So I was one of the people who asked if my money is at any risk, I don’t feel bad for asking it. As someone else stated I have no idea of their burn rate and cash flow, or their future profitability. I have husband a who after the first year of delays started hounding me and freaking out a little… allot. He left me alone for a year because I told him before the purchase that it would take a year. We are a family of 7 who recently went through a house fire "freak electrical accident obviously not the fault of glowforge in anyway but our circumstances affected how laid back we used to be about money, our savings is now painfully low and all we have left is the few thousand we set aside for medical emergency which seems to happen anytime my son gets sick. I was happy Dan answered my question so I could go back to my husband and show him the direct response to hopefully make him feel a little bit at ease, this has been a stressful time for my family so any questions I think will ease me or my husbands fears I’m going to ask even if it annoys some of you because to be honest you guys aren’t the ones I have to sleep next to at night and you aren’t the ones I disappoint when delays come up. So go ahead with the “just get a refund” if you don’t like my question. It won’t bug me at all if someone decides to say it to me, however it does bother me when it’s said to someone else who visibly gets their feelings hurt. I don’t like seeing other people hounded on. Honestly it makes me angry and I wont sit back if I feel like someone is being picked on even if it makes me a target.
Everyone seems to be on edge right now. Delays tend to do that. You asked a fair question, whether you got exactly the answer you were hoping for. So sorry you’re family had to go through that. Hope you are able to hold on and then make some great stuff with your forge. My way of thinking is, if the company was getting stressed about money, then they would be churning out as fast as they can to remove the liability of the promised ability to give refunds. Seen plenty of other companies do this. Just my perception, but this (hopefully) last delay actually makes me feel more secure regarding the company. They seem very confident in the quality of what they are going to deliver even if t means waiting a little longer. If you get a chance have your husband browse the “Made on a Glowforge” category. It helps relieve my wife’s concerns 
Honest question, I’m a simple man and $2,000 is a lot of money to me too!
Really, what puts me at ease (besides having a pre-release unit in my hands) is the venture capitalists involvement.
Besides our collective $27 million (or what ever it is) the venture capitalists bought in and cut a $9 million check at the beginning, and came back with a bigger one after the first delay. These guys don’t throw money around without due diligence, and their research goes miles deeper than mine.
Dan has assured us that operations (rent, paychecks, components etc.) are funded out of that, and our money is set aside. With his history (did you read his book?) I have no cause to doubt him at his word.
‘Freak electrical accident’… so unfortunate, sorry to hear that. Life is struggle enough without calamity like that! Luckily everyone in your family is OK.
Let me just say that this machine is everything I hoped it would be, and I am so glad I stuck it out.
I opted for a hard cover “as a free gift” he offered but it was never received. One of the things I just never had a need to complain about because it was a freebie so there was no real loss, although I am sure they would have fixed it had I. Now I wish I had received it. Maybe if I read it I would have been less on edge, I’m thinking I will check it out on Amazon Thanks
Absolutely. Email Rita at support and I’ll bet she hooks you up. 
Dan has made many posts regarding the financial situation, and I’m just going to point out this one post in particular in hopes it helps calm your nerves.
Here is something to think about if you are frustrated about the shipping delay -
I backed G3D Systems T-1000 resin printer on Indiegogo. They claimed they were just using the crowdfunding site as a way to promote their new printer, it was already manufactured, in their US warehouses and would ship to everyone as soon as the crowdfunding money cleared their account.
The printer arrived as promised, but there are a few issues -
First, the 4 to 5 pound aluminum print bed was placed in the acrylic vat (holds the liquid printing resin) with one thin layer of small-bubble bubble wrap and a couple of inches of of play between the two. Guess what happened when a 4-5 pound piece of aluminum slid around in a ¼" acrylic vat? Busted. (BTW the printer weighs 75 lb, shipped FedEx ground). Who would would think that it’s OK to let items shift around in shipping? A little more time spent thinking about packaging would have saved the company money and customers a little frustration.
Once the replacement vat arrived, I could go through the set up procedure. Ends up the Mac software doesn’t work there are a lot of bugs in the PC version. That means you can only print the test file, but there are some other printing issues that people in a forum are trying to work through just so they can print the test file while waiting for the software update to be released that will let us process other files. Support is backed up, so it takes 3-4 days for them to respond. If someone at the company had just tried to install the software and ran some test prints, much could have been avoided.
Since it was on Indiegogo, it’s not like you can get a refund for the printer.
While delays suck, I would have rather had 6 months of delays for the company to get the product right instead of getting something on time and spending 3+ weeks of my evenings and weekends attempting to get it to work with noting to show for it. I’m frustrated with the product and wonder it it will ever work as promised. People who pre-ordered outside of Indiegogo have pulled their money, so how long do you think this company will last?
So would you rather have delay in getting your Glowforge and when you get it, it works as promised, or would you rather get it now and have a ton of issues and it sit unused for weeks while waiting for a resolution?
Those of you complaining about business partners, spouses and customers giving you a hard time for backing the Glowforge with yet another delay, you’d look even worse getting a laser cutter with a lot of problems.
Honestly at the time it made me feel at ease about that delay, which is why until this point I never questioned one but as stated… burn rate, cash flow, ect. can be of some concern, however the great news is Dans direct answer to my question did put me at ease, although my husband is still somewhat apprehensive.
