Can I suggest that you add your queries to the Q&A with Dan thread,
@Duality @stilts @info3 @scottmillersb
Edit: moved to Q&A thread
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Fair enough, I know how hard it is to hire and keep good people, especially in a town where you have companies with hiring budgets that make Glowforge look like a lemonade stand. That being said at some point you have to say there just isn’t an excuse.
Crunchbase says @dan and the Glowforge company was founded in 2014 and raise a seed round in Feb 2015, which means that the company is close to or exceeding 3 years of operations and 2 years with significant funding. It’s hard for me to believe that they couldn’t have grown as needed during that time.
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No, not really. If you had kept your money and bought a GF today you would have to pay the increased price. You wouldn’t have got that much in interest if you’d left it in a bank, had you invested it you take the risk of loss, partial or full, I’d say you’re still ahead of the game, delays notwithstanding.
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I edited my original post in that thread with a link to this one, rather than duplicating my posts and @dan 's responses.
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Of course you can. Sorry for being stupid, but could you please give a hint how to actually move it? Thanks!
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You make a valid point. Consider this, however: They’re writing a lot of proprietary code from scratch, in an industry that (in my opinion) has grown stagnant and sitting on their own laurels because of the lack of competition. Lots of competitive products have been in the game for 3-4x as long. Once you have that steady codebase to sit on, making incremental changes is childsplay. Glowforge is trying to meet and surpass them by adding truly unique features. Personally, if I wanted “just” a laser cutter (at double the price!), I would have bought “just” a laser.
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Unlike most people here, I’ve only been waiting about 2 months so far. But, here’s what makes NO sense to me:
How can you rush people to order by 10/4 in order to get the discount pricing, setting the expectation of shipping in 5 months, only to share that it will be double that wait (10 months) only two months later?? That’s not a mistake. That was either lying or severe mismanagement.
I’ve run software development for nearly 20 years. And my philosophy is that everyone has been late, and it happens. But then you have to follow these rules:
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If you don’t know or communicate you’re going to be late until the project is about due, you’ve failed miserably.
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If you are going to delay, you’d better pick the right date next time. Don’t miss a replacement date.
When I ordered this just 2 months ago, you assured the forums you had no plans to move the dates yet. So given the above rules of delays, this is not a failure. This is a a failure of epic proportions.
Given all of this, im not excited by a 12 month warranty. 2 years minimum. Going from 6-12 for this kind of money and wait does not increase my confidence.
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Hofstadter’s Law - It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.
These days I restrict my bad language to Telstra and the Policy Makers behind our NBN. I’m an international customer, and so far wise enough not to promise friends, or set up business plans until it arrives on my door stop. I did however arrange to take 2 months leave from the end of December in anticipation of a delivery - can’t change that now, but I’ll have other things to keep me occupied.
Best wishes to Dan and the Glowforge crew - I’m hopeful I’ll see a great machine sometime in 2017.
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Ouch! Now just apply Hofstadter’s law to your holiday plans and extend them!
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[quote=“stilts, post:106, topic:3657, full:true”]i think we all would like to know so we have a general idea of our “place” in line
[/quote]
Knowing what percentage of orders are canceled doesn’t tell you your place in line…
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You are absolutely correct that this is a game changer and @dan and his founders and advisors have an incredible vision of an amazing product. The community rewarded them for this by pre ordering $28 million in product in the first 30 days alone.
But I have to disagree that because something is new, it should be delayed by 18 months.
So that leaves me to believe one or more of the following is true… (COMPLETE SPECULATION)
1: @dan and Co brought the pre-order campaign to market too early, over promised and under researched…
2: They failed to properly locate resources to complete the projects and material experts to help them solve the issues at the correct time.
3: I hate to say it, but from the responses from @dan tonight, he doesn’t look like he is open to change when things are obviously not working.
4: They had a success so huge they had feature creep and added a lot of wishlist items they didn’t have in the original version
(END COMPLETE SPECULATION)
As @dan admitted:
I speculate that they have lost a total of 10% of their total orders to date and will lose another 20% over the next 14 days. Holidays are coming and people will eye that money vs other items that fulfill their needs. I think its possible that could be mitigated with Community Management, Trust Building and better communication. But @dan seems to be closed to that idea
The question is, how much does this cost Glowforge not only money but reputation and trust?
