Re: Another one bites the dust.
Indeed, and $100k doesn't necessarily go that far in injection moulding. In the scheme of millions on litigation... it's small fry. And given the number of people they employed, I imagine it would have been rather less than 6months of payroll.
That being said, I've seen other kickstarters (and businesses) go bump through poor management of high-CapEx processes like injection moulding. I recall there was one heavily-hyped (is there any other kind?) boardgame kickstarter which collapsed spectacularly and shipped nothing. One of the "challenges" that the founder blamed was the cost of getting moulded prototypes which they then didn't end up using in the game. This led to two obvious questions:
1. You don't need actual game pieces or tokens to play-test a game or establish the mechanics. Bits of paper and card with appropriate scribblings will do. Artwork and miniature design is basically the last thing you do once you've finalised the game design and know exactly what/how many miniatures/cards/counters/tokens/dice the box needs. You shouldn't be getting moulds made for items that "don't end up being used". In fact, you shouldn't even be having the CAD done, because those pieces don't exist beyond a set of paper notes which didn't survive testing.
2. 3D printing exists. The idea that they paid for injection moulds for a short-run of pieces to play-test with... insane. The incompetence was deafening.
I have a feeling there was some fraud on that particular one as well.
Now I'm not saying that this applies here - the patent troll appears to be the bigger issue. But the moment you start commissioning hardware, life gets very expensive and there's plenty of startups and even well-intentioned kickstarters who have bit the dust for not managing that aspect of the business adequately.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
