The plan a bit more detailed (2011-09-27)

[OpenUser]

Skeezix! Man! Congrats and all the best for the years to come...


@ED: I am certain you will be able to do even the next run with the community alone.


To my mind there is no need for additional venture capital - but it's your decision, of course.


In any case - good luck for setting up the production in Germany!

 

[EvilDragon]

Skeezix! Man! Congrats and all the best for the years to come...


@ED: I am certain you will be able to do even the next run with the community alone.


To my mind there is no need for additional venture capital - but it's your decision, of course.


In any case - good luck for setting up the production in Germany!

The next run shouldn't be a problem anyways.


The business plan DOES NOT only cover the next production run - the money has been calculated to be enough to continue after that.


There's no plan to get more venture capital

 

[stophle]

So assuming there's nothing from CC, when can pre-orders be fullfilled?


After waiting so long and putting down 300Euros a few years ago I am not happy to read this:

Some of these 1000 will have to go to new orders and some of these will go to the preorderers.

And may I remind you that the premiums (though I understand the were needed) were supposed not to make any pre-orders wait longer.


Assuming you sold 100 premiums, how screwed over must the next 100 in line feel? Good thing I don't now where I am in the line


So any plan not focusing on fulfilling preorders asap is very disappointing from my point of view.

 

[Emnasut]

You cant have enought gb

30 PB ought to be enough for anybody

Just like 640 kb RAM will be enough for anybody? ^^

 

[ledow]

Just like 640 kb RAM will be enough for anybody? ^^

It is. You just have to specify your usage.


In the 70's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for anybody.


In the early 80's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your main memory.


In the late 80's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your video memory.


In the early 90's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your USB stick.


In the late 90's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your phone SIM


In the early 00's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your hard drive cache.


In the late 00's, 640Kb of RAM was enough for your wristwatch.


...


...

 

[Hoodoo]

Who would wear wristwatch these days? Yuppies and wannabe filthy rich ppl?

 

[EvilDragon]

So assuming there's nothing from CC, when can pre-orders be fullfilled?


After waiting so long and putting down 300Euros a few years ago I am not happy to read this:

Some of these 1000 will have to go to new orders and some of these will go to the preorderers.

And may I remind you that the premiums (though I understand the were needed) were supposed not to make any pre-orders wait longer.


Assuming you sold 100 premiums, how screwed over must the next 100 in line feel? Good thing I don't now where I am in the line


So any plan not focusing on fulfilling preorders asap is very disappointing from my point of view.

The plan IS on fulfilling preorders as soon as possible.


Please offer me a better solution, if you have one.


1200 preorders are left.


If you assume there will be no more units from CC, about 600.000 EUR would have to be raised, as you can only produce in batches of 1000.


Given a failure rate as well, there would be about 650 - 700 left to sell. That would be about 240.000 - 260.000 EUR sales.


That wouldn't even be enough to continue the production (at least 270.000 EUR are needed). And there are also fix costs (rent, etc.) that need to be paid.


So in the end, the investors would've lost their money as production could not be continued.


In this case, the investors would not be investors but sponsors... and I doubt I could find that many.


So to fullfill all preorders at once, please show me a sponsor who will give me at least 500.000 EUR for free, without wanting anything back.


Really, I would LOVE to send out all units to you right away if I could.


But this is just totally unrealistic.


The only real solution is to have a plan which is attractive enough to get investors (they risk their money after all!), solid enough to keep the risk as low as possible and fair enough for the already paid preorders so that they will NOT have to pay an upgrade price (after all, the preorder price was WAY below our actual production costs).


Well, unless someone wins in the lottery and would really love to donate 500.000 EUR to us

 

[FatalErrorX]

maybe notch ?

 

[Darkknight512]

ED, I still don't feel a free pre-order like that is what you should be doing. Every place where pre-orders are made be it game stores or whatever need you to ake a deposit, the Pandora should not be any different.