P.S. @Dan I wrote you a private message here on the forums.
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Hi Info3, don’t know that it’s possible to “move” something over to another thread, copy and paste may be the best way.
Cheers
I beg to differ
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I mean… okay? Let’s imagine 3% of orders canceled. What’s your place in line and how did it change?
You have no idea where in line those 3% were, so you don’t have a basis to determine how it’s affected your position.
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Glowbabe here. I haven’t posted much, but I have lurked, because I have a stake in all of this as your customer and supporter. I have a feeling that pressing the send button last night was probably the last thing you wanted, Dan. I don’t envy your position one bit. Personally I have a lot of mixed feelings about what I have just read and the manner in which it was delivered. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but after thinking and reading some in this thread, I am pretty sure of a few things.
First, I am not going to cancel my order while I am feeling all the heat of my emotions. Not now, and not until I have had the time to run some numbers and be certain that giving up is the right thing. Canceling may be what I ultimately have to do, but I would advise others to cool off a little, think things through, participate in some discussions, and be sure you are truly doing the right thing - and not just the angry, reactive thing - before you pull the plug on Glowforge.
Second, even though I am awfully disappointed with this news, there’s a part of me that realistically could not see the Glowforge coming for quite a few weeks after the most recently promised deadline. I don’t know much about startups, but I know that originating anything is about taking two steps forward, one step back, and is never going to proceed according to much of a schedule. This seems realistic. The December deadline wasn’t, and frankly I think we were all deluding ourselves with it. Shouldn’t we have known better?
Third, I’m afraid the process of communicating with your customers about Glowforge’s progress has been poorly managed to some extent. The shortfall is evident, and I think you need to hear people out on this point and do what you can to make things right. Some people in this thread have already begun dishing out the reality check with some constructive criticism and ideas that you must consider very seriously going forward. Even some of the angry ideas are good ones that you and your team can learn from.
I agree that we need to hear and see more of what goes on behind the scenes, not just the bright (but oft-delayed) future, but the struggle it is taking to get there. Managing our expectations is key, as was wisely noted earlier in this thread. I visit the Facebook page all the time looking for signs of life and not finding much. There is a lot you could do to manage our excitement and our disappointment, but there is so little real information out there. The website hasn’t changed much since the original fundraiser. How about another video? Or lots of them, posted regularly? How about regular interviews with beta-testers? How about seeing more of what this machine can do, so our excitement stays strong during times like these? I feel like you need a whole new way to approach PR, and a professional team whose job it is to manage just that.
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@dan, like everyone else here, I was really hoping for my Glowforge this month. However, I read your update as more of a positive to me than a negative. The previously unannounced features are exciting. And the 3D engrave example is spectacular! I’d much rather wait a few extra months than receive a Glowforge that doesn’t live up to expectations. As I have said before, the alternative for me is to wait 6 to 8 years until I can afford/justify a $20K laser that will do what I want it to do reliably. I’m looking forward to an amazing laser in 2017.
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They way to fix this mess is quit showing us polished marketing materials. Show us 3d engraving working if its there already. Show us printing a picture, just not a finished item.
Give us meaningful updates every 2 weeks. Give us a list of what is still left. I’ve posted about this before, there is absolutely 0 confidence that you will be able to meet your deadline. Why? because you promised and missed 3 before.
To me, not wanting to provide this information means that there is also very little confidence that the next promised arbritrary 6+ months deadline has no real chance of getting met either.
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Unbelievable… people are constantly prodding for updates and better communication only to be given vague suggestions that things are on schedule. Everytime someone voices their concern about this theyre typically met with a choir of kool-aid drinkers insisting they personally dont mind the wait and think everythings fine (good for you).
This isnt a sudden, unexpected delay, its downright dishonesty. Theres no way when people were asking for updates a week ago that you didnt know this delay was coming. And rather than tell them, you waited till the final hour to spring a six month delay.
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Thats how the GF team rolls. Wait till the last possible minute, and all the while having the cheerleaders making up wild excuses as to why the GF team rolls they way they do.
The truth is they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, and under estimated everything wildly. Another 6 months delay? Why not. What confidence you have that it will be working in July? None.
The pattern of communication has been substandard, and I expect nothing less moving forward.
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