Crowd funding - modern scams?

[Badvok]

I fell for a shiny gadget on Kickstarter only to realise that you are essentially 'gifting' money to them in the promise that should they launch you'll get the product. Sadly it seems more and more kickstarters and indiegogo projects are failing either by bad management or just a plain old scam. Many are walking away with millions!

Reddit on the whole affair here

Some notable failures :

Zano collected $3.2 million
Laser Razer collected $4 million
Crystal Wash scam pseudo science raised $210,000

and this one just just takes the biscuit yet managed to raise over $1 million!

Edited by Badvok on Saturday 23 July 21:36

[Bullett]

Some of them, probably. I do think the majority mean well and any failure isn't premeditated. I have had almost 100% delivery for the projects I have backed, the few that have not delivered yet are either just finished or delayed, I'd sure both will deliver.

The thing that pisses me off is when viable companies crowdfund something they should be able to bring to market as they already have customers/proof it works. It should be for innovative or projects that might not gain a market otherwise.

I still expect to see a fallout from Star Citizen though.

[Mr Snrub]

Or the whole Coleco Chameleon saga, where they got a load of money to make a new games console but instead made a shell with bits of a Super Nintendo and video capture card stuffed inside

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-03-04-there...

[jdw100]

Badvok said:

I fell for a shiny gadget on Kickstarter only to realise that you are essentially 'gifting' money to them in the promise that should they launch you'll get the product. Sadly it seems more and more kickstarters and indiegogo projects are failing either by bad management or just a plain old scam. Many are walking away with millions!

Reddit on the whole affair here

Some notable failures :

Zano collected $3.2 million
Laser Razer collected $4 million
Crystal Wash scam pseudo science raised $210,000

and this one just just takes the biscuit yet managed to raise over $1 million!

Edited by Badvok on Saturday 23 July 21:36

Hi, that page your 'here' links to is a mess......which was the one that didn't deliver for you?

I've got three watches (and have backed another two) - all I'm really happy with. In fact one of them gets more wear than my Rolex or Omega etc. (I have too many watches....)

Got some beach towels at a silly low price by backing early - really good!

A phone case that the coating has rubbed off, not so good. However the company are going to replace it or refund customers as desired.

Overall I've really enjoyed the Kickstarter process but. I wouldn't spend than £500 on something there - that's as much as I'm prepared to risk.

Most of the watch producers have gone on to make more models. I often pre-order from other watch micro-brands so for me KS is not that different a process anyway....

Sorry to hear you lost your money, hope it wasn't too much!

[Supersonic Welly]

jdw100 said:

In fact one of them gets more wear than my Rolex or Omega etc.

Pic?

[Badvok]

jdw100 said:

Hi, that page your 'here' links to is a mess......which was the one that didn't deliver for you?

thats how Reddit community looks, you get used to it

I didn't actually lose a lot, I think around $30. I 'backed' the ZNAPS iPhone magnetic connector, way overdue and others are available right now on Amazon for far less. There's also a lot of dodgy rumours flying around about them.

Overall I don't feel the process of giving someone money in the hope that you may get something back is at all right. The more you dig at these projects the more you see a number of them are blatantly scams that will never deliver yet somehow manage to whip up $100,000

[AlasdairMc]

I've got one outstanding at the moment, an iPhone charging cable (ooh, revolutionary). However, there are a couple I'm about to back, one of which because it's from an established manufacturer so I think chances of failure are low.

I agree re the magic claims you see on there - if it's too good to be true etc etc.

[Condi]

Badvok said:

Overall I don't feel the process of giving someone money in the hope that you may get something back is at all right. The more you dig at these projects the more you see a number of them are blatantly scams that will never deliver yet somehow manage to whip up $100,000

You have to wonder who the fool is though? Who gives a company a significant chunk of money for something which isnt produced or proven yet? Also, Im not sure of the wording, but you're not actually buying the product when investing in Kickstarter or the like, you're providing capital for the business and in return they are offering a free item when its produced, which is a very different legal contract to making a purchase from a shop. Hence why they can shrug their shoulders and walk away when it doesnt work.

[wildcat45]

Can someone please explain to me what crowd funding is and how it works?

[Ari]

Supersonic Welly said:

jdw100 said:

In fact one of them gets more wear than my Rolex or Omega etc.

Pic?

Google 'Rolex watch', then Google 'Omega watch' - plenty of pics.

[anonymous-user]

wildcat45 said:

Can someone please explain to me what crowd funding is and how it works?

you ask a crowd(people) to fund (donate) to complete a prototype or fanciful idea, to full scale manufacture, in return offering various crap rewards.

the Crowd funding host will take a percentage of raised fund.

