Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from half
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I love all things tech.
Speaker 1: And in a couple of episodes recently, as in't the
Speaker 1: ones just before the one that published yesterday, I talked
Speaker 1: about vapor ware, and today I'm going to focus on
Speaker 1: crowdfunding platforms and some of the best and worst examples
Speaker 1: of tech projects that have received crowdfunding. This is not
Speaker 1: a definitive list by any stretch of the imagination. I
Speaker 1: could do a month's worth of episodes about really cool
Speaker 1: crowdfunded tech projects and ones that just went terribly wrong.
Speaker 1: And by worst, I don't necessarily mean that the idea
Speaker 1: for the project was a bad one, but rather something
Speaker 1: happened between the campaign launching and what of her the
Speaker 1: delivery time was supposed to be for that product. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that just means that things didn't go as planned. It
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean any particular idea was bad. But first
Speaker 1: I want to go into the background of the two
Speaker 1: most popular crowdfunding platforms that are out there, and that
Speaker 1: would be Kickstarter and indie go Go. Kickstarter was an
Speaker 1: idea that's been around for a pretty long time. As
Speaker 1: it turns out. In late two thousand one, an artist
Speaker 1: named Perry Chen wanted to get a musical performance organized
Speaker 1: during the two thousand two Jazz Fest in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: So he's looking ahead. He's saying, next year, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be this big jazz festival. I want to create a
Speaker 1: show where these these two dep DJs can come down
Speaker 1: and do a full performance in the course of the
Speaker 1: jazz festival. Uh, I really want to make this happen.
Speaker 1: So he tries to get this show together. He takes initiative,
Speaker 1: but the musical venue he was talking to wanted way
Speaker 1: more money than he could provide. There was no way
Speaker 1: he could come up with the the expense it was
Speaker 1: going to take just to have the show. So even
Speaker 1: if the show were incredibly successful, it would never be
Speaker 1: able to happen because he could not come up with
Speaker 1: that front capital. So that experience inspired him to brainstorm
Speaker 1: about a way where people who are interested in having
Speaker 1: something happen could pledge money toward that thing, perhaps using
Speaker 1: credit cards or some other form, and if enough money
Speaker 1: were pledged to meet the costs to have that thing happen,
Speaker 1: then it would happen. They would be charged the money,
Speaker 1: The money would go towards the cost of production, and
Speaker 1: the thing would go on, and in return, people could
Speaker 1: actually go to that thing. They would end up receiving
Speaker 1: essentially a ticket in return for their pledge. But if
Speaker 1: not enough money were pledged, let's say that after a
Speaker 1: certain amount of time there just wasn't enough interest, then
Speaker 1: the whole thing would be scrapped. No one would be charged,
Speaker 1: and everything would go on. It's mary little way. Well
Speaker 1: that would become the germ of the idea for Kickstarter,
Speaker 1: but the actual launch of Kickstarter was still years away.
Speaker 1: Flashboard to two thousand five. Perry Chen has relocated. He's
Speaker 1: living in Brooklyn. That's when he met Yancy Strickler, a
Speaker 1: writer and editor who had worked for m j I
Speaker 1: Interactive and Flavor Pill Media. He was mostly working as
Speaker 1: sort of a rock and roll music critic and writer.
Speaker 1: Chen was waiting tables at that time in a restaurant
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn, and Strickler was a regular at this particular
Speaker 1: restaurant and the two started talking and eventually Chen told
Speaker 1: Strickler about his idea about this fundraising approach, this idea
Speaker 1: of pledging money towards something, but only getting charged if
Speaker 1: enough money were raised to make that something happen. And
Speaker 1: Strickler thought this was a really cool notion, so they
Speaker 1: went and bought a white board and they began to
Speaker 1: actually brainstorm what Kickstarter might look like and how it
Speaker 1: might work. That kept on going for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand seven they ended up meeting another
Speaker 1: person by the name of Charles Adler. He would become
Speaker 1: the final piece of that triumvirate who founded Kickstarter. Adler
Speaker 1: and Chen began work on the actual artistic layout of Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: Uh Strickler was still working on the project as well.
Speaker 1: He was also working his regular day job, but none
Speaker 1: of the three co founders were actual developers, so building
Speaker 1: out a functional website was laborious and filled with errors.
Speaker 1: So they started hiring people to work on the idea.
Speaker 1: Some people would stay on the project for a little while,
Speaker 1: some would stay a little bit longer. They ideated several times.
Speaker 1: There are pictures online of the various versions of Kickstarter
Speaker 1: that were proposed before the site went live. Some of
Speaker 1: them are truly hideous to behold. But they began meeting
Speaker 1: with other people who had helped them with the design
Speaker 1: and the launch, and eventually they were able to get
Speaker 1: something together. They went to an early beta test in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, and then on April two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: nearly a decade after Chen had the original idea, they
Speaker 1: launched with a public website. The first project to fund
Speaker 1: successfully on Kickstarter was called Drawing for Dollars, and it
Speaker 1: hit its goal on May third, two thousand nine. It
Speaker 1: raised all of thirty five dollars. Two other projects funded
Speaker 1: that week as well. In two thousand ten, Time magazine
Speaker 1: named Kickstarter one of the ten best inventions of the year.
