Crowdfunding the Ubuntu Edge will fail

http://www.openanalytics.eu/blog/crowdfunding-ubuntu-edge-will-fail

by mnml_ • 13 years ago

51 47 13 years ago

Peroni• 13 years ago

The primary factor missing from this analysis is marketing.

When they launched, naturally contributions went through the roof. When they did the Reddit AMA, there was another noticeable spike.

I have no idea what their marketing plans are but there is no way they have exhausted their options within the first week.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 13 years ago

Do you think that with new marketing, they can reach lots of potential backers who haven't already been reached? Bear in mind that the target market is highly geeky and highly connected. And so are likely to have seen the articles on HN and reddit already.

mikkom• 13 years ago

I'm not exactly having high hopes of edge getting the money but I seriously doubt the value of simple regression model on predicting if it's failure or success.

ealexhudson• 13 years ago

Previous projects had a peak at the start and the end - more like an inverted-U of activity. That all said, although the regression is probably not useful, the graph definitely helps indicate how much work is ahead of them. They've done a huge amount already (I believe they've broken some records already?) and to be so far off just indicates how crazy the target was. They're probably going to raise more than any other crowd-funded project, but it's a ways a way off.

oelmekki• 13 years ago

That's really too early to reach such a conclusion. It just got under the median line, well, it's a median line.

And the graphic should show major marketing events and press article to be relevant : we may just be at the farest point from last event, and one new may happen soon to boost donations again.

eterm• 13 years ago

Given that the rate of funding is well observed to decrease over time, hitting the median line this early on (and especially at such an angle as it has) is a disaster for the prospects of hitting the target.

aw3c2• 13 years ago

LOL, how about: "Actual funding hits linear projection after some days, extrapolated function can not predict future."

javindo• 13 years ago

They need to do more international media events, interviews, articles - highlight the fact that you can reserve your very own "Formula 1" phone, plenty of non-techies will be interested by that, specifically the market with the most money who are likely to want the latest, unique, luxury item. If they were doing a TV interview on, say, Bloomberg Business about the uniquely absurd crowdfunding model and bespoke high-end possibility they would likely see another spike in sales.

toble• 13 years ago

I've always assumed that perks overload the viewer from a usability perspective. If your goal is to sell bleeding edge phones and you hide that ability with a load of miscellaneous merchandise, then you might end up losing those high value purchases.

workbench3• 13 years ago

They targeted it wrong, the early adopter bonus shouldn't have been a cheaper phone it should have been a more expensive but exclusive colourway.

alistairjcbrown• 13 years ago

You're completely right - to me the phone is worth $600-650 because that's what I could have bought it for early on.

There's no way they'll get me to shell out +$200 now. The reward system feels like penalising those who back late, rather than rewarding those who back early.

mtgx• 13 years ago

I think it would've been successful at $600, for whatever storage they wanted to give at that price. But they're being very stubborn about it having 128 GB, no matter the cost (which is a quite high $830). And I think they've done a very poor job explaining why you need to get a phone with 128 GB of storage, too. They need to really "sell" that feature, so people think the price for the phone is worth it.

jessep3• 13 years ago

This doesn't take into account the typical shape of crowdfunding curves, which are almost always steep at the beginning and even steeper at the end, and relatively flat in the middle. This is very well documented by a bajillion kickstarter campaigns. Here's a typical curve: http://www.sneakattackpress.com/images/KickBrokenProgress.jp...

arkades• 13 years ago

I think the problem is that the Edge campaign flattened out so early. The link you provided seems to go flat at about the 50% funding mark. The Edge (appears to have) stalled at 20%. Unless it's just a transient bump, that seems far too soon.

jessep3• 13 years ago

I have no idea if it'll hit the mark, I just think the analysis doesn't hold water because it doesn't acknowledge the real dynamics of these types of campaigns.

This campaign could go so many different ways. The safest bet is that it won't succeed, simply because it is so groundbreakingly large. However, how many times have crowdfunding campaigns surprised you with their level of success? For me, the answer to that question is "tons of times". So I'm not taking a guess on whether it'll succeed. I'm just saying, "Good luck!".

mcintyre1994• 13 years ago

That flat line is a lot closer to 100% than they are though, I wonder whether flatlining around 20% and then funding would be precedented, I suspect not.

w0utert• 13 years ago

I would assume the steep end of the typical Kickstarter curve occurs because projects start to approach their funding goals, drawing in a lot of new backers because they believe the project will actually get off the ground. If the Ubuntu Edge fundraising already stalls $20M before they reach their funding goal, I yet have to see if they are able to create a spike in their backing just before their deadline...

jessep3• 13 years ago

In response to the couple of people who commented, "But that graph was close to 100% before it spiked" look at this one: http://flippfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/FinalFundingC...

