Why not have a Kickstarter to get a price drop?


EvilDragon is tough, I'm sure he can weather the jerks.

As a dragon, especially an evil one, this is to be expected.  As a wizard I am sure you know this. ;)


 

Umm, nope, without the preorders, it would've been a lot cheaper and easier to continue... the money to continue the production came from investors.

And you even helped out and organized fund raising to help someone else's customers.  That is the thing that still says the most to me.  I need to go to the ED business school so I can learn how you do things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: rSl
I always thouth that a kickstarter is only neccesary for one reason: To spread the word. Only with the feedback of the websites that are going to talk about Pyra we are going to won a lot of people interested on the project, we are going to grow as community and maybe have more developers and users. Also the indie videogame developers can take a look into the project and start developing for it. I only see advantages on the KS/Crowfunding idea.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
More companies in between will always make it more expensive, Kickstarter could only increase the number of customers and make it a bit cheaper this way but nobody know how many devices more would be sold. Good PR is possible in other ways too outside of Kickstarter and since it has been flooded with so much bullshit by now, I guess that tech magazines are the way to go and they are already aware of the Pyra, I guess.

Anyone think of any other ways KS might lower the price?

Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, or some other almighty tech firm with too much money might buy Dragonbox and thus be able to spend beeellions in "improving" the device with 4k screens and 8-core 20GHz FGPA with ARM, x86, x64, XboxONE, PS4 and 3DS cores... only at the minimal cost of adding many years to the production cycle :)
 
Yeah, I can totally see those companies selling an open device with open software, bwahahaha.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I always thouth that a kickstarter is only neccesary for one reason: To spread the word. Only with the feedback of the websites that are going to talk about Pyra we are going to won a lot of people interested on the project, we are going to grow as community and maybe have more developers and users. Also the indie videogame developers can take a look into the project and start developing for it. I only see advantages on the KS/Crowfunding idea.

Actually, as the name implies, the necessity comes from getting the funds required to kickstart production. Say you want to sell oodles plastic gizmos people want, but 3d-printers can't give you decent quality and prototype shops are expensive per unit. So you'd need to get a mould for factory production, but those cost a lot and banks don't believe your product has a future, so you can't get a loan. Kickstarter allows you to get funds from people that want your project to happen and are willing to put down money to remove the obstacle of upfront payment from your way. As thanks they get something once you're up and running.

The marketing angle only manifested once kickstarter projects started to make it into mainstream media and stuff.

EDIT: Of course, since ED already has the funds to handle initial production, this crowdfunding step is not necessary, though it can be made as a marketing stunt.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
TL;DR

As mentioned in the costs calculation thread, what makes the Pyra more expensive than mass-produced products is the upfront investment.
What Kickstarter might do is gather enough money to reduce its impact on the final price. Let's put it this way :
We'd need like 150,000 € to cover the development costs. If we do a kickstarter with this price plus the estimated reward Pyras' costs as a goal, we can offer the Pyra for less than the calculated retail price.

How ? Because we covered the upfront costs, which for 1,000 units would be of 150 € per unit. If we can sell 10,000, that reduces it to 15€.
Now, if the Kickstarter isn't successful enough, we don't have these cheaper Pyras to send. But if it is, we can sell them for cheaper because we have those costs covered.
We wouldn't lose money in the process, given that we can cover the Pyras' cost.

Else, we can offer them at retail price, with no reduced price, but with a preorder priority over the post-release orders.
It may be a bit more complicated than just that, and ED said himself that he wouldn't like too many orders at once :

The more units I sell, the more people and space I need to hire to be able to ship them and have enough space for the stock.

That's why I want to grow slowly - what would happen if I have 10,000 sales per month, and after 6 months it suddenly goes down a lot...?

I still had to pay the rent and wages - and then would probably run out of money at some time.
There's always more relaxed sites than Kickstarter anyway. We can gather funds from Indiegogo for example. Some of these sites don't need rewards, and take a lesser share of the profits. Plus they don't have goals, so that's direct donation. This would allow us to gather some of the dev costs, and we can still offer an order priority and a bit-reduced price, given that they already paid this part of the Pyra's price.
All in all, we say "Kickstarter" because it's the most obvious and publicized crowdfunding platform.
There are other ways to gather money while advertising the Pyra. We can still do preorders on the forums, but the marketing part is close to zero. We need just enough people to know about the Pyra so that it's a success, but not too many otherwise we couldn't stand the orders.
Decisions, decisions... :rolleyes:
 
EDIT: Of course, since ED already has the funds to handle initial production, this crowdfunding step is not necessary, though it can be made as a marketing stunt.

I don't. Nothing will happen after the prototypes if we don't have at least 1000 preorders (maybe even 2000).
 
EDIT: Of course, since ED already has the funds to handle initial production, this crowdfunding step is not necessary, though it can be made as a marketing stunt.

I don't. Nothing will happen after the prototypes if we don't have at least 1000 preorders (maybe even 2000).
Oh. My bad. I guess I was thinking of the prototyping phase. Welp, then KS would fit the bill. I'd rather have a bona fide preorder though.
 
Could always try regular pre-orders first and if that fails to get enough in 4 weeks try kickstarter to make up the difference.
 
 
It could work, but then I remember the same situation with the likes of gcw zero, pre orderes, kickstarters, etc.
It would really be nice and easier if we had only 1 group of buyers.

Then, if we are looking for 2k pre orders, I´m afraid the forum+community might not be enough to reach it, so a crowdfund is a good solution on spreading the word.
On the 2 campaings I stated, they are pretty much the same product from a noob´s pov, indiegogo got to 800buyers while kickstarter got to 7k, so kickstarter is really the only way.

Problem is that the pyra costs an extra zero, so there will be  A LOT of work on the campaign, specially to state pyra´s qualities above a cheap notebook.
 
Problem is that the pyra costs an extra zero, so there will be  A LOT of work on the campaign, specially to state pyra´s qualities above a cheap notebook.

Yes, it would need a proper mascot that everyone could understand:

eierlegendewollmilchsau-web.jpg


;)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Umm, nope, without the preorders, it would've been a lot cheaper and easier to continue... the money to continue the production came from investors.

the point is that the original pre orders allowed the device to be produced in the first place - without the remaining ones that increased the expense to continue there would be no device - chicken and egg.

the other point was that many companies take over products or services from failed companies and make it a success leaving behind any liabilities - something that you ED have not done much to your credit!
 
Hm, yes, the way it was being done. But I most probably wouldn't have done it like that, I always was in favor of some investors - but Craig was allergic against investors... I only agreed to take preorders because I - like everyone else - was conviced by Craig that delivery would happen two months later...
 
Hm, yes, the way it was being done. But I most probably wouldn't have done it like that, I always was in favor of some investors - but Craig was allergic against investors... I only agreed to take preorders because I - like everyone else - was conviced by Craig that delivery would happen two months later...

And now we know the reality - that start to finish reality is closer to Two Years than Two Months.  In case you haven't heard it from anyone this week:  Thank you for your continued development efforts!
 
I learned so much from Craig's failure there are times I'm actually kind of glad it all went south.  Just a little.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tsh
I would like to start by saying that I'm a late adopter of the Pandora and have been liking it since I got mine earlier this year.  I've been looking forward to the Pyra reaching the "Full Production" stage since I first heard about it last year sometime.  If I'm not able to pre-order one, I will try to show my support if ED starts a KS campaign.  Keep up the good work ED and I look forward to having a fully working Pyra.  Thank you and have a good day!   :)
 
Back
Top