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glen likes this
I get that companies have to promote things they haven't done yet but I wish they would be more grounded when doing these projects. 9 Million dollars is a lot of capital to get something done. It's a pretty weird world when you can take that kind of money and then just say "Welp, sorry, I couldn't do it actually."
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ahnyerkeester 7 years ago
I backed this. We were getting regular updates about the progress of the project and NOTHING about financial problems till we got a notice that they were filing for chapter 7. There is a class action law suit being brought by supporters but I don't anticipate getting my money back.
Does that mean that crowd funding is a failure? Not really. What it is is a risk. And that's what investments are: risks. So some of my crowd funding experiments have been wonderful such as the MST3K Revival, Lumo Run, Bibliotheca, and the Basics (now Nomatic) day planner. Others have been failures like Znaps which never went bankrupt but hasn't shipped anything or Plastc which just folded.
Going into these things you just have to know that you are a small scale venture capitalist and you stand to lose everything you put into the project. Or you get in on something for a lower price.
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ahnyerkeester 7 years ago
Wait a minute. The very first sentence of the article is "Crowdfunding is not an investment—it's a gamble." What? What does Eric Limer thing investments are? Sure things? Eric needs a basic economics course.
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brian 7 years ago
All fair points and I agree the story is a little one sided. There have been some great products and innovations made through crowd funding. I just wish some people would think long and hard about whether they can deliver on their promises before setting up a Kickstarter...etc., the Lily was a sham from day one and the people behind it knew it. I tend to think people are genuinely good and not intentionally trying to rip people off, but then there are a small percentage that are totally fine with doing that. It's just a little disappointing, focusing on those people and situations is ignoring the thousands of successful projects that have been funded.
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