Basically, these things always spike at the end (if they have any traction), and I'd be willing to bet all the money in my bank account that this will spike at the end. The only real question is whether that spike will get them to their goal.

agumonkey• 13 years ago

I'll add the Parallela project, another project with similar end spike but in the range of 700000$.

http://canhekick.it/project/5064d31d8f647c24e5ad60d0

Differences with Ubuntu Edge :

- unknown group and brand

- non mainstream~ product

- small marketing campaign at the beginning

- few articles featured on large website near the end

ronaldx• 13 years ago

Isn't this graph more typical of a successful crowdfund?

javis• 13 years ago

Mark Shuttleworth has a net worth of $500 million and has been to space. I have doubt he'll just let the project fail.

I don't see anything stopping him from jumping in at the end, getting it to the $32,000,000 mark. He has the funds.

diroussel• 13 years ago

32 is a significant part of 500.

Also, surely the point of this is to develop a sustainable model, as they said they want to repeat it each year. So if there is no demand, then it should be abandoned, or rethought.

workbench3• 13 years ago

He didn't rich by writing a lot of cheques

rbanffy• 13 years ago

No, but one of the advantages of being rich is being able to do it when you want it.

jamii• 13 years ago

He explicitly stated in the reddit AMA that he will let if fail.

EDIT Link - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j166z/hi_im_mark_shut...

rogerbinns3• 13 years ago

I didn't back them for two reasons. The first is that the hardware will be late. Not their fault, but rather that hardware is always late. The hardware shouldn't be compared against what is on the market now, and not even on the purported release date, but rather a few months after that. I suspect it won't be that extraordinary.

The second is that Ubuntu have deliberately alienated me as a user. They are under no obligation to do any different - actions they have taken have been a different direction than suits me. The phone is ultimately not for a free(dom) software community, Linux community or collaborated UI community device - it is a Canonical/Ubuntu (Unity) one. In the AMA "So in this first generation Edge, no, we didn't look for open hardware specifically"

Examples of where they have gone different directions: keeping upstart versus systemd, not trying to play nice with Gnome 3, CLA, Amazon on by default, bzr, launchpad, a general preference towards writing new code versus fixing the many issues languishing in the bug tracker etc. They did do good stuff with trying to make a community, fresh software packages, PPAs etc.

If Fedora, Arch, Gentoo, SuSe, Mandrake etc users had a reason to buy the phone I'd bet it would be a lot more successful.

inthewind• 13 years ago

What I'd like to see is a very basic cheap open mobile device.

It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack. Is it possible to make an open/free mobile phone right now?

Alternatively you could use wifi, wireless and peer to peer. A very cheap instant grid/alt internet would be nice.

Interesting the way that Google have opted for their HDMI dongles. I'm surprised we haven't seen a similar offering from the Ubuntu camp. Do we really need the display?

rogerbinns3• 13 years ago

What I'd like to see is a very basic cheap open mobile device

Raspberry Pi and a battery?

It might even have to shun making calls because of the proprietary hardware/software stack.

The cellular side can be on a separate baseband processor that talks to the outside world using good old fashioned AT commands[1] pretending to be a serial device. At that point you don't care how proprietary it is since any kernel and userspace can work with it. The current proprietary problem area is graphics (binary blobs abound) and often some other pieces (eg bluetooth, system initialization and bootloaders)

OpenMoko[2] did do open phones, although IIRC there was one proprietary piece.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openmoko

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

I'm led to understand the majority of money tends to come at the start and end of fundraising efforts for these things. Though I can't recall where I heard it. Chris Taylor talking about the funraising effort for GPG I think -

http://youtu.be/5zJdMRKBbLE

- Ah, there we go, at around 3 minutes in. U shaped distribution for Proj Eternity -

[Very good interview, by the way, if you haven't seen it and don't already know a bit about game companies. Really feel sorry for the guy.]

Anyhoo. Not that I'm saying this is a U shape, but I suspect you're going to need comparison to similar products to say too much of meaning.

workbench3• 13 years ago

Would it not be greatly dependant on how far the project gets in that initial funding. The projects that overshoot in the final days are generally ones that are 60-80% funded.

