This is both unnecessarily unkind, and inaccurate: keyboardio seems like a successful use of Kickstarter to me, even with these issues. They have produced and distributed product to their backers which delivers on their promises as far as I can tell.

And, of course, there's a sampling bias at work: even very experienced commercial users of Chinese ODMs have these stories. They just don't write them up publicly for everyone else to learn from.

They shipped after about two and a half years of excuses, so now their success rate is 50%. Par for the course.

Shame on them for trying - your attitude stinks. I've backed a few small projects and they came through; however, if they had a similar story to this and failed I would certainly be understanding. When you back a project on kickstarter you assume a lot of risk. Perhaps Kickstarter should make it VERY clear that the product you're backing may never come to light and that your funding is going to be used to TRY to bring the product to life. Backers are not pre-ordering the next iPhone - they're literally helping someone boostrap an idea that "might" come to life. Back all projects accordingly.

I tend to agree somewhat, but think that this is mostly a strength. As a Kickstarter supporter, I tend to intentionally choose to support smaller and less experienced creators, because I believe in their vision. I want to join them in this journey to see whether they can, or maybe cannot, bring that vision to life. As long as the creators are doing what they can and being honest about their process, I get exactly what I paid for. If I just wanted a product, I would've gone to the store.

I like the idea of the idea of Kickstarter but it's hard to argue against him for execution. I'm only on month 28 of waiting for my Superbook order to ship. Original estimated delivery date? Feb 17. Luckily nothing changed in consumer tech over the past 22 months of bad luck and poor decisions holding delivery up, right? Shall I even mention The Coolest?

this one? https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andromium/the-superbook...

Except that, despite all this drama, they delivered an excellent product (eventually).

That's the point of Kickstarter, isn't it? I've backed some pretty awesome products in the past and have, so far, avoided the failures.

Well, business is a lot of failing forward. And their product is a good one.

Don’t be like that.

Opinion presented as fact.