Speaker 1: So that shows you that just within a year Kickstarter
Speaker 1: was already making a big impact right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Nearly another ten years and more than three billion dollars
Speaker 1: in crowdfunding campaigns later, things have changed a lot. Charles
Speaker 1: Adler would leave Kickstarter in two thousand thirteen. Perry Chen
Speaker 1: was serving as CEO until two thousand fourteen, and then
Speaker 1: stepped down just to to the the chair of the
Speaker 1: board of directors. Yancey Strickler took over as CEO, and
Speaker 1: he would remain as CEO until Kickstarter actually became a
Speaker 1: public benefit corporation. That means that benefiting the public good
Speaker 1: is actually part of the company charter, in addition to
Speaker 1: making a profit. In seventeen, when Strickler stepped down as CEO,
Speaker 1: Chen actually stepped back in, first as interim CEO, and
Speaker 1: then he said he was the new permanent CEO, although
Speaker 1: no official announcement about that came out of the company.
Speaker 1: According to BuzzFeed, Chen's returned to the helm was not
Speaker 1: greeted with universal approval. About fifty out of a hundred
Speaker 1: twenty employees left the company, including all but one of
Speaker 1: the executive team who had worked under Strickler. Kickstarter, by
Speaker 1: the way, takes a five percent cut of any successfully
Speaker 1: funded campaign. According to kickstarter itself, the site has seen
Speaker 1: about three point three three billion dollars worth of successful campaigns,
Speaker 1: which would put the company take it around a hundred
Speaker 1: sixty six million dollars, which isn't bad, but Kickstarter also
Speaker 1: has a reputation. More than three fifths of the total
Speaker 1: dollars pledged on Kickstarter has gone to campaigns for games,
Speaker 1: design projects and tech projects rather than creative artistic projects.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people look at Kickstarter as the
Speaker 1: place to go to pitch your ideas to the general public.
Speaker 1: So instead of like going to a company and saying
Speaker 1: I've got this idea of for our product, I would
Speaker 1: like to work with you to produce it, or going
Speaker 1: with potential private investors like Angel investors to get a
Speaker 1: company together, you take it to Kickstarter and you pitch
Speaker 1: it to the general public and see if you can
Speaker 1: get your support that way. Indie go go is similar
Speaker 1: in many ways to Kickstarter. It actually launched before Kickstarter did.
Speaker 1: It went live in January two th eight. Indie go
Speaker 1: Go was the brain child of Denay Ringelman, Eric Shell,
Speaker 1: and Slava Rubin, who met at the University of California, Berkeley.
Speaker 1: Like Chen, these three wanted to create a platform that
Speaker 1: would make it easier for people to get funding for
Speaker 1: various projects. Ringelman came up with the idea. She was
Speaker 1: inspired originally by her parents, who were small business owners,
Speaker 1: and also her experiences both as a student and someone
Speaker 1: who had worked in the financial district over on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Her original idea was for an offline business, but Shell
Speaker 1: and Ruben would collaborate with her and convince her that
Speaker 1: an online platform would actually be a better solution. The
Speaker 1: three struggled for three years to find investors to help
Speaker 1: fund their company. It was live, it was working, but
Speaker 1: they didn't have a whole lot of money to work
Speaker 1: on this. They were actually supporting it largely themselves. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, they landed one point five million
Speaker 1: dollars in venture capital, and then over the next few
Speaker 1: years they would raise more. Indie goog covers a broader
Speaker 1: spectrum of projects than Kickstarter does. Kickstarter is really meant
Speaker 1: for creative projects, although that can include products like tech
Speaker 1: or games. Indie go go can be used for just
Speaker 1: about anything, including raising money for causes. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted to hold a funding campaign for a nonprofit organization,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably use indie go go, but you could
Speaker 1: not use Kickstarter because it's not what kickstarters for. Also,
Speaker 1: Kickstarter limits people in the US, UK, Canada, and a
Speaker 1: couple of other countries for their campaigns. You cannot launch
Speaker 1: a campaign if you live outside of that small group
Speaker 1: of countries. Indie go Go considers itself an international crowdfunding option,
Speaker 1: although it does not allow campaigners that are that belong
Speaker 1: to the nations that are on the United States Office
Speaker 1: of Foreign Assets Controls sanctioned list. That would include countries
Speaker 1: like North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Indie go Go has a slightly different approach to funding
Speaker 1: than Kickstarter. So if you launch an indie go go campaign,
Speaker 1: you can choose to keep whatever money you raise even
Speaker 1: if you don't make your goal. So let's say that
Speaker 1: your goal is twenty dollars but you only raise seven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Well, you could actually select an option that
Speaker 1: allows you to keep whatever money you raised. Now, in
Speaker 1: that event, indie go go gets to keep a nine
Speaker 1: percent take of whatever you raised. Now if you hit
Speaker 1: your goal, if you hit that twenty dollars, you get
Speaker 1: back some of that cut that indiego go takes, so
Speaker 1: indigoga would only take uh four percent of the total,
Speaker 1: not nine. Or you could choose the all or nothing
Speaker 1: approach similar to what Kickstarter does, that also locks in
Speaker 1: that four percent indie go go fee. So if you
Speaker 1: do that, you're actually owing a little less to indie
Speaker 1: go go than you would if you were running the
Speaker 1: exact same campaign on Kickstarter. There are also a lot
Speaker 1: of other crowdfunding platforms out there, by the way, some
Speaker 1: of them are like go fund me, and that's more
Speaker 1: about fundraising for causes, personal or general. Some of them
Speaker 1: are more like Patreon. Actually, Patreon really is kind of
Speaker 1: its own thing. Patreon sets up a recurring pledge, like
Speaker 1: a monthly pledge, to fund ongoing projects and work. So
Speaker 1: it's not a startup thing. It's an ongoing thing. So
Speaker 1: if I were saying making a web series, I could
Speaker 1: have a Patreon and in return for monthly uh pledges,
Speaker 1: you might get extra material related to the web series.
