Kickstarter used to be exciting. I actually used to check on the trending products weekly. It was a great place to find innovative ideas all in one place.
I would happily contribute to the most interesting or useful product campaigns, get excited about my new purchase, and wait for the creator’s progress updates.
But then the tail end of the process showed it’s ugly face.
Updates start to come in less frequently. The company hits a wall developing a certain competent they didn’t consider beforehand. I even funded a company that flat out admitted that they weren’t equipped to deliver the product. I admire them for not wasting time, but what were they thinking when they launched the campaign weeks earlier?
It’s as if these so-called creators forgot they actually had to do work to create the amazing things they promised to the world.
The end result is either a refund in full or a product that I am far less excited about a year after I purchased it.
Case in point, I funded the Agent Smartwatch. Without checking the dates, that had to be in 2012. They’re still sending monthly updates while they develop the first version of the watch. How insane is that? I don’t even want that stupid smartwatch anymore.
A similar thing happened with Coin – even though they accepted their pre-orders on their own site. Too much development time passed and more than 50% of their customers ended up asking for refunds by the time they developed the smart credit card.
And that’s why I stopped funding Kickstarter campaigns.
The good trustworthy companies will be successful after they’ve raised money. Whether they raise the money via VC’s/angels or on Kickstarter is now meaningless to me. Either way, I now just wait until I know the product is actually obtainable.
I will now only purchase products that will be shipped to me immediately.
I’d like to close by saying I still adore Kickstarter as a company. This problem isn’t their faults. It’s merely a flaw in the human attributes that exist within something I call “The Excitement Cycle.” As humans, we like to get excited about things so that we can anticipate events in intervals. Spiking our adrenaline for these things in the short-term are often the only catalysts that keep us going.
Yancey Strickler will remain one of my favorite CEO’s in the space. He’s absolutely brilliant. The entire founding team of Kickstarter is. But if they want to prove that this crowdfunding model can be less frustrating for consumers, they need to tread the tech space with more caution moving forward.