Sorry if my other post was super long and you didn't have time to read it, I had nothing to do for 2 hours...

 

[Neelix]

maybe notch ?

Am I the only one here who feels somewhat uncomfortable with all the constant public speculation over what we could do with Notch's money? Honestly, I think I would find it very off-putting if it were my money people were so obviously lusting after.


- Neelix

 

[EvilDragon]

maybe notch ?

Am I the only one here who feels somewhat uncomfortable with all the constant public speculation over what we could do with Notch's money? Honestly, I think I would find it very off-putting if it were my money people were so obviously lusting after.


- Neelix

Same here. I'm happy if he wants to invest and sent him the business plan, but I don't want any of his money for free and I don't expect him to invest as well.


It's up to him whether he wants to do it or not.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Who would wear wristwatch these days? Yuppies and wannabe filthy rich ppl?

Hey. >:[

 

[stophle]

So assuming there's nothing from CC, when can pre-orders be fullfilled?


After waiting so long and putting down 300Euros a few years ago I am not happy to read this:

Some of these 1000 will have to go to new orders and some of these will go to the preorderers.

And may I remind you that the premiums (though I understand the were needed) were supposed not to make any pre-orders wait longer.


Assuming you sold 100 premiums, how screwed over must the next 100 in line feel? Good thing I don't now where I am in the line


So any plan not focusing on fulfilling preorders asap is very disappointing from my point of view.

The plan IS on fulfilling preorders as soon as possible.


Please offer me a better solution, if you have one.


1200 preorders are left.


If you assume there will be no more units from CC, about 600.000 EUR would have to be raised, as you can only produce in batches of 1000.


Given a failure rate as well, there would be about 650 - 700 left to sell. That would be about 240.000 - 260.000 EUR sales.


That wouldn't even be enough to continue the production (at least 270.000 EUR are needed). And there are also fix costs (rent, etc.) that need to be paid.


So in the end, the investors would've lost their money as production could not be continued.


In this case, the investors would not be investors but sponsors... and I doubt I could find that many.


So to fullfill all preorders at once, please show me a sponsor who will give me at least 500.000 EUR for free, without wanting anything back.


Really, I would LOVE to send out all units to you right away if I could.


But this is just totally unrealistic.


The only real solution is to have a plan which is attractive enough to get investors (they risk their money after all!), solid enough to keep the risk as low as possible and fair enough for the already paid preorders so that they will NOT have to pay an upgrade price (after all, the preorder price was WAY below our actual production costs).


Well, unless someone wins in the lottery and would really love to donate 500.000 EUR to us

Maybe you don't have a choice. I'm just saying I don't like it.


But you're also being in trouble if the 1200 preorders want their money back. (~=300kEuros+extras).

 

[neko]

Am I the only one here who feels somewhat uncomfortable with all the constant public speculation over what we could do with Notch's money?     Honestly,  I think I would find it very off-putting if it were my money people were so obviously lusting after.

I definitely agree that the public speculation about who is investing and how much should stop.  No one has committed to investing anything at this point.  Several dozen people expressed interest, but there are still a lot of details to be worked out, and not all of those people will end up being investors.

 

[fusion_power]

About 270.000 EUR are needed for 1000 Pandoras, and as some parts have a certain leadtime and some users will probably cancel their order, more money is needed to be safe.

Yes, of course you need more money if you want to make more Pandoras. But for just starting the first new run are 270K enough? Thats OK. ^^

And I've got no idea what shipping back and forth there will be.


All parts will go to Global Components.


The cases and LCDs will either go to Global Components or to me, depending on whether they will build the Pandoras (my preferred option) or we will do it here.

Thats news for me. I am still under the impression that GC only does the CC Job: building the Mainboards. Then you ship it to England where Craig assembles thePandoras, then ship back to you if a german Order happend and you flash the Pandoras and then ship to the Customers. I had no hint that Craig doesn#t make the assembly anymore so I still calculated with GB for the main assembling of the Pandora. This was the reason why I wrote about these shipping orgies.