Speaker 1: So not only would you be supporting my work, but
Speaker 1: you would get a little extra something on the side.
Speaker 1: And there are others that are geared specifically for stuff
Speaker 1: like musicians, or for startup companies or for charities. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to tech products, the two big crowdfunding
Speaker 1: platforms out there really are Kickstarter and indiego Go, and
Speaker 1: both of them have played host to some good and
Speaker 1: some questionable tech products. I'll talk more about those in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Okay, let's get this underway. Let's
Speaker 1: go to the tech category. Over to Kickstarter. One of
Speaker 1: the most successful campaigns on Kickstarter in the tech category
Speaker 1: was the Pano Music campaign. This was championed by musician
Speaker 1: Neil Young, and the idea was pretty interesting. Pano Music
Speaker 1: would take the master recordings of various songs, so the
Speaker 1: masters are the recordings from which all copies are made.
Speaker 1: If you get your hands on a master, you are
Speaker 1: listening to the most accurate representation of how the music
Speaker 1: was originally sounding when it was recorded. That is copy
Speaker 1: number one, or really recording number one. It's not a copy,
Speaker 1: is the recording. Pano Music was going to create digital
Speaker 1: versions from those masters, and it was going to use
Speaker 1: a lossless digital format that you could play on a
Speaker 1: special digital music player. Lossless means that no data gets
Speaker 1: thrown out, whereas a compression format like MP three is
Speaker 1: known as a lossy format, and it's called lossy because
Speaker 1: during the compression algorithm, some data gets pushed out in
Speaker 1: order to make the file size more manageable. And typically
Speaker 1: a lossy sound file will eliminate any sounds that fall
Speaker 1: outside the normal range of human hearing, because the the
Speaker 1: idea is that you would not be able to perceive
Speaker 1: them anyway. There are audio files who argue know that
Speaker 1: actually has an effect on the overall quality of the sound.
Speaker 1: You may not be able to hear those individual sounds,
Speaker 1: but they'll produce other elements like harmonics that you can
Speaker 1: actually perceive. So there's this argument that goes back and
Speaker 1: forth between audio files and people who work in compression technology,
Speaker 1: and that has raised the the issue of lossy versus lossless.
Speaker 1: So this Pondom Music player was supposed to play lossless
Speaker 1: music files, although it could handle other ones as well.
Speaker 1: The campaign had an early bird special for one hundred backers.
Speaker 1: If they pledged at least two hundred dollars, they would
Speaker 1: get a Pinto Player device as soon as they became available.
