The wheels look too tiny for the real world. Nice idea, though.
This guy invented the Roomba? He must have been really screwed by iRobot if he has to do a Kickstarter to fund his next project. He should either have enough money or the reputation to talk to VCs.
The "goal" on KickStarter is set as US$ 120,000 (at this moment it reached more than double that US$ 265,213).
So he asked to receive between 108,000 and 110,000 US$ (net of the Kickstarter fee of 5% and of the additional - absurd BTW - "payment fee between 3 and 5%).
This can be a rather large or a ridicoulosly small amount (of course it depends on points of view) but I propend for the "ridicolously small".
A (hopefully) succesfull robotics engineer in his fifties should have (or can procure through relations) that amount of money easily, and he is "only" a co-founder (and CTO) of the new company.
It seems to me - I have noticed it on other projects that ask for otherwise senselessly small amounts of financing - that Kickstarter is used only to give some visibility to the product/invention.
Seen this way the 10,000-12,000 US$ (financed by crowd BTW) are more "advertising expenses" than anything else, and even if at the end Kickstarter gets (thanks to the higher level of founding contributions) double of that, it is still peanuts for the amount of visibility it provides.
Yes exactly, and "having to do" a Kickstarter doesn't necessarily mean that he "must have been screwed", I think regardless of how much capital you may or may not have, there is no shame in raising funds, is there?
This guy invented the Roomba? He must have been really screwed by iRobot if he has to do a Kickstarter to fund his next project. He should either have enough money or the reputation to talk to VCs.