Why We Cancelled Our Kickstarter And Funded It Ourselves

It doesn&#x27;t look like they were going to make their funding goal. I know that a lot of money comes in on the final 2-3 days, but unless they had a pile of friends and family ready to throw in, the projections don&#x27;t look good.<p>They also say that they decided to cancel just 10 days into the campaign, but it looks like they actually cancelled on Nov 14th (day 24) with just 7 days remaining (and at less than 50% funded).<p>None of that invalidates what they&#x27;ve written and what they gained from running a Kickstarter, but it seems like they&#x27;re spinning it that they killed what was going to be a successful campaign.<p><a href="http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/marshallhaas/201552485/#chart-exp-projection" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kicktraq.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;marshallhaas&#x2F;201552485&#x2F;#cha...</a>

Get all of the hype and exposure that a Kickstarter campaign gives without having to pay them their cut. Makes sense.

For anyone that needs a DIY preorder site, there&#x27;s the lockitron selfstarter project<p><a href="https://github.com/lockitron/selfstarter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;lockitron&#x2F;selfstarter</a>

Kickstarter takes a lot of money for basically delivering hype. I think KS really should have rules&#x2F;terms that prevent you from canceling after certain things happen.<p>Press like covering KickStarter. It is a validation that the product is &quot;obtainable&quot; as opposed to a pie in the sky press release from a company that something might come out someday. KS takes a big cut for what they deliver, but they do deliver it, so they should protect that model more fiercely than they do.<p>That said... If I were shipping a physical thing I would just use Amazon and do Pre-orders instead. Doing a KickStarter can preclude you from many retail stores, and Home Shopping. If your product is awesome you&#x27;d likely be better to be in those places instead. If your product kind of sucks, making a splash on KS can get you easy money early. I can think of several products that this has happened with (a talking bear, a video game console...)<p>But what it all boils down to is you have to decide if hype is what you need, or distribution. If you have a solid product you don&#x27;t need hype.

I use notebooks, notepads, blanks sheets of paper, Japanese A5 and A5 notepads, and Pilot Frixion erasable pens.<p>I do mostly writing, and also diagramming (I&#x27;m a software developer) with the odd doodle and 3-d house.<p>I&#x27;m very picky about pens, very picky about paper.<p>I also definitely want to keep my notebooks.<p>I do not want all this stuff digitized. At all.<p>What I do digitize, I convert carefully, taking care to craft it as well for pixels as I did for paper.

What about confidentiality and privacy?<p>Love it, but some of my notes are highly confidential. Obviously, I could use a separate notebook, but is there any thought towards privacy or assurance from these guys that no one is reading these notebooks when they&#x27;re digitized? The video makes it look like a fairly manual process. Ordered one anyway to try it out.

<i>&gt;&quot;We’d kill the subscription model...&quot;</i><p>I tend to be wary of any service with ongoing running costs sold as a one-time fee.<p>As long as new sales exceed the cost of servicing the existing population everything is fine. Once that relationship reverses all bets are off.<p>That said, I like this idea and $25 is a better price point that I would have expected.

This is such an interesting experience, especially with canceling to what seemed to be a promising kickstarted campaign. I am glad you killed the subscription based model and are now selling it simply as a product.

I wonder if the notebooks are stripped to bare sheets, scanned and then re-built as a new notebook with proper bindings for sending back.<p>I don&#x27;t see any other way of doing this that would keep it efficient.

Very interesting piece to read about their thought process - and a very interesting product that I had not heard about before.<p>If I was in the US, I would buy it.<p>If they get international shipping (EU) at say an extra 10 bucks and no return shipping, I would still consider it, but I fear the cost of shipping + added turnaround time would make it a much less attractive value proposition.

Livescribe pen been on the market for years. It&#x27;s good and you do not have to wait for 5(!) days for digitized version - it&#x27;s there automatically. Could you please explain me, why would you want to use service like Modnotebooks? Am I missing something?

Is there a HN thread where we can discuss this service and ask questions&#x2F;debate the merits? I&#x27;d do it here but it feels inappropriate as the thread is more about Kickstarter and not the core product&#x2F;service.

I&#x27;m personally interested in when Kickstarter makes sense, vs. one&#x27;s own self-hosted presales site. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?<p>It seems like Kickstarter makes more sense for smaller projects, but the 15% cut and inflexibility (no bitcoins, no bulk sales, etc.) might be a bigger issue for larger projects.<p>The &quot;virality&quot; part of KS is nice, but it doesn&#x27;t seem like a huge percentage of orders. The &quot;all or nothing&quot; part reassures people, but for a YC company or other respected entity, you could just make the same promise.<p>The &quot;artificial deadline&quot; part is nice, though.

In case you missed it, there was a plug of a fulfillment company www.monthlyboxer.com<p>Does anyone have experience to share about fulfilment companies in general? What costs per shipment should one expect?

I associate Draft with Nathan Kontny&#x27;s wonderful stuff <a href="https://draftin.com/about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;draftin.com&#x2F;about</a><p>(edit) I see it&#x27;s been renamed! Should have gone past the banner image!

I just tried to buy, but you don&#x27;t ship to Canada :-( Any plans to change that?

Very eager to get one. When are you opening up orders to Canada?

Do these people ever heard of screenshots?<p>Taking photos of your screen in oblique orientations introduces horrible artifacts. Just don&#x27;t do it!