Speaker 1: After that, you would have to make a pledge of
Speaker 1: at least three hundred dollars to get a Poto Player,
Speaker 1: So the first one hundred could get that two hundred
Speaker 1: dollar price, and then if you showed up at the
Speaker 1: campaign after that, you'd have to The lowest you could
Speaker 1: pledge to get a pot a Player would be three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, but even at that price, backers were assured
Speaker 1: they would be spending tollars less than what the eventual
Speaker 1: retail price for the Pinto Player would be. That retail
Speaker 1: price ended up being three cents, so you would save
Speaker 1: about a hundred bucks off the final price. By being
Speaker 1: a supporter during the Kickstarter campaign. The campaign more than
Speaker 1: met it's eight hundred thousand dollar goal. By the end
Speaker 1: it had raised more than six million dollars ers and
Speaker 1: the Poto Player did actually come out in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: So this is not one of those vaporware stories. It
Speaker 1: was a device that really came out, It really worked,
Speaker 1: it really got shipped to the backers. But the story
Speaker 1: still doesn't have a very happy ending, or or quasi ending,
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, because what the heck ever
Speaker 1: ends these days. The Pinto Player supported many different formats
Speaker 1: for music. It could support MP three's as well as
Speaker 1: tons of other file formats, but the goal was to
Speaker 1: guide users to the Panto music World digital music store
Speaker 1: to buy this lossless form factor to get hold of
Speaker 1: these high definition, high resolution audio recordings. However, according to
Speaker 1: Neil Young, music labels demanded very high prices for those
Speaker 1: high resolution, lossless format audio files. They're demanding two to
Speaker 1: three times as much for normal MP three files, which
Speaker 1: again is a lossy format. They said, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: spend let's say five dollars on this sound file, then
Speaker 1: for this other format, you're gonna have to spend fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars for it in the music store went offline when
Speaker 1: Ponto Music's partner company, omni Phone, was sold off. Panto
Speaker 1: announced it would partner with another company called seven Digital,
Speaker 1: but the store never came back. Neil Young moved on
Speaker 1: to launch a free music streaming service called Xtreme. The
Speaker 1: letter X followed by the word stream. But the Ponto
Speaker 1: Music Player only plays downloaded songs. It doesn't have any
Speaker 1: WiFi or cellular capability. You cannot streaming to the Pinto Player.
Speaker 1: So wamp wamp, there's a four dollar MP three player
Speaker 1: you've got now, essentially. Also, I should add that, according
Speaker 1: to several reviews I read, the Pinto Player was a
Speaker 1: good digital music device, but it was really hard to
Speaker 1: tell the difference between lossless and lossy file formats, assuming
Speaker 1: that someone wasn't going crazy with the compression rate when
Speaker 1: they were making the lossy file. So while the device
Speaker 1: performed well, it was based on a somewhat faulty premise,
Speaker 1: because if you could not reliably tell the difference between
Speaker 1: a lossy file and a lossless one, why are you
Speaker 1: spending four hundred dollars on this thing? Anyway, Let's move
Speaker 1: on to a different one. Another big winner in the
Speaker 1: text space on Kickstarter was the z Time smart watch
Speaker 1: from Micronos Switzerland. The watch is a kind of hybrid watch,
Speaker 1: so it actually has physical hands, like in that analog style,
Speaker 1: actual clock hands on your watch. So if you don't
Speaker 1: know how to read a clock, an analog clock, I
Speaker 1: guess you're out of luck here. But in addition to
Speaker 1: these physical hands that would point to the time, there
Speaker 1: was also a touch screen digital interface incorporated into this watch.
Speaker 1: The goal for the campaign was to raise fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: but it raised more than five point three million dollars.
Speaker 1: The campaign had three early bird specials for the first
Speaker 1: one thousand to contribute at each of those levels. Uh
Speaker 1: there was a hundred and nineteen dollar level, a D
Speaker 1: seven dollar level, and a one level for the original,
Speaker 1: Premium and Elite models respectively. And the company designed the
Speaker 1: hands so that they would actually move out the way
Speaker 1: when you received messages on the smart watch screen. So
Speaker 1: let's say that you're looking at your watch and it's
Speaker 1: normally would say six PM, which means the the hands
Speaker 1: would be in a vertical line, but it needs to
Speaker 1: display a message to you, then the hands would actually
Speaker 1: shift so that one is pointing at three and one's
Speaker 1: pointing at nine, So it's making a horizontal line. That's
Speaker 1: just the clearer the face so that you can read
Speaker 1: the messages. Probably it would then go back to the
Speaker 1: regular time once you had dismissed the message, which I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of a cool idea. Also, the hands
Speaker 1: would automatically adjust to reflect whatever time zone you were
Speaker 1: in at that time, and it had some other features. Uh,
Speaker 1: I guess I should say it has other features The
Speaker 1: watch does exist, including a pedometer has a heart rate motor.
Speaker 1: According to Digital Trend, those features worked really, really well,
Speaker 1: although their overall review for the watch was less than stellar.
Speaker 1: The campaign listed a ship date of September, and that's
Speaker 1: when the first Z time watches actually began to ship,
Speaker 1: So that's good. This is one of those stories where
Speaker 1: there was something that was promised, that thing was delivered.
Speaker 1: It appears to be the thing that everyone was promised.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a bait and switch. But the reviews I've
Speaker 1: seen for the watch say the features tend to be good,
Speaker 1: but the interface is a little tricky, maybe a little frustrating.
Speaker 1: So your mileage may vary, but I would at least
Speaker 1: say this campaign should fall into the good category, not
Speaker 1: the bad story category, because it actually produced what was
Speaker 1: promised and they shipped it. Another one of kickstarters most
Speaker 1: funded tech projects came to a pretty dismal end down
Speaker 1: the line, and that would be the Zano Nano drone.
