Well, apparently this guy actively misrepresented what he was doing and just ran off with the money. Most Kickstarters gone wrong involve amateurs totally underestimating the resources they'll need to achieve something and running out of money before having a product.
Many also get drastically overfunded, and the creators totally go off the rails with grandiose plans, instead of following their original, achievable goals.
The ZPM Espresso project was a great example of both of these. Founders were woefully inexperienced and underestimated the difficulties of manufacturing at every turn. Plus, the fact that they wildly overshot their initial goal meant they were in the worst "middle ground" of manufacturing. They had to worry about much more than just delivering a small number of prototype units, but they also didn't have so much volume that they were getting much discount from manufacturers.
Is there the ability to limit funding in bands to limit this 'middle ground'
ie. if we're funded between a to b we'll deliver a prototype unit, but over b we won't deliver any more until we hit c. Hitting the initial funding goal opens up a stretch goal that is independent (backers are backing the stretch goal, not the initial campaign and won't get rewarded unless it's also hit)
I've seen many Kickstarters that have limits on certain rewards. I've never created one so I can't say for sure... but perhaps if you can set all your rewards with limits you could at least keep it from being a runaway. That would at least give you a window and certainly an absolute top end (if all reward levels sell out).
I think smart campaigns, especially for manufacturing projects, should limit funding so that they can work out the kinks in their product, and if they're wrong on cost estimates, they limit their losses. If they're successful, they can always do another kickstarter to ramp up manufacturing.
Yep; same, I keep a list of things I'll buy if/when I can just get it through their website. I've seen too many fail to deliver stuff for a couple years now that I'm pretty skeptical of any pre-orders.
The latest thing on my list is the Marbel skateboard. Looks great on paper, all the tech exists, other [small] companies are doing it, but they've had tons of delays and I don't trust that their first products sent out won't have some kinks. I'm not really willing to pay the early adopter fee for a vehicle which could cause me great bodily harm if it malfunctions (e.g. Bluetooth has interference problems or randomly disconnects, which would definitely not be unprecedented in the world of e-skateboards).
Seems like the best thing to do then is turn around and find funding (probably by way of debt or equity) to turn the small run into a larger run. Clearly there was some demand, and it's doubtful their whole potential market saw the Kick Starter campaign.
