My opinion on crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo):
It's better for the makers than for the buyers.
I've bought like two dozen products by crowdfunding. My results:
- a couple of products I like (but could have bought later.)
- A few products which turned out to be no good for me.
- Several products which I've just never used.
- many products which took over a year to arrive.
- A couple of products which did not work.
- And the most expensive product of all of them, a serious investment (a mid-market 3D printer), turned out to be an elaborate hoax, and I lost a hunk of money. (And I was not being stupid, the smartest tech guy I know bought into it too.)
I guess the point is that the savings is not worth the great risk, usually. If a product turns out to be good, you can get this fact confirmed by reviews after it's on the market, and the price difference usually is not big.
And by the way, I don't think I've been unusually unlucky. I don't tend to be. For example I've bought *many* things on eBay, and almost never have I felt cheated. Just one real example comes to mind, and Paypal got me my money back pronto, something which does not happen with crowdfunding.
Update:
Anonymous said...
I don't think buying and saving money are the objectives of crowdfunding.
Anon, good point. There is often a social aspect of crowdfunding and so on, it's complex. I think crowdfunding basically is a great thing, it has enabled many good things to become real.
But there are also tons of projects which are simply commercial products. There's often no particularly socially interesting aspect, it may just be a new drone or whatever. And just like a normal investor needs a reasonable chance that he will get more back than he puts in, a crowdfunder needs a reason to buy now and to take the risk, and usually that reason is "get it cheaper now" or similar.
And I was aware of that risk, but I had no concept of how real and how high that risk was, and I think many others are in that boat too.
3 comments:
I don't think buying and saving money are the objectives of crowdfunding, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdfunding#Role
I don't think it is a problem with crowdfunding if you buy things that you don't really need. Some of the other problems seem to be inherent, unless there is involvement by people who have a track record, and then they are probably going to be seeking funding through traditional channels.
There have been a couple of projects for camera controllers. The idea is that you attach the device to the camera and then it connects to the camera using USB. then a phone or tablet connects to the device by WiFi allowing control of focussing etc.One thing they allow is automated focus stacking. So far, so good. The main worry is that remote control of cameras can be dodgy, so what happens if they can't get it perfected? I get a device, it doesn't work well enough to be useful and then they disappear.
Ken, yes exactly.
---
Anon, good point. There is often a social aspect of crowdfunding and so on, it's complex. I think crowdfunding basically is a great thing, it has enabled many good things to become real.
But there are also tons of projects which are simply commercial products. There's often no particularly socially interesting aspect, it may just be a new drone or whatever. And just like a normal investor needs a reasonable chance that he will get more back than he puts in, a crowdfunder needs a reason to buy now and to take the risk, and usually that reason is "get it cheaper now" or similar.
And I was aware of that risk, but I had no concept of how real and how high that risk was, and I think many others are in that boat too.
Post a Comment