Evan Lindquist and Brent Burroff are learning firsthand that Kickstarter’s crowd-sourced backers can turn into an angry mob.
The duo’s Seattle company, Zion Eyez, raised almost $350,000 on Kickstarter in May 2011 to make a prototype of sunglasses that would record HD video.
Zion Eyez promised a pair of the glasses to each backer who kicked in at least $150 — plus pledged to keep all contributors in the loop on its progress. But 16 months later and with nary an update and no glasses, investors are getting restless.
The company, renamed Zeyez, has become the example of how not to handle a project on Kickstarter.
“It’s a crowdfunding platform and if you don’t meet obligations the crowd will come after you,” said Adam Clark, who runs a site called Kicktraq, which analyzes Kickstarter projects.
To be sure, many project deadlines are missed but proper etiquette is transparency, according to Kickstarter’s own team.
Zeyez has failed on that front, too. “I haven’t declared it a failure yet, but from the very beginning, they made it sound like the glasses were finished and they were shipping by end of 2011,” said backer David Elliott.
Kickstarter has a hands-off policy, leaving disputes to be worked out between the creators and their backers. The crowd-sourcing platform takes a 5 percent cut of projects that reach their fund-raising goal.
Zeyez said it will have a key update shortly. It appears the company is now looking to raise more cash.
Clark has words of advice for Kickstarter enthusiasts: “It’s not a shopping-cart experience.” Most projects miss their shipping targets, he said.
The makers of a smartwatch called Pebble, for example, raised more than $10 million. Strong demand led to delays, but the company kept backers happy with updates.