6d0debc0712• 13 years ago

Yes - things that are U shaped would depend heavily on how great the initial and final funding is. In terms of $/t, rather than donations/t, it'd look more like - well assuming you got all your money on the first and last day you'd have two sheer cliffs with a perfectly flat plateau between them. But in reality it's likely to be somewhat smoother than that and the plateau is unlikely to the perfectly flat.

Assuming that the linear model holds until the last few days and then you get an upturn equal to the initial contributions, then you'd be looking at something like $22-23 million. Well, I'm just measuring it on my screen with my hands to get that, but that'd be my prediction based on what little I know of these sorts of fundraising thingies, assuming it behaves in the same manner as they did. ^^;

tome• 13 years ago

if nothing changes, the Ubuntu Edge will fail. Let’s hope something changes

At the very least, time will change.

moocowduckquack• 13 years ago

I do wonder about the sense in the enterprise bundle being $10,000 more for 100 phones than it is to order 50 of the $1400 2 phone deal.

akandiah• 13 years ago

The enterprise bundle includes a workshop and added support.

sampo• 13 years ago

enterprise bundle being $10,000

$80,000

jon-wood• 13 years ago

the enterprise bundle being $10,000 more for 100 phones than it is to order 50

Try reading to the end of the sentence.

smewpy• 13 years ago

This is senior high school analytics and stating failure as a certainty with this simple model is over-reaching, not to mention, Mark Shuttleworth's money.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 13 years ago

I surmised something similar on day 1, i.e. the interested audience will mostly be highly internet-connected early-adopter geeks. They will have heard about it very quickly, so it's not going to "go viral" and reach a much wider audience later on in the campaign.

The enthusiastic early adopters are more likely to pledge in the first few days and so a steeper than usual drop-off is likely. It's also a very ambitious target amount.

BerislavLopac• 13 years ago

My prediction: if it becomes clear that it won't make it, Mark Shuttleworth will cover the rest from his own pocket. What do you think?

Kiro• 13 years ago

What's up with the ridiculous target amount?

6ren• 13 years ago

Anyone bookmaking? My money's on $15 million (linear + mirror flip at the end).

The key thing here is that phone-like devices replacing desktops is inevitable. It's straightforward historically-supported Christensen + Moore. Phones are already powerful enough for almost all desktop purposes, just connect keyboard/mouse/monitor.

The question is, who will "lead" this revolution? Maybe Canonical.

Executor• 13 years ago

Why is it inevitable? You sure haven't done any programming, rendering, gaming, etc, have you?

rogerbinns3• 13 years ago

You forget about the cloud thing. Your phone can be used as an authenticator (partly not all) and if your data is in the cloud then whatever is sitting there will work just fine. What is it about the hardware you are carrying that requires it to be used as the desktop computer?

girvo• 13 years ago

What I want to know is how much Canonical is kicking in. I mean, this isn't an indie game, this is a company that while different compared to say Apple or someone in that they deal with FOSS, they DO make money.

They haven't mentioned it, but I hope they're not just relying on the Indiegogo to pay for it all, considering they stand to gain a Lot from it going forward.

Of course, they probably are. I'm guessing it takes more than 32mil to make a new phone and OS.

donquichotte• 13 years ago

From TFA: > The model used was a rather naive linear model: y \sim \beta_0 + \beta_1 x ^{1/2} + \beta_2 x^{1/3}

That is not a linear model. Also, note the dent at ~July 21, when it became possible again to buy phones in advance after the first "batch" had sold out.

yaddayadda• 13 years ago

Personally, none of my friends or family, have ever bought a phone outright. We've always done some 'pay over x months' type of plan.

I'm particularly hesitant to pledge a large sum (and yes, for some of us $775 is a "large sum" to drop at once) to a Kickstarter, even a Canonical Kickstarter. But, I understand and believe in the idea.

I'd be much more willing to kick in a sum in the range of $20-80, to get a reward of my name on the founder's page and a discount of the same amount once the hardware is sold to the public.

This means I can actually afford to make a contribution that is reasonable for my budget, and that if the hardware doesn't see the light of day the I'm only out a month's cell phone payment. More importantly, if there are others out there like me, it means that Canonical's Kickstarter would be getting a little bit more of a financial boost, and people like me would be buzzing about it a lot more.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

A $775 phone is so 2012. This year, the big innovation will be Motorola selling a not-bleeding-edge phone that runs Android just fine for a cheap price, as many other 2nd tier OEMs are already doing for the prepaid market.

Crowdfunding the Ubuntu Edge will fail

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