Pandora As A Business Venture

[enigmacipher]

I have been curious for a while now as to whether or not the devs are making any money. Because I care about the success of the Pandora team, I want to know how many of these assumptions are true.

The first 3,000 units will be made with borrowed money.
These first 3,000 will turn a small profit, but enough to warrant a second batch AND keep investors interested.
There will be a significant drive (from the investors) to make a second batch and a little more money.
The Pandora team and community will continue on long enough to keep the Pandora alive until a successor.
The community will be interested in a successor.
The Pandora team is allowing us to donate money.

A few more questions:
If it is information safe to make public, roughly how much profit is the Pandora turning? (even a very rough estimate is fine)
If we are allowed to donate money, how is it done?

One suggestion:
Allow money to be donated with the purchase of a Pandora. ie: prices go up from $330 to $350 to increase profits of the team.

If the first batch sells out in a few days, I will wait for second batch. I can't justify spending $300+ without knowing EXACTLY what I am buying. If the first batch doesnt sell out immediately, I will buy into that. either way, I will not be allowed to donate money straight to the team, only with the purchase of a Pandora. I also think that more people will give money if that option is there.

 

[schnitzelboy]

i don't really know that much but i do know that Craigx, one of the developers of the pandora, wants to set up a donation process so you can support the devs, and in return you can get special beta to try and stuff like that

 

[Julius]

Please don't donate to commercial projects, as that screws up all proper business plans. The Pandora can only be successful in the long run if it can suvive without subsidaries.
Keep that money to support homebrew developers (that will also help the pandora more in the long run).

Oh and all that has been said is that the first 3000 will be on a very tight profit margin (basicly paying for the costs I guess).

The rest are company secrets, and should stay such.

 

[TaG]

Oh and all that has been said is that the first 3000 will be on a very tight profit margin (basicly paying for the costs I guess).

The rest are company secrets, and should stay such.

Agreed - nobody has the right to such commercial information. The developers are businessmen; I really can't see them doing this without a suitable return even if it is a relatively low margin.

 

[Chip]

I have been curious for a while now as to whether or not the devs are making any money. Because I care about the success of the Pandora team, I want to know how many of these assumptions are true.

I'm sure you don't mean anything by it, but asking a small business owner for the financial details of their business is very rude. Privately held companies are not required to make any financial information public, and even publicly traded corporations do not tell just anybody how much profit they make on specific items. There are a lot of very good reasons why companies don't give out this sort of information. It would be incredibly foolish.

 

[quadomatic]

Please don't donate to commercial projects, as that screws up all proper business plans. The Pandora can only be successful in the long run if it can suvive without subsidaries.
Keeps that money to support homebrew developers (that will also help the pandora more in the long run).

I thought craigix had said that the donations that were supposed to be available to consumers with the purchase of a pandora was for supporting homebrew developers.

 

[Gilrad]

Also, don't confuse the "devs that are currently making the thing" with the "devs that will benefit from the donations system"

The hardware devs will see money from system sales. Whether or not you donate does not directly affect their pockets. The homebrew devs are the people who will benefit from the donation system. How exactly that will work is still yet to be determined.

As far as how much money the hardware devs will see... I seem to recall one of them (craigx?) mentioning that if the P saw as much success as the GP2X, he would be very happy.

 

[PoisonedV]

I don't really see the reason WHY, but as stated earlier, it's generally rude to ask questions about finance to anybody, business or person

 

[christo930]

I don't really see the reason WHY, but as stated earlier, it's generally rude to ask questions about finance to anybody, business or person

I don't really understand either, but it is generally accepted. You can probably get pretty close with an educated guess. The chips set price is well known and anyone with manufacturing experience should be able to get pretty close to the setup costs and manufacturing costs. Then you can make some assumptions about what kind of payback an investor would want. One thing that is probably helping keep the cost down is the that the designers are not working for a large company making 6 figures designing the thing. I assume they are basically doing it for free, hoping that profits will come later if the unit is a success. A company like Gamepark, Sony or Nintendo doesn't have that luxury. They would have to pay their designers up front, no matter what happens later down the road, so you end up with a product costing millions of dollars before one piece of silicon is laid (so to speak).

