Think I’m batting 4 wins and 2 losses with KS now. Assuming the xBloom is delivered, which seems likely.
One loss was for the x-bar espresso device. $200 maybe? Reviews by influencers were positive but then they simply disappeared and all we got was radio silence. That one appeared to stumble in going from prototype to production. Covid probably did not help.
The second was due to me being dumb and basing my pledge on images rather than seeing a video of a working prototype. Not coffee related. $180 maybe. Turned out that one was a blatant rip off.
The latter type of loss is my concern with crowd sourcing.
The goal is reached, pledges collected and then presumably the money, minus KS fees, is deposited into the private bank account of the project owner.
In the case of a proven manufacturer with many shareholders and board governance, that’s a safer bet. Although such companies normally raise capital privately.
But where we have one individual who relatively quickly finds $5 million (?) dollars in his bank account, I have to confess to having concerns.
In the case of Meticulous, concern #1 is the Chess KS project that raised $2 million (?) and years later has not been delivered.
Concern #2 is the temptation to take the money and simply fudge a failure by stretching out excuses over a few years while living the high life. I’m not aware of any federal requirement for transparency or accountability with KS projects. And even if there was, the power to prosecute based on one country’s laws weakens considerably once the money and the owner relocate to another country.
But assuming the above two concerns are not an issue i.e. the project owners are ethical people, concern #3 is putting $5 million (?) into the hands of someone who is not experienced in bringing thousands of machines to market from a prototype that is clearly not yet fully sorted.
The extraordinay success of the Timemore and Meticulous KS projects have magnified what were minor concerns before, to what are now major concerns, as least in my mind.
It was different when the individual pledge amounts and the total amounts raised were smaller. I may not be concerned about a firecracker going off on my front doorstep, but I would be very concerned about a bomb going off.
The KS game has changed.