Speaker 1: Now as a quad copter drone, it can actually fit
Speaker 1: in the palm of your hand, and the campaign included
Speaker 1: an incredible video showing off what the drone could supposedly do,
Speaker 1: which was really impressive. The late fourteen campaign aimed to
Speaker 1: raise a hundred five thousand pounds British pounds that's equivalent
Speaker 1: to about a hundred nine thousand dollars back at that time. Ultimately, though,
Speaker 1: it would end up raising two point three million pounds
Speaker 1: or nearly three and a half million dollars. The drones
Speaker 1: were supposed to include a high definition camera. They were
Speaker 1: supposed to have some object avoidance technology so that they
Speaker 1: could um detect and easily avoid things like trees or walls.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to have tracking technology. You would end
Speaker 1: up controlling them using gesture controls on a smartphone, like
Speaker 1: you could actually hold your phone up and move it
Speaker 1: across your field of view and control your your drone
Speaker 1: that way, and they had an early bird rate for
Speaker 1: this as well. If you want to buy a white
Speaker 1: or black Xano or pledge at that level, it was
Speaker 1: a hundred thirty nine pounds if you were one of
Speaker 1: the first five hundred backers to pledge for those perks.
Speaker 1: Once the campaign was over, the company behind it, Torking Group,
Speaker 1: ended up taking pre orders for more Zano drones. They
Speaker 1: accepted around three thousand pre orders after the conclusion of
Speaker 1: the campaign. The company send out regular updates about production,
Speaker 1: which is good transparent communications very important. At the launch
Speaker 1: of the campaign, the company had claimed that it pretty
Speaker 1: much had all the elements in place to go into
Speaker 1: production immediately upon funding, though they did start to introduce
Speaker 1: stretch goals once they began to hit those campaign goals
Speaker 1: really early on, and those stretch goals, you could argue
Speaker 1: that's an example of feature creep, where they started to
Speaker 1: throw more and more features into these drones, and it
Speaker 1: would even include technologies that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: finding kind of questionable, like do you think you could
Speaker 1: actually work this into this design, including stuff like facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology, three sixty degree panorama capability, the ability to
Speaker 1: fly upside down and also wireless charging. Torking Group estimated
Speaker 1: that it was going to have a delivery date for
Speaker 1: June two thousand fifteen. That was when I was going
Speaker 1: to start shipping out these drones. It wasn't until September
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen that any drones were actually shipped, and
Speaker 1: even then it was only about six hundred of them.
Speaker 1: They went mostly to the preorder customers rather than the
Speaker 1: crowdfunding backers, and that raised a lot of eyebrows and
Speaker 1: more than a few tempers. Out of the thousands of
Speaker 1: backers who put money towards this, only four of them
Speaker 1: ever received a drone. And to make matters worse, the
Speaker 1: people who received the drones complained that the product they
Speaker 1: got was not what they were promised. They got a
Speaker 1: quad copter, but they could barely fly. They'd hop around,
Speaker 1: they slammed into walls. They apparently had no object avoidance technology.
Speaker 1: They were missing tons of promised features. On November eighteen,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, to Working announced it would undergo liquidation.
Speaker 1: All of the company's assets would be sold off and
Speaker 1: the money would be sent to creditors. To Working had
Speaker 1: spent a million pounds over the two and a half
Speaker 1: million it had earned from crowdfunding in that time, and
Speaker 1: to Working's servers shut down, which was a real shame
Speaker 1: because the drones actually would call into the server in
Speaker 1: order to operate. So once the servers shut down, the
Speaker 1: drones that were out there were left inoperable. Even if
Speaker 1: they couldn't work very well, now they couldn't work at all.
Speaker 1: Mark Harris, by the way, has an incredible piece on
Speaker 1: medium all about the Zano story. I encourage you to
Speaker 1: look it up if you want to know more about
Speaker 1: what happened. It is an exhaustive account. It's far too
Speaker 1: long for me to go into on this episode, but
Speaker 1: I had to call special attention to it because it
Speaker 1: is an amazing investigative peace so if you really want
Speaker 1: to learn all about how things can go wrong, and
Speaker 1: I should stress that Harris concludes that this was not
Speaker 1: a scam. It wasn't a hoax. It wasn't that people
Speaker 1: were trying to get money from folks and then run
Speaker 1: away with it. They really were trying to build a product.
Speaker 1: It just got away from them. It's a good warning
Speaker 1: story to read, both from someone who might want to
Speaker 1: launch a product and someone who's looking at potential products
Speaker 1: that they might support on a crowdfunding platform. Well, I
Speaker 1: have more to say about crowdfunding misses and hits, but
Speaker 1: before I get into that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now, I don't want it to
Speaker 1: sound like I believe Kickstarter has an exclusive hold on
Speaker 1: bad crowdfunding projects, because this next one ends up being
Speaker 1: the realm of indie go go. And as the Dragonfly
Speaker 1: future Phone future phone is spelled, all is one word
Speaker 1: fu tu r e f O with a new lout
Speaker 1: in future food. That was an indiego go project that
Speaker 1: funded on December two, thou fourteen. The campaign raised more
Speaker 1: than seven hundred twenty five thousand dollars, which meant the
Speaker 1: campaign funded by six thousand, four hundred. Now, originally the
Speaker 1: campaign goal was to hit one dollars, but Jeff Batio,
Speaker 1: who was the head of this company that was bringing
Speaker 1: this project up to crowdfunding, apparently lowered that to ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in an effort to get the fully funded
Speaker 1: designation on indiego go. Because that gives it a sense
Speaker 1: of prestige. People are more willing to put money into
Speaker 1: it when they see other people are already supporting it.