I know NOTHING about manufacturing or venture capital, but I would guess that if I were investing in a high risk project like the Pandora, I would like to see pretty high returns. A project like this would not be possible at all without the internet and a lot of "advertisement" is going to have to come through reviews on websites and possibly through gaming magazine reviews. I think that is where a lot of the larger products get killed, is through the high cost of advertisements. Since Pandora will be happy with a small distribution (say 40-50k units), they could probably do it with minimal advertisements. Just word of mouth and reviews on techie websites, linux websites and gaming websites. If the Pandora can attract a large community of developers who can bring great games to it, then it could be a really big success.

I really wish them the best of luck in this endeavor. It could very well open the door to new projects that might not have been possible in the past.

Chris

 

[enigmacipher]

Thanks for the answers everybody, its good to here

obviously I did not intend to be rude, but I apologize if I did offend.

I am not concerned with specific information but rather I am concerned with the future of the Pandora. I want the devs to be making a somewhat significant profit, not basically doing it for free. But its not my decision, I will leave it to them.

 

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

I'm sure you don't mean anything by it, but asking a small business owner for the financial details of their business is very rude. Privately held companies are not required to make any financial information public, and even publicly traded corporations do not tell just anybody how much profit they make on specific items. There are a lot of very good reasons why companies don't give out this sort of information. It would be incredibly foolish.

Oh man...

That's exactly the same sort of nonsense you hear from companies who don't want to go open source with their code or let the public in on design plans. The Pandora is helping to break down those outdated practices, why can't it go further? There are in fact no good reasons why a company can't disclose financial information, it's just silly paranoia and capitalist cultism. The idea that it's somehow even rude to ask about is the more ridiculous still. It's not even possible to be rude to a business organization, for crying out loud!

What is this bull?

Obviously no on is obligated to let us know stuff like this, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking and personally, it would make me feel a lot better about parting with my $330 if I knew I was giving it to a group of people who really had a broader vision of how to operate a business like this, rather than just a new twist to squeeze a few more years out of the same old failing model.


...word is bondage...

 

[sold]

What a load of bollocks. There is no reason to ask anyone about their business or personal financial matters. It's rude. And the reason it is rude is because it's none of your business. I think you're lucky Craig or one of the other devs hasn't responded with something to the effect of a polite "go fornicate yourself".

@ Sweater Fish Deluxe: Why don't you go sit under a tree and grow long stinky dredlocks and develop body odor the likes of which can only be created by eating nothing but tofu and neglecting to bathe and play bad acoustic/folk/reggae songs about the environment you freakin' hippy. Ever heard of the word "commerce"? I hate when people say this but Im even gonna go out on a limb here and hit ya with the old adage "go get a job"

 

[Chip]

What is this bull?

It's not bull, it's business. There are hardly any businesses that will just hand out information about their profit margins, and the ones that do only do so because they are required to by law. Giving out numbers like that opens up a whole mess of problems. No matter what the numbers are, there are people here that would complain that they're charging too much. Other armchair marketeers would claim that they're not charging enough, and the company is doomed to failure. If there are any actual investors involved with the project and they believed the release of this information harmed sales, they could sue for the lost profits. I'm not familiar with British financial law, but in the US it can and does happen.

But even putting potential legal calamities aside, it is still rude to ask. Would you not consider it rude if I asked you how much money you make? How much do you spend on rent? What is your monthly food budget? Don't you think it's irresponsible to spend so much on beer? Why don't you put more money into savings every month?

It would be rude of me to ask you those questions, and it's just as rude to ask a small businessman about his finances. It has nothing to do with "capitalist cultism" and everything to do with common courtesy. You may not think it's possible to be rude to a business organization, but this "organization" is basically one guy. One guy with a couple business partners and a lot of unpaid volunteers. And right now, you're being rude.


