Hello everyone! I'm the creator of the Smach Z exposé. I joined this forum just because it seems to be one of the best places to discuss and speculate about the Smach Z project.
I didn't notice this before, but the Smach Z Kickstarter page mantions they have investors. So even though they lost a bit of money in the failed Imasd venture, they should have investor funding that hopefully covers it and more.
This is a big unknown for several reasons. Of course we don't know anything about the investor side of things, but we can speculate what's most likely. I find the idea of investors pumping money into the Smach Z to be extremely unlikely for the most obvious reasons. Investors are not philanthropists. They throw money at something only when they think they can recover more than they put in. Considering the problems the campaign is having and the recent astronomical new price, ask yourself-
would you invest your money in Smach Z right now? I didn't think so. Even if they made a substantial investment in the past which hasn't been repaid, I think any experienced investor would know now is the time to cut your losses and move on.
But there's been so many critical twists and turns that it really does make me wonder how the investors operated. It's clear by now that there was some major misrepresentation, if not outright fraud that occurred with this campaign. Were the investors in on it? It's one of the biggest mysteries which we might never know the answer to. I have a few theories about where the investors stand:
1) The Innocent Investors
This would be the theory that the investors were just as clueless as the backers. They went into this thinking the Smach Z was well in development, that the campaign launched with a working prototype of their own design, and the original in the Kickstarter price was well researched and calculated to make sure they could deliver to backers. This is how you would hope an investment firm would operate, that if there was any foul play they didn't know about it and they invested in good faith.
Problems with this theory: it seems really far fetched that a "tech venture" would be as clueless as Kickstarter backers, you would hope that they would do some deep research into figuring out what was running in the prototypes. After all, they paid for them:
Thanks to Mola, SMACH Z received the necessary capital to finance the first prototype of the console.
Source: October 26, 2016 public update
And if they knew something was wrong I would hope they wouldn't go along with it unless...
2) The Crooked Investors
This would mean the investors knew it was sketchy from the beginning but went along with it because there was money to be made. This could be plausible because assuming they were innocent investors that were lied to- wouldn't they go after Smach Z for essentially robbing them? But if they're crooked then that would explain why the investors don't care that the project is going up in flames, they're in the same boat and have a guilty conscience.
Problems with this theory: what was the end game then? Were they betting that Smach Z could fake their way onto Kickstarter but actually deliver after receiving the funds and they would get a cut of the units sold to the public? That seems like a really bad bet to make. You're investing in some people pulling a con in the hopes that they'll eventually fly straight and make it all right.
3) The Loan Shark "Investors"
This is the thought that the "investors" aren't investors at all, they just provided Smach Z with a loan which was to be repaid immediately from the Kickstarter funds. This is corroborated by the quote above. It would also explain why we haven't heard anything from the investors anymore. They're gone. They already got their money back plus interest, and they don't have a dog in this fight so they couldn't care less. So the investors are out of the picture because they were never a real investment partner to begin with. They just provided necessary initial funding (which was footed by the backers in repayment) as well as credibility for being able to claim investors are on board.
Problems with this theory: ... nothing I can think of. We know they did in fact pay for the prototypes. It answers why we haven't heard from them since and why they won't go after Smach Z for luring them into a bad investment using fake development hardware.
The real answer could be a combination of any of these three possibilities. I'm pretty sure 3 is true, then it's just a matter of whether they knew about the wider scheme as a whole, which would be theory 1 or 2. We'll probably never know because the only one they could ever admit to would be #1 but that seems to be the most far fetched a requires a lot of trust to believe they would be so absent minded.
What do you guys think?
