Sorry you got stung with this one cold_fashioned. Birdkids did lay down an ambitious project for themselves, as i noted over in the Crowdfunding thread.
Also note that Birdkids had to take two swipes at funding to meet their goal, they didn’t raise enough to meet goal first time around, so they lowered their goal. I guess it’s not totally surprising that they might run out of money. Their real cost was probably closer to their first estimate.
Looking at the summary i put in that thread of a group of projects i followed there, it looks like about half the crowdfunded projects, fluffed their target dates.
But then look at some of the projects that have slipped :
- Expressive E Osmose
- Majella Implexus
- Conductive Labs MRCC
These all are products that are significant and i am glad exist. Perhaps some of these could have been made without crowdfunding, but most could not. Developing new hardware has some very expensive phases.
The Artisan Nucleus is another one up for funding right now, another one that probably is worth having, especially if it leads to the Artisan polysynth. But do you risk it to help make it happen ? ADDED LATER : And the Nucleus did fail to fund, raising only a part of their very modest goal.
Then on the other hand there is Pluto,
( your thread cold_fashioned ) who have managed to pull it off and even do battle with the pandemic supply chain dragon, without taking a dime up front.