> But people already paid for them and I failed to deliver those to them

I may be missing something, but shouldn’t you be giving them to the people who paid for them?

Yea, or sell them and try to reimburse the people… there are ways to make this somewhat right.

I did my best for 5 years, but I really fucked up the business by over promising (I was young, this was 10 years ago). I hit burnout a couple years in, and kept pushing. Then I had to take on debt to keep going, so I had to get a full time job to start paying off the debt. With a full time job and debt to pay I worked weekends for months to try to deliver, but after years of burnout and still so little progress I eventually had to give up.

I’m seeing a lot of comments about “you should do X” but I don’t think a lot of people understand what extreme burnout is like. My mental health was horrible after all of that, and at some point I literally couldn’t will myself to continue. After five years of work I announced the project was over in 2018. Some people understood and some people were upset. But I did everything I could for 5 years, and by that point there were a lot of better products on the market that people could actually buy, unlike mine. You give as much as you can but at some point you have to walk away.

I'm so sorry. Burnout is the worst. If you ever recover, you have the people's addresses and the devices, send them.

When you're in a better place, maybe have someone else ship them so you don't have to deal with it.

You could try updating your backers and see if they will pay the postage for the devices they already paid for! Honestly, the mentality of some kickstarter creators is beyond belief.

If you have the devices, that you acknowledge that people paid for, then at least attempt to provide your backers with something.

You didn't go into receivership as you still have the assets - at the moment you just sound like a fraudster.

I did attempt to give the backers something. For years I did the best that I could. I went in to tens of thousands of dollars of personal debt just to be able to produce the boards, and then had to work a full time job to pay off that debt. Working full time and paying off debt left very little time or money to pack the items and pay to ship them. After years of burnout I was spending all weekend packing and shipping items, and after doing that for months, and at some point after delivering about 1/2 the hardware I just hit a wall. I was unable to continue. My mental health was horrible. It continues to be the worst period of my life, and I gave it everything I could for 5 years.

I very much gave what I could, but when you fuck up in business sometimes you just have to walk away. I really needed to for my own mental health. The product launched in 2013 and I walked away from it in 2018. It took me years to recover. To this day I can’t really even stand to mail simple packages. I’m not going back - that period of my life is over.

I just never figured out what the product was really good for, so I’ve been unsure who to donate the remaining stock to.

What the f?

If you don't deliver anymore than you have an obligation to sell it to try to give them money back...

Linking to my other comment in reply to the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36255281

Sounds genuine totally inexperienced and at least tried.

Eieiei

>But people already paid for them and I failed to deliver those to them, so I can't in good conscience sell them.

Why couldn't you sell them and give the proceeds to the people who paid for them?

See my other replies above, but I had to take on debt to even get the hardware made, which then required me to get a full time job to pay off the debt. I tried to continue running the business on weekends but after years of burnout, working 7 days a week was killing me. I simply exceeded my capacity to continue operating the business, and so was unable to try selling the boards to refund people. I elaborate on this in the other replies but basically I had pushed through burnout for years on end by that point, and eventually you just hit a wall. You get to a point where there’s nothing you can do but walk away. That was 5 years in with no hope of success. I felt awful for letting all those people down, but I simply couldn’t continue to operate the business in any capacity, and no one wants to buy a failed business with loads of debt that has been eclipsed by venture funded startups shipping successful products.

Oh I read your other posts about no longer being able to run the business, your statement about not being able to sell them in good conscious just implied to me that you would otherwise be able to sell them.

Hackerspaces are probably your best bet. They might have the contacts. I would also specify that they would need to pick them up, or at the most just do one big delivery. Don't mail each one out to individuals. Ebay could work like that at a stretch, as I know some Hackerspaces are inundated with gear.

If that fails, just destroy them. Remove them from your life should be the priority you are literally dreaming above them every night.

All good points, thanks. I had a horrible nightmare about being trapped last night after discussing all this right before bed! I’ll take a bag of em to my local hacker space and try to entice people to use them.