Speaker 1: There's also this whole fear of missing out the fomo approach,
Speaker 1: where you might think, oh, if I don't put money
Speaker 1: into this, I'm not going to be a part of this,
Speaker 1: or I'll have to pay three times as much when
Speaker 1: it comes out for retail. So it was a pretty
Speaker 1: clever move. So what was the future phone. Well, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be part laptop, part tablet, and part phone.
Speaker 1: Imagine a laptop computer. Now imagine that this laptop computer
Speaker 1: is actually kind of four pieces. Both the screen and
Speaker 1: the keyboard are divided right down the middle, and it's
Speaker 1: to vide in such a way where when you fold
Speaker 1: it down like you would fold down a regular laptop,
Speaker 1: you could then fold it again, so you're essentially folding
Speaker 1: it twice right, once with the screen down and once
Speaker 1: when you fold it back together against itself. Um, all
Speaker 1: the parts were hinged. It was supposed to work seamlessly,
Speaker 1: and you could even detach one of those two screens
Speaker 1: and have it act as a phone with the Android
Speaker 1: operating system. You could use a stylists or a keyboard
Speaker 1: for input. It was supposed to have a slide out
Speaker 1: touch pad that would come out of the keyboard as well,
Speaker 1: so you could use that as like a mouse pad tracker.
Speaker 1: And it was also supposed to be able to run Windows,
Speaker 1: so you could run Android and Windows parallel to each other.
Speaker 1: And you were supposed to have uninterrupted experiences. So if
Speaker 1: you were watching a movie, say on your Android fablet,
Speaker 1: which is what we used to call these things that
Speaker 1: were larger than phones and smaller than tablets. And I
Speaker 1: hate the phrase, but there you go. If you plug
Speaker 1: that into your overall device, you could turn it into
Speaker 1: back into laptop mode and keep watching right at that
Speaker 1: same moment. From that point forward. It was also supposed
Speaker 1: to have an eight hour battery life, was supposed to
Speaker 1: have really powerful process. There's a whole lot of ram
Speaker 1: for both the phone version and the laptop version. Essentially
Speaker 1: it was to have all the bells and whistles, and
Speaker 1: yet you would be able to secure one for just
Speaker 1: under eight hundred dollars. Remember the phrase if it sounds
Speaker 1: too good to be true. Well, Jeff Battio has a
Speaker 1: history of legal issues in business. He received a ban
Speaker 1: from selling securities in the state of Illinois at one point.
Speaker 1: The Danzing report goes so far as to call the
Speaker 1: future Phone and outright scam, saying Battio was essentially fleecing
Speaker 1: the public, that there was no intent to ever release
Speaker 1: a piece of technology at all, and in fact, there
Speaker 1: was a history of similar projects, even with similar signs
Speaker 1: to this future phone, that never seemed to exist beyond
Speaker 1: a computer generated model. The piece also pointed out that
Speaker 1: Battio's company, Ideal Future Incorporated, had actually let its business
Speaker 1: license expire, which seems to be an indication that it's
Speaker 1: not really a thing anymore. There's some speculation online that
Speaker 1: he's actually scheduled to go up for trial for possibly
Speaker 1: unrelated charges later this year. And now I don't know
Speaker 1: if Jeff Badio set out to create a scam and
Speaker 1: fleece people out of money, that is what a lot
Speaker 1: of people have accused him of doing. But I can
Speaker 1: certainly say that there's been no evidence of a future
Speaker 1: phone actually coming out since the announcement back then, and
Speaker 1: like there was, there were several updates that would come
Speaker 1: out over the next two years, but since it's been silent.