Edited by The Spruce goose on Sunday 24th July 13:47

[sjg]

Badvok said:

I fell for a shiny gadget on Kickstarter only to realise that you are essentially 'gifting' money to them in the promise that should they launch you'll get the product.

They make it pretty obvious that it's pledging and not a storefront. On any project when you click "Back this project" you see:

kickstarter said:

Kickstarter is not a store.
It's a way to bring creative projects to life.
Kickstarter does not guarantee projects or investigate a creator's ability to complete their project. It is the responsibility of the project creator to complete their project as promised, and the claims of this project are theirs alone.

They even make every project have a "Risks and Challenges" section to outline what they think may cause them problems.

Many of the funded failures are not so much a scam as inexperienced people with an idea and a slick video but little clue about how to get from that to a finished, manufactured and dispatched product. The ones that get many times their original goal often combine that with scope creep and needing to manage extra staff and third parties too - it all costs more and takes longer than they thought and they burn through money until it collapses.

I've helped fund plenty of stuff but it's either been cheap and simple, or done by experienced people who I feel are capable of delivering. It works really well for things like board games where a designer can have a good working concept done, and just needs the money to pay for proper artwork and printing - it also takes a lot of guesswork out of how large a print run to do.

[jdw100]

Supersonic Welly said:

jdw100 said:

In fact one of them gets more wear than my Rolex or Omega etc.

Pic?

I'll take some tomorrow.

[wildcat45]

The Spruce goose said:

you ask a crowd(people) to fund (donate) to complete a prototype or fanciful idea, to full scale manufacture, in return offering various crap rewards.

the Crowd funding host will take a percentage of raised fund.

Edited by The Spruce goose on Sunday 24th July 13:47

Ah I see. Thanks for explaining.

[hairyben]

A couple of chancers whos previous experience was putting on a few club nights decided to put on a 4 day, 4 stage 200+ band alternative music (goth/industrial etc) festival in a 40k venue a couple of years ago, with tickets being via crowdsourcing. The whole thing just stank of "how will this ever work" and it inevitably fell flat on its face with load of people owed money. I do wonder whether it would have sold more of the tickets they needed to if the model wasnt so risky but the whole thing and the break even numbers were a bit of a fantisy really.

The whole crowdsourcing thing does seem very open to abuse by dreamers and schemers.

[xRIEx]

There is/was a self-filling water bottle project on Indiegogo that this guy pretty convincingly debunks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPvXnmBIO7o (debunking via theory)

and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vss1ke5tTvI (debunking via experiment). He's done 3 or 4 videos on that in total.

He's also done one on an artificial gill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5ep2vUMJt0 and has done several on solar freakin' roadways. All quite interesting, covering the science behind it.

Edited by xRIEx on Sunday 24th July 18:42

[anonymous-user]

basically 99.9% of ideas are snake oil.

[Bullett]

That's not true or even close to it.
https://www.kickstarter.com/fulfillment

91% success or close to it. My personal experience is 100% success so far, I have back 30 projects 3 failed to hit funding targets, two have yet to reach initial delivery dates.and there was a straw poll on one of facebook groups reporting similar levels of success.
Of course that 9% is going to hurt someone and the high profile/big money cases will always make things seem much worse than reality.

Like most other things, if it appears to be too good to be true it probably is.

[ecsrobin]

AlasdairMc said:

I've got one outstanding at the moment, an iPhone charging cable (ooh, revolutionary). However, there are a couple I'm about to back, one of which because it's from an established manufacturer so I think chances of failure are low.

I agree re the magic claims you see on there - if it's too good to be true etc etc.

This was an established company and I lost nearly £100 http://www.triggertrap.com/news/triggertrap-ada-ca...

[jdw100]

The Spruce goose said:

basically 99.9% of ideas are snake oil.

Oh come on, that's not even close to being true.

I've backed 7 projects so by that measure I should be out by all of those - I'm not and I'm really happy with them all.

I have a friend who backed a carry on backpack type thing - it's great and he got it for half what they are retailing at now.

I'm on emailing terms with one of the watch makers and he's a lovely chap, has a passion for watches and is in no way a 'snake oil' salesman.

Check out the latest offering from LIV watches, totally honest campaign; there have been some delays but all of them explained with photos and detail of exactly where they are in terms of the manufacturing process.

I will continue to back things that interest me. Of course if it's for something like a teleportation system for your home or a hover car I would treat it with a good degree of scepticism....but for most things I have no issues with KS.

To say that 99% of activity is fraudulent is clearly untrue.