 

[EvilDragon]

Maybe you don't have a choice. I'm just saying I don't like it.


But you're also being in trouble if the 1200 preorders want their money back. (~=300kEuros+extras).

Well, that's been thought about in the plan as well.


The normal preorder was 250 EUR. Some paid less, some more.


That's 300K EUR alltogether.


However, if these would all cancel, the units could be sold for 444K EUR


If in worst case all 1200 would cancel at once, some inbetween money might be needed. With the units in production, you could get a bank loan for these few months.


Even with 40% interest rate, this would work out (and heck, bank credits are expensive, but not 40%).


In my business plan, I also expected and included possible refunds.


I expected an amount of 300 refunds before the first 1000 units are delivered and have the spare money for that planned as well.


And I'm pretty sure before I have to get a bank loan, I could TALK to the users to hold on for the money 1 - 2 months longer before getting the refund.

I definitely agree that the public speculation about who is investing and how much should stop. No one has committed to investing anything at this point. Several dozen people expressed interest, but there are still a lot of details to be worked out, and not all of those people will end up being investors.

Well, I got about 200.000 EUR confirmed so far, only the contracts left to be signed, and about 300.000 EUR in "thinking about it", so it's not looking bad

 

[theshining]

Well congratulations to Skeevix and partner, a busy time for you both I'd imagine not having kids I wouldn't know, I just spend the cash I would on kids on tech instead which brings me to my second congrats, to ED and the OP team they've obviously been extremely busy this year, and the pandora project really looks like it's going to carry on and actually be quite stable from what I've read here, I don't know where I am in the queue either, but I'm a second batch orderer and I've waited over a year now and still haven't given up hope, so please please carry on.

 

[stophle]

I really don't mean to be an ass. I am just very frustrated, but I can only try to imagine how frustrated you guys must be...


It's three years in November - other people have waited even longer - and I don't expect to get it anytime soon.


But I will not get a refund. I still believe in supporting this. Just feels bad that there's hardly ever real good news when coming here. So I guess I should just wait for the confirmation mail and not read here.


But I'm weak

 

[Michael Eriksson]

And I've got no idea what shipping back and forth there will be.


All parts will go to Global Components.


The cases and LCDs will either go to Global Components or to me, depending on whether they will build the Pandoras (my preferred option) or we will do it here.

Thats news for me. I am still under the impression that GC only does the CC Job: building the Mainboards. Then you ship it to England where Craig assembles thePandoras, then ship back to you if a german Order happend and you flash the Pandoras and then ship to the Customers. I had no hint that Craig doesn#t make the assembly anymore so I still calculated with GB for the main assembling of the Pandora. This was the reason why I wrote about these shipping orgies.

As far as I remember this isn't that new. ED wrote weeks ago that he was either planning to do the assembly by himself (at least for the forst 1k units) or directly at GC.


No shipping to UK except for that machines that were ordered by people from the island.


In my opinion this makes perfectly sense. Craig is fully occupied by doing the ICP stuff and who knows what the people he hired for assembly are doing now? I doubt that they still work for Craig so wherever you start the assembly of the new units you need to hire new people and to teach them how to do it. So why not safe all those money for sending boards and units from A to B and back?

 

[EvilDragon]

Also, Craig will be building the iCPs. If those take off as well, he will be pretty much working fulltime on iCP assembly.


So it's best if I create Pandoras here and send the finished ones to Craig for his customers and he created iCPs and sends the finished ones to me.


BTW: A quick update with some numbers.


So far, I got about 230.000 EUR already for sure and 320.000 EUR maybe.


And this is all with guys from the community here... I wonder what I'll have to offer when I meet those major investors next week. It looks like everything will be settled until then... well, not that I would complain about that


This community simply rocks Thank you all


I'm going to make a phonecall to GC today... it seems we can start pretty soon, so I might order some stuff right away today.