Just wanted to pop my head in to share
this story. Which totally has nothing to do with the subject of this thread. Nothing at all:
Thx. Will read right now.
The following could be a TLDR. Though it is a fascinating look into massively overfunding a Kickstarter project. The entire writing was a great read giving me much insight. Here I have included some things that stood out to me:
The Kickstarter postmortem on the Zano crowdfunded project:
--
“Kickstarter was a great way to create a viral marketing campaign, to raise awareness of what we were trying to do,”
--A good project idea that the Internet went wild over supporting. It
"met its initial funding target in just 10 days, then blew right past it." Thousands of donations from around the world pledged an astonishing amount of funds that were Many Times Over what Zanos had asked for.
--Zano kept regularly posting encouraging news.
--Workers recall
"a fun, busy office. “It was hard work and everybody believed in Ivan and the product until the last weeks,” he says. “We all gave up weekends and did [a] stupid amount of overtime without seeking remuneration. It was like being part of an adventure with a tough start but [then] to be a lot better off after a year…of hardship.” With
"a bunch of very passionate, skilled, and dedicated persons,” he says. “Too many times we worked until 9 or 10pm, some weekends included, to accomplish tight deadlines planned by the directors. But we were happy to do that." Thousands of "customers were waiting for the product, and success was just around the corner.”
--Updates posted a generally rosy picture. Although there were some warning signs if one was looking closely, like the deadlines that came and went. Always being followed by more excited happy promise of new ones. That eventually came and went.
--
"a pervasive culture of overconfidence: “The word ‘risk’ seemed to not exist at Torquing. During the first months after the Kickstarter campaign, we were already the ‘winners’, the way ahead was a straight walk down from the top of a hill.”
--
"But bumps in the road kept popping up."
--
"So what went wrong? Almost everyone I spoke with had an opinion, and (almost) none suspects foul play. Kestrel’s Grant says, “I don’t think they were criminal. I think they were small businesspeople who bit off more than they could chew.”
--
“In no uncertain terms, I believe the reason TRL failed was basically poor financial planning". "The truth seems to be that almost everyone at Torquing was out of their depth." Success working in a small related business has a whole different set of skills to
"building a competitive consumer product company."
--"Torquing’s directors managed their business poorly and spent the Kickstarter money too freely."
--
“I started to feel…that where we had gone wrong was listening to Ivan saying he could do this." “Ivan was a good friend to me. If I saw him tomorrow, I would have more condolences for him than I would have anger. But at the end of the day, thinking of all the people who invested in his Kickstarter, he shouldn’t really have done it.”
"But what had actually happened? Was the Zano project a scam from the word go, a money-making scheme to defraud backers? Were the Torquing leadership team inept, negligent, or incompetent, or some combination of all three?"
Well...
Massively overfunding can significantly effect and restructure the thinking and desires of a project's designers. Kickstarter admits this is a problem, this dumping of unexpected huge amounts of money into the laps of projects that have crowfunded for a fraction of that amount. Which is why Mark Harris was hired by them to investigate how, where, & why the Zanos project funded through them went wrong as well as how Kickstarter can better support the funders using Kickstarter.
(And though paid for by Kickstarter Harris agreed to doing this investigation only with the agreement Kickstarter could have no imput of any kind or editing rights of any sort. Period.)
So what did this author surmise researching the Zanos project?
--Crowdfunders should
"be as honest and transparent about their failures as they are celebratory with their successes."
--"Communications from the project creators to backers were, on the whole, regular and fairly honest. However, they were also incomplete, overconfident, and reflected a dangerous lack of self-awareness of the problems the company was making for itself."
--The Kickstarter
'Report This Project' button at the very bottom of each Kickstarter page is vague and easy to overlook. I would suggest replacing it with a 'Convince Me' button in a prominent location. If enough registered users click on this, the project would receive additional scrutiny from the platform’s Trust or Integrity teams.
--
"High value and massively overfunded projects require special attention. Kickstarter, and other crowdfunding platforms, should reconsider the way that they deal with projects involving massive overfunding"
--
"Potential backers should do more to educate themselves and each other. While unbridled enthusiasm is always welcome, the most useful thing backers can bring to any project is helpful, thoughtful criticism. "
--
"Finally, crowds are great but mobs are not. Having ten thousand people actively following your every move can be overwhelming even when things are going well. Rants, accusations, and personal threats are hurtful and invariably counterproductive."
"Many of the backers that got in touch with me, even ones who had previously lost money in unsuccessful crowdfunding projects, say that their experiences with Zano soured them on Kickstarter itself and crowdfunding in general."
And quite interesting to me:
“I don’t think the Zano project has [failed] in any way,” says Reedman. (designer of the project)
“I think there’s a very distinct possibility that the project itself will continue." Reedman tells me that he has had a number of discussions, both commercial and open source, about resurrecting Zano:" ---- SPOCK: "Fascinating."
