I pre-ordered the Pyra and have been following its development ever since. IMO, many companies could learn a lot from them. Despite being such a small team they give out regular updates and are completely transparent. I think as long as you're honest about what's going on people are very understanding about delays and many other issues.

For an example of a massive hardware screw-up, take a look at the Jolla tablet. They barely gave any updates, always pretending everything was great, and suddenly they're out of money and cancelling the whole thing. Springing that up out of nowhere completely killed my trust with them.