Speaker 1: Not all questionable campaigns, by the way, go the distance.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they get caught before they can go to completion,
Speaker 1: at least not on every platform. Back in twenty of team,
Speaker 1: there was a company called Scarp Technologies that launched a
Speaker 1: Kickstarter campaign for the Scarp Laser razor. And yeah, this
Speaker 1: was the device that was supposed to use laser light
Speaker 1: to give you a smooth close shave. The razor was
Speaker 1: supposed to reduce waste and eliminate skin irritation. Didn't use
Speaker 1: a blade to cut. It was going to use a
Speaker 1: fiber that has laser light running through it too destroy hair.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to actually be the evolution of technology
Speaker 1: that came out of the medical and cosmetics fields. The
Speaker 1: video on Kickstarter showed a device that was supposed to
Speaker 1: use lasers that relied on wavelengths of light that hairs
Speaker 1: could absorb but skin would not, So hair would effectively
Speaker 1: melt off at the base of the shaft, but your
Speaker 1: skin would remain untouched. The video also showed that the
Speaker 1: razor was in pretty much the same form factor as
Speaker 1: your general plastic disposable razor. It's just didn't have a blade,
Speaker 1: had this little laser light thing. But that's incredible they
Speaker 1: could fit all of that into a form factor that small,
Speaker 1: The power source, the laser, everything that you would need
Speaker 1: would be in this little handheld razor, just like it
Speaker 1: was disposable. That's amazing. The goal of the project was
Speaker 1: one sixty thousand dollars and the campaign had hit four
Speaker 1: million dollars, but then Kickstarter stepped in and suspended the
Speaker 1: campaign on October twelve, two thousand fifteen. So why did
Speaker 1: Kickstarter do that? While according to Kickstarter, it was because
Speaker 1: they said the team had no working prototype to show off,
Speaker 1: and Kickstarters said that any campaign that offers a physical
Speaker 1: product as a reward must have a working prototype of
Speaker 1: that product in order to be considered a valid campaign. Undeterred,
Speaker 1: the creators hopped on over to indiego Go and they
Speaker 1: launched a campaign there. They did not raise another four
Speaker 1: million dollars like they did on Kickstarter, but they still
Speaker 1: got five d seven thousand, hundred ten dollars funding. On
Speaker 1: October twenty, two thousand fifteen, two weeks after the kickstarted
Speaker 1: campaign had been suspended. Backers were supposed to get their
Speaker 1: laser razors in I have not seen any reports that
Speaker 1: anyone ever got one. Though a c Net reporter did
Speaker 1: visit their facility and god demonstration of the technology, it
Speaker 1: was not in the same form factor, it was not
Speaker 1: capable of doing all the things that the laser razor
Speaker 1: is supposed to be able to do. That the basic
Speaker 1: principles behind the technology were demonstrated, so the technology kind
Speaker 1: of sort of worked. The last update I saw from
Speaker 1: the company was in mayen and here is what it said,
Speaker 1: verbatim so quote. Dear Indiego Go supporters, it's hard to
Speaker 1: believe it's over two and a half years since we
Speaker 1: enlisted your support to help us bring the world's first
Speaker 1: laser powered razor to the market. It's been a time
Speaker 1: of many ups and downs, more downs than ups, to
Speaker 1: be honest, but the team continued to progress the project.
Speaker 1: It took nearly two years to produce the fiber to
Speaker 1: the necessary specifications, and halfway through we are pleased to
Speaker 1: announce we have also managed to apply the first coding
Speaker 1: in a manner that will allow the device to perform
Speaker 1: as required. We are also very pleased to announce that
Speaker 1: some strategic manufacturing partners are assisting us with continuing developments.
Speaker 1: Next steps include a second coding and then the challenge
Speaker 1: of mounting the physical size of the fiber. Finally, continued
Speaker 1: funding is vital, and meanwhile, fundraising we continue to keep
Speaker 1: funding progress from personal means as well as backing afforded
Speaker 1: by you, which I interpret to mean they actually are
Speaker 1: continuing to get money from their backers. A variety of
Speaker 1: industry professionals and executives remain involved in both these and
Speaker 1: our technical developments efforts. We knew it might not be
Speaker 1: easy to bring SCARP to the market, but we thank
Speaker 1: you for your continued support and optimism. Sincerely, Morgan and
Speaker 1: the SCARP team. So from this from May two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: we can presume that they're still working on this technology
Speaker 1: and maybe one day they'll actually be able to come
Speaker 1: out with the the full product. Whether or not it
Speaker 1: will be worth the weight is a question that other
Speaker 1: people will have to answer. I am not a backer
Speaker 1: on this one, and there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: who list this as an outright sort of scam approach.
Speaker 1: I'm not so readily eager to jump on that bandwagon.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the c NET report about actually seeing
Speaker 1: the technology working, although again in a totally different form
Speaker 1: factor and in a very limited use case, at least
Speaker 1: tells me that they are sincere in their efforts and
Speaker 1: raising half a million dollars. While that's a lot of
Speaker 1: money is not a lot to work on for two
Speaker 1: and a half years. So I suspect that this is
Speaker 1: a passion project that the team really hopes is going
Speaker 1: to work out, and here's hoping that they are able
Speaker 1: to turn out something that satisfies the people who have
Speaker 1: been backing their project. Now, no discussion about crowdfunding stories
Speaker 1: is complete without a rundown of the coolest cooler. This
Speaker 1: is probably really one of the most infamous tech related
Speaker 1: crowdfunding campaigns, and this one was a huge headache. Ryan
Speaker 1: Grepper first tried to get funding for his idea in
Speaker 1: but that campaign failed to fund. His second try, however,
Speaker 1: was a success, a massive success. He set a fifty
Speaker 1: thou dollar goal and he hit more than thirteen million
Speaker 1: dollars with more than sixty two thousand backers. And the
Speaker 1: idea sounded kind of neat but also kind of you know, bonkers.