Sold: Speaking of being rude, you are as well. Sweater Fish may not have any idea how businesses work or have a basic grasp of etiquette, but there's no need to be a jerk about it. Idealism is not a terrible quality, even if it is incredibly misguided in this situation. If you cannot express your opinion without name calling then keep it to yourself.

 

[magicman5421]

QUOTE
But even putting potential legal calamities aside, it is still rude to ask. Would you not consider it rude if I asked you how much money you make? How much do you spend on rent? What is your monthly food budget? Don't you think it's irresponsible to spend so much on beer? Why don't you put more money into savings every month?

I would say that 3/5 of these questions are not rude. I would have no problem divulging my earnings, or how much I pay on rent, or my monthly food budget because those are facts. The next two are opinions, and depend on the person. Those could be considered rude. IMHO, the facts are just that, facts. It's when you involve your opinion, and sound condescending, that people get offended.
EDIT: And I see how answering the first 3 could easily lead to the 2nd two, I am just pointing out that to some individuals, those questions (the ones I indicated) would not be offensive. To a company, I don't have enough experience to formulate a relevant opinion.

 

[timofonic]

Sorry if this is too obvious by most people, it's just some kind of summary and personal thinking.

Obiously homebrew development exists since the first home computers, but it was a bit uncommon on actual consoles. Mostly the stuff I remember was from 16bit era, later retrodev appeared too but that's another story.

I think all this about a machine designed for homebrew is something not common, personally I think the homebrew development revolution started in Dreamcast and that was originally a commercial system.


A short summary about the era created by GP32 and sucessors (sorry for possible mistakes):

- Suddenly started by "mistake" with GP32, a handheld system created by the South Corea company Gamepark in 2001. Small communities started to develop and people help each other in user and development stuff.

- Gizmondo appeared, the device looked promising even if the stetic design was odd and had a smaller screen. It used Windows CE and supported GPRS for connectivity, a 0.3mp camera, GPS and SMS sending. It had an interesting list of games by different companies including EA and Sega. One of the people involved in the company was an involved criminal, known for having an accident by his Ferrari car. This was one of the reasons it failed between others

- Shortly after, Zodiac appeared. The creators was a company Tapwave, formed by Palm ex-employees. Designed to be some kind of PDA and handheld game system hybrid, started to looks promising both for commercial and homebrew game development. Sadly it has many flaws like joystick problems, the absurd release of two models with different ram capacity, the drm for non-commercial development, lack of worldwide distribution and lack of marketing. The idea was good, but it was executed poorly and needed tons of more effort.

- GP2X appeared in 2005 by a spin-off of the original GP32 company named GamePark Holdings. It appeared when GP32 had problems due to SMC cards started to be difficult to obtain and the GP32 scene was a lot less active. This system partially solved a few things, but the design and manufacturing problems were quite obvious, joystick is not quite solved actually. Personally I think not so many devs were happy by the hardware, due to certain design flaws and not really a big step in hardware power compared to GP32. Anyway, there's a good homebrew scene.

- Due to people not so happy with the GP2X hardware, certain people (Craig and others?) started to talk about the creation of a new handheld on the forums. People gave the ideas and a CPU was chosen (I think an i.MX model, not remember), finally evolved in a more developed system featuring keyboard and an upcoming SoC from Texas Instruments. This boosted the hardware power of the system and overall possibilities, like a powerful 3D hardware and more prepared for multimedia playing thanks to the builtin DSP.

- Recently at ending of August 2008 a new system by GamePark Holdings was announced. The system is called "GP2X The Wiz" or "GP2X Wiz" and features a more powerful SoC compared to the original GP2X by MagicEyes (but incompatible), having 3D support and an ARM9 at 533MHz. Some unusual design decisions were chosen, like using two NES-like style dpad instead one dpad and buttons or a very small size (like gameboy micro) OLED screen with the same resolution as GP2X (320x240).

What do I mean with all this inaccurate summary? I hope Pandora creators learn from fails of others and try to understand that due to this stuff, there are a lot people that can't trust easily to this initiative.

Pandora creators must demostrate this system is interesting and that users will not get abandoned in the word scenario (I mean a promise of releasing certain stuff to people). The lack of a company presence with their own website and such is another problem too.

