolves them of anything a funded project does after receiving funding. As well as not asking project creators to state what will be done with the money in the event the project fails to deliver.

Look at the ZionEyez kickstarter ($343,415 pledged, $55,000 goal, July 31, 2011), for instance. I'm not a backer, and I've only read the comments, but it seems the project isn't going so well. In the comments, backers talk about Kickstarter not being helpful in resolving issues. Backers are talking about class actions, FTC complaints, and small claims courts to resolve their problems.

If ZionEyez is 100% legitimate, and they deliver the product as promised, they've still shown countless others how easy fraud could be.

TwistedWeasel• 14 years ago

FTA: "The site's first $1m project was Double Fine Adventure"

Double Fine Adventure wasn't the first Kickstarter project to hit $1M, it was the elevation dock a short time earlier.

pokoleo• 14 years ago

The founders are graduates from the University of Waterloo. :D

(+VeloCity)

treme• 14 years ago

putting DENT in universe. way to go guys.

eykanal• 14 years ago

There is no good reason why the article couldn't include a link to the Kickstarter page in the actual article text, preferably at the top where they first mention it. Are they that worried that people will leave and not come back?

Shame on you, BBC. Shame on you.

OzzyB2• 14 years ago

I don't disagree, but I think it's probably because the BBC can't be seen to directly promote a commerical product?

trafficlight• 14 years ago

That's the entire point of the article...

nfriedly• 14 years ago

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper...

cgranade• 14 years ago

Just to point out, there is a link, but it's hidden at the bottom of the page under "Related Internet links." That's pretty bad, but it at least beats the many articles I've seen that discuss something on the Internet without ever providing a link that I could reasonably find.

JVIDEL• 14 years ago

I really don't see why this is a surprise: unlike many other projects this one shows a more or less finished product that works as advertised, not a "idea on paper" or pie-in-the-sky, and you can get the watch by backing the project, a win-win situation.

In a way this was more like a presale for the watches, which is not a bad idea considering these guys could've gone broke if they had built the watches and not sold enough to make their investment back.

This is a good way to test the waters before getting in.

Pebble smartwatch breaks record for Kickstarter funding

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