Speaker 1: It's a cooler, the kind you put ice and drinks into,
Speaker 1: but it was also meant to have a USB charging
Speaker 1: station in it. There's a blender for a crushing ice,
Speaker 1: a waterproof Bluetooth speaker, and led light for the lid
Speaker 1: for those nighttime beach parties and a whole lot more right,
Speaker 1: You can actually see these things online. You can find
Speaker 1: one on various shopping sites. Well, Grepper ran into huge
Speaker 1: problems in production and in shipping. He discovered that it
Speaker 1: was really really complicated and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: points of failure and he kept running into them. And worse,
Speaker 1: he found it was more expensive than he anticipated. So
Speaker 1: while he had raised thirteen million dollars, that actually was
Speaker 1: not going to be enough to cover his costs to
Speaker 1: manufacture and ship these coolers out to backers and two
Speaker 1: pre orders. The company also put the cooler up for
Speaker 1: sale on Amazon before they had actually shipped out all
Speaker 1: the coolers to backers. In fact, as of this month,
Speaker 1: at the end of June two eighteen, approximately twenty thousand
Speaker 1: backers still have not received their cooler. That is crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean it's years later and twenty thousand people are
Speaker 1: still waiting on this. The company asked backers to cough
Speaker 1: up another nineties seven dollars at one point for expedited shipping.
Speaker 1: That was really in an effort to get a little
Speaker 1: more money to help cover the costs, almost you know,
Speaker 1: robbing Peter to pay Paul sort of situation. Uh, Grapper said, well,
Speaker 1: this is think of it this way. You're still getting
Speaker 1: the cooler for less than what retail price is going
Speaker 1: to be. That didn't necessarily mollify backers who had already
Speaker 1: spent the money thinking they were going to get a
Speaker 1: cooler in the first place. Grepper eventually would have to
Speaker 1: settle a case with the Oregon Department of Justice, and
Speaker 1: Coolest would ship coolers to eight seventy three backers in
Speaker 1: Oregon as part of that settlement. Coolest Coolers remains an
Speaker 1: example of how a project can get away from someone,
Speaker 1: particularly a project that involves manufacturing. So when you rely
Speaker 1: on production that's going on in another country, like in China,
Speaker 1: you give up a lot of your control and you
Speaker 1: might find that things do not go your way, and
Speaker 1: when things go wrong, it's really hard to rectify them.
Speaker 1: Actually feel pretty badly for Grepper. His campaign was incredibly successful,
Speaker 1: his costs were way higher than he anticipated, and his
Speaker 1: obligations were such that that really put him in a
Speaker 1: tough position. His backers were understandably upset by numerous delays,
Speaker 1: and he has to scramble to deliver upon promises because
Speaker 1: he takes these obligueations seriously. It's not again, it's not
Speaker 1: going to take the money and run kind of situation.
Speaker 1: This is a case where success kind of stinks, where
Speaker 1: because he was essentially promising stuff for less than what
Speaker 1: was going to cost him to make it, and because
Speaker 1: it got so incredibly successful, ultimately he was digging a
Speaker 1: deep hole for himself. I feel for the guy, especially
Speaker 1: since he just had an idea to make a kind
Speaker 1: of ridiculous cooler. Anyway, that RUPs up this discussion, this
Speaker 1: overview of some of the hits and misses of crowdfunding.
Speaker 1: Really to give you guys a sense of it, it's
Speaker 1: important to maintain skepticism and and you know, some some
Speaker 1: realistic expectations when you look at crowdfunding campaigns, and also
Speaker 1: to ask yourself really really really hard questions before you
Speaker 1: launch your own crowdfunding campaign, because sometimes it might mean
Speaker 1: the difference between setting a goal that is a chief
Speaker 1: movable but it's going to put you in a very
Speaker 1: difficult position, or setting a goal that is extremely ambitious.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't achieve it, but if you if you don't,
Speaker 1: you're not beholden to those guarantees you've been making. It's
Speaker 1: a delicate thing both as a crowdfunding campaign manager and
Speaker 1: as someone who's actually looking out at the crowdfunding landscape
Speaker 1: and saying, this sounds like a really interesting project and
Speaker 1: I want to support it. It also depends upon how
Speaker 1: you view the whole concept. Is it supporting a project
Speaker 1: or are you pre ordering a product? If you're thinking
Speaker 1: of it as pre ordering a product, maybe it's better
Speaker 1: to just wait pay full price when it comes out,
Speaker 1: after you have been assured that the product works as advertised.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe that's just my own opinion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: why not write me and let me know what those are.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I ain't gonna know. The email address for the
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