I was a backer, so I will share the last update from KS (which was only provided after months of backers pleading and cajoling for any type of update):
Fatal Mistakes My name is Connor Nishijima. In 2015, I set out to audit the emotions of the earth via Twitter using a Kickstarter for Emotiscope - then known as "Moodlight". It crashed and burned. Here's what I did wrong. I never planned to make it this far I only wanted just enough funding for a small batch. Just enough leftover to start a run on Tindie afterwards or something, so I did the math. $935 was what I needed to make a modest batch, and grow it from there afterwards. I could handle assembly and shipment on my own in a timely matter for that kind of run. I hit that goal in less than 24 hours. Fuck. It kept going, and kept going, until I was 483% over funded. My first fatal mistake was never planning for this before starting. I didn't know how to fulfill that size of an order yet. Irresponsibility with funds I own a 2008 2nd Gen Prius. It's a wonderful car, but it had a hiccup. Driving on a freeway, the car would slow down on its own. No dash warnings. I turned off the air conditioner and radio. The car kept slowing down and losing power. It went into safe mode, then all the dash warning lights went on. After taking it to a dealer, the regular service tech couldn't figure why it was failing. There were no codes being generated upon failure. The dealer got a master tech from Toyota who went over the car and said it was fine. After the first service tech and I witnessing the failure, I wasn't confident taking the car. The master tech said he would try driving it again. After a 20 minute drive, the car failed again. The diagnosis from the master tech was to replace the Hybrid, Power and the Transmission Computer. This totaled $1,660 in parts and $1,428 in service. I had $1,700 of my own savings on hand, but I still needed another $1,300 to cover the cost. My girlfriend at the time didn't drive or work, so this was the only way for either of us to afford our roof. At the time I was making ~$1,500 a month at my job, so I figured this would be easy to fill in with some help from family. I pulled $1,300 from the KS fund, with the idea of paying it back in within a month. This was my second fatal mistake. That company I worked for was the original RadioShack. (Now General Wireless DBA "RadioShack") After filing their Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February that year for a restructure plan with Sprint's parent company, they got the approval in September. In October 2015, RadioShack cleaned house of over 80% it's hourly-waged employees to bring in existing Sprint staff for massive downsizing. Now I've fixed my car, and I have no income source. During following month, I had to live off of KS funds, until landing as an Electrical CSA for Lowe's, for about the same wages. So my life was back on track, but now I'm out $1,300 car fund, and $800 rent. I was making about $1,400 a month on average at my new job, and this wasn't enough. Rent - $800 Groceries - $100 Gas - $20 Heating - $80 Electrical - $60 Water - $40 Verizon - $110 Comcast - $60 Pet supplies - $20 Total: $1290 At the end of every month, I would only be left with about $110. At that rate, it would take 19 months to refill the KS fund to it's original status, so I knew now that the entire profit margin was gone and I would have to sell at a loss. I had no fulfillment company One thing I realized very quickly after it was too late, was that anyone whose ever comfortably "made it" on KS used a fulfillment company to handle shipping. There are companies designed where you can ship your entire stock to them, and an address list. They charge $2-5 per order, and move shipments for you. I didn't have one on retainer, because I never expected the massive overfunding. But I couldn't afford that fee, as things were already in the hole. I wasn't cautious with large order proofing "Might as well keep up appearances", I thought. I pressed on, making a final revision of the boards, double checking it, and ordering 120. I checked every trace, and all was well. But this was my third fatal mistake - I did the mass order without a proof. By forgetting to change out the DRC of the more-expensive and capable OSHPark fab, I gave a board to a Chinese factory that couldn't match the OSHPark standard my board passed during checking. As you may recall, 120 boards arrived with a short to ground near the LM317, causing it to overheat, overdraw current, and quickly destroy any USB port they were plugged into. This was a $574 loss. I kept changing the product after launch I was starting to make a little more money on the side with some graphic and web design consultation, so I was able to make back a lot of the missing money. So I got cocky. I wanted to make the wait worth it for my backers, so I refined the prototype unit seen in the video to a slimmer model, with a faster processor, and a painted, translucent front window. I figured since the boards were dead I could still change the PCB as needed. This was my fourth fatal mistake. This extra prototyping ended up costing an extra $400, and wasn't necessary. My backers fell in love with the original model - why the hell was I changing it when I'm already in the hole? By the time I'd reached the point where a design was set in stone, that I felt was worth the wait to the backers, the 6 already-running DigitalOcean computation servers had costed me another $480. I was left with $1,400 at that point in time, and I would need another $2,485 to simply break even on this product. Fear of permanent Kickstarter reputation Anxiety set in. This product just wasn't going to happen - and I didn't want to face it. I was called a coward by some of my more intense backers, and one even released a previous address of mine from a WHOIS record in an attempt to have people harass me or my family in my home. I alerted the current residents to the entire situation, at which point their attorney said that if anyone came to the door for that purpose they could pursue a class-action harassment charge with me against that backer for openly inciting residential harassment from strangers online. Luckily for him, that never happened, and the KS staff removed my information from the campaign. But what did happen was a permanent negative comments section of Kickstarter, which will rightfully tie to my name forever. Hiding This did incite a bit of fear. Someone wanted angry backers to find me in person. To do what, I'm not sure. While some of you are disappointed at the failure of my venture, I can't imagine you're violent. So I went on hiatus until I could figure my future in electronics out. A month later, I released photos of one final model: the slim, but windowless fourth model. Maybe there's still some love out there. I wasn't ready to post a public update, so I kept some of my angrier backers up to date for the time being. The info leaked to all interested before I finished an update, so I let people discuss the new model on their own and answered questions, until I realized something: I wasn't passionate anymore Even if some angel investment allowed me to continue as if nothing happened, I wouldn't want to. The project at hand became too ambitious, as I realized I'd have to continue paying for Emotiscope servers for years after retiring the product. The sense of failure and disappointment tainted the entire idea for me, and I no longer loved this little lamp, I resented it and myself. This is the end of the line... My fifth and final fatal mistake was a lack of transparency. I regret keeping my backers in the dark as my product capsized, I was too prideful to admit defeat as soon as I should have. I'm sorry for the long run of nothingness this became, and for being irresponsible with funding. This will probably be my first and last Kickstarter, as I'm terrified of the entire site now. My heart would sink every time I got a message from a backer and didn't know what to say. For the longest time I felt like I could turn it around, but it's official: The Moodlight Kickstarter is closed. I don't have enough funds for every backer, and even if I did, I couldn't possibly pretend I was still passionate about the service it offered. Even after 18 months of development I could never bring the statistics to the level of accuracy I wanted, so the lamp was little more than a random light show at times with only major world events across all cultures triggering a response. I'd like to extend my full appreciation to all 102 backers for funding my first Kickstarter, being patient for a year, and even trying to scare me - because it's made me more cautious. It's made me realize I wasn't ready, and has given me a reason to never blindly take the risks I did, again. - Connor Nishijima On Tue, Mar 21, 2017 at 11:41 PM, Nick <[email protected]> wrote: > Is there a public reference for the Kickstarter issue, or is that heresay? > > Nick > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "neonixie-l" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > msgid/neonixie-l/7164ffd3-c2c7-4c49-b4ef-126bef786107%40googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. 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