Obviously Craig and co. not have the economic resources for investing compared to the big ones, but a smart use of resources and worldwide promoting by homebrew communities could help a lot. Coding contests and guerrilla marketing could help a lot, you know.

Pandora makers must convince and demostrate that the system has a present and a future, making it know by others and promote aggresively the homebrew and indie game development if wanting to succeed and not being another Tapwave Zodiac. How? I'm not sure how to do it, but it can be possible.

Pandora creators must show people that this is a serious effort and make people forget the idea of being vaporware. It's not your problem, it's just because there were so many liars and unsucessful products in the industry that made people quite skeptical.

 

[sold]

@Chip. Yeah I was being a bit of a jerk. But I was kinda kidding around as well. I'm not against Sweater Fish being idealistic, but there is a fine line between idealism and hypocrisy. These days it seems there are more and more people jumping on the counterculture bandwagon and it pisses me off. All this anti-capitalist hippie nonsense is wearing a little thin. And I may have come across as a jerk, but Sweater Fish was responsible for one of the jerkiest posts I've ever read IMO.

Oh, and you went from calling me a jerk to "If you cannot express your opinion without name calling then keep it to yourself." That's a little contradictory isn't it? Also why don't you let people, like Sweater Fish for example, fight their own battles.

 

[PoisonedV]

I'm sure you don't mean anything by it, but asking a small business owner for the financial details of their business is very rude. Privately held companies are not required to make any financial information public, and even publicly traded corporations do not tell just anybody how much profit they make on specific items. There are a lot of very good reasons why companies don't give out this sort of information. It would be incredibly foolish.

Oh man...

That's exactly the same sort of nonsense you hear from companies who don't want to go open source with their code or let the public in on design plans. The Pandora is helping to break down those outdated practices, why can't it go further? There are in fact no good reasons why a company can't disclose financial information, it's just silly paranoia and capitalist cultism. The idea that it's somehow even rude to ask about is the more ridiculous still. It's not even possible to be rude to a business organization, for crying out loud!

What is this bull?

Obviously no on is obligated to let us know stuff like this, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking and personally, it would make me feel a lot better about parting with my $330 if I knew I was giving it to a group of people who really had a broader vision of how to operate a business like this, rather than just a new twist to squeeze a few more years out of the same old failing model.


...word is bondage...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how liberals get a bad reputation.

 

[TaG]

If Craig and co really wanted to tell us all their financial dealings, they could have done so on this board any time over the last year.

Nobody tells people how much it costs to make things because it is usually commercial suicide. It tells competitors what they have to beat, it means supplies will not give you a good price because you are going to publish it which damages their bargaining position. Many suppliers will not let you disclose costs.

Why should any body disclose this information? What gain is there to disclosing it?

The company has been mentioned before. They do have a web site - openpandora.org.

You are not dealing with unknown entities - Craig is gp2x.co.uk/gbax.com. Limited companies protect the investors , not the customers btw.

You are not dealing with mass market so they don't need millions of working capital - the second batch will be funded by capital released from selling the first batch, that's one reason why they aren't making them in 25000+ batches.

Although this is called an 'open' project because it is involving the community and the device is designed to run open source software, the hardware is not open. Some of the device specific drivers/code is not open. It is not and cannot be 100% open.

Even if you did get the financials, every body would argue differently about what that meant; they're charging too much / too little; if they're making that much profit they could've added this feature etc.

For those arguing full disclosure, why not declare your income and everything you have spent cash on in the last two years, not matter how personal. Tell the world exactly what savings and assets you have. (the two years relates to the development year and the first trading year).

What a crock.

 

[Mr Wendal]

Donations would be crazy, but how about investing in pandora then?
I know it`s not a listed company, but I got a couple of grand that would otherwise only go to strippers ....

 

[PoisonedV]

Donations would be crazy, but how about investing in pandora then?
I know it`s not a listed company, but I got a couple of grand that would otherwise only go to strippers ....

i was a stockholder for a certain handheld that went under :rolleyes: