I'm more worried that products like this will put an end to the ease of crowdfunding.
A few more duds like this that raised over $200,000 for developers and engineers clearly without the technical know-how and prowess to pull something like this off and deliver what they promised just makes it that much harder for people to have their projects taken seriously on kickstarter in the future.
I'm not worried about that, I'm hoping it happens. It obviously should be harder to have your project taken seriously and raise 200k. I adore kickstarter, but it shouldn't be a gold rush for anyone good at making videos, but not products.
I agree with this point and I too adore kickstarter. Generally, the startup advice I've been receiving is to show vision by creating a really solid pitch rather than actually building (or only build for pitch purposes). I understand why this would be the case since if I can build the right emotional state which leads to the same or better outcome (raise $$) at a fraction of the time/cost, why wouldn't I? However, this has caused me to be jaded. Instead of getting excited about new products, I'm now very cautious. I'm asking myself... is the focus on the sales approach right for this product or does it weaken its credibility?
I can't think of a better example for buyer-beware. The crowd-funding idea is new and exciting, and a lot of people are jumping in on ideas they want to see come to fruition, without properly vetting those behind those ideas.
We will probably see some money come out of crowdfunding, but only the mindless money that was being thrown at it before that shouldn't have been. This product shouldn't have been funded, and likely, in the future, a product with similar prospects won't be. That's a good thing.
This product should have been funded, clearly. You are saying it shouldn't have been because the execution didn't match the (perfectly reasonable) hype.
One problem highlighted by this situation is the lack of an advisor. There should be an advisor (essentially a board member) associated with sufficiently large projects to make sure that things progress (and to give the inventor the ability to communicate changes without it blowing up like this).
Jokes aside, people continue to vote for politicians who are under-qualified and who make promises they wouldn't even have the power to keep... and yet study after study shows that bad promises are far more effective at getting votes than setting realistic expectations.
If the same holds true for crowdfunding, illustrious but poorly defined projects built by under-qualified "inventors" has a long run ahead of it.
A few more duds like this that raised over $200,000 for developers and engineers clearly without the technical know-how and prowess to pull something like this off and deliver what they promised just makes it that much harder for people to have their projects taken seriously on kickstarter in the future.