Once again this was a kickstarter so I knew their timeline was a bit off, honestly I warned my spouse who is my partner there would be a year delay, however yes I would hope all the kinks would have been worked out by now and we would have gotten something that worked as promised. Delays happen but it’s perfectly normal to have apprehension after more then a few. I am however really sorry about your previous investment, that must have been pretty rough. We all have different situations and circumstances I think this one helped shape the positive viewpoint you have, which is great.
It will be fine. The company is working though the issues, just slowly, because the support team of 2-3 people isn’t dealing with a handful of people with minor issues, they are dealing with hundreds of angry people.
The printer will eventually work like it should, but nothing takes the luster off a new toy, a new car, or a new boat like it being broken from the start.
If it makes you feel any better my glowforge will be delivered Thursday and I will message you photos of it. That way you know they are real and being delivered
That’s a very nice offer however I never doubted the fact they have been shipping out some of the machines, although I would love to see your projects if you get a chance to post them 
I really appreciate all the detail in this update. And the black from tray looks great. Waiting another few months because the rate of manufacturing is ramping up slowly, well, presumably when I get the GlowForge it will be so awesome it will drive such concerns away.
That sounds like a great keychain engraving. Something to wear with pride.
This is a topic I can tell you with a fair bit of data: many, many of them do not. Many more who do have forgotten it.
Like anything, you can say “refunds are available” in a caring way or in a dismissive way. And like anything, it can be read in a means other than it was intended.
But I’ll always say it (and I encourage others to say it in a caring way) when I think the listener might need to hear it, because the alternative - that they think their hard-earned dollars are being held hostage, and I could fix that with a phrase - is far worse.
Very thoughtful post. We have a phenomenal finance team - our COO has done this for publicly traded companies - who use tools like this and more to make sure we preserve maximum cash flexibility.
I don’t mind you asking at all. It’s a lot of money, and you have every right to be thoughtful and careful about where it goes and what happens to it. I have a hard time answering because if I was uncertain about trusting someone, I don’t feel any better about them after they say “NO REALLY YOU CAN TRUST ME”. 
Could you shoot a note to support@glowforge.com? They’ll take care of it right away - at least as a digital copy if they can’t get you a paper one.
(It may take a day, because we purchase every copy - digital and paper - from the publisher, because while I wrote it, they own the rights to it.)
I couldn’t agree more. Crowdfunding is littered with the corpses of those who ran out of money or shipped terrible products. Caution and concern is justified.
I am really happy with how it looks!
I was head of Engineering at my last job (dont be impressed, there was only 3 of us in the department LOL) and it’s a relatively small company so I was directly involved with Purchasing, Finance and vendors in getting those tools going there. The ever-changing production schedule however, made things difficult because they would change the order of deliveries on us, and each project was usually a different make/model of the product that requires differing parts and materials! Fun fun! hahaha. So glad I’m out.
Dan’s book really made a big shift in me with being comfortable with the delay. I learned a lot about him and startups. Because the refund aspect of the crowdfunding has been transparent from the very first (many of the first posts on this forum were issues with orders and a few refunds) I wasn’t worried about losing my money. I have no idea what kind of bankroll the founders are sitting on personally and how much of their own equity is in the project but I’d say that they might bring a good base for develooment. Something we haven’t really discussed. And then there is their experience of bringing products to market. then the first twenty hires made me giddy at times, and envious, at what was going on up there.
I made a trip to Seattle and had a lot of time during the drive to think about these things. Then there was the participation of the Regulars on the forum that I got to know and get amazed at their knowledge and continued urging and participation in this project.
I have had doubts about their ability to pull it off in the time they allotted. And the delays happened. But even with the delays there were steady indications that they were working toward making this happen. The beta units and demos really helped, but always made me wonder about the completion of the full feature set.
When I got the pre-release, I said I would be happy with it as my forever Glowforge. I certainly would have gotten my initial discounted payment worth out of this machine. Now that I have experienced the improvements in the production units and the improvements of the software, I’m very content.
I’d like to do two sided cutting more easily and I’d like to do low power. However, to take advantage of these things means I would have to do twice as much design work as I am doing now.
Anyone waiting on the Glowforge: try not to let the delays preoccupy you. Get busy designing stuff. Throw some ideas out on the forum. The pre-release I have hasn’t near achieved its potential. I have lots of leather stuff to do. I have so many ideas. I’m just burned out on the time it takes to design stuff. I just have a hard time making myself do it. Luckily people are giving me projects to do now and I am getting a little inspiration from them.
I’m also kicking around going to Des Moines to the State Faire and do a three day demonstration setup at the cultural arts center. That’s keeping me focused.
So here’s to all those who are sticking it out: you will be very happy with what you can do. Your pleasant surprises will be much, much more than your disappointments at what it can’t do.
And those who are asking for refunds or considering it, or getting queried/nagged/teased about the long wait: this is all about agency. Agency is an amazing concept. For many centuries, the philosophers talked about free will but it was so often without content and context. Way too theoretical. The modern way of talking about it is called agency. Agency is identifying the degree you have power to change within a system. Many, many issues that cause conflict can be traced to an imbalance of agency: some people have the cards, and some people don’t. Some people have a big pot to bet with and some people have nothing to be with. When we feel foolish or helpless, often it is because our agency has been taken away or compromised. Agency is very important in American culture. If you have none, then you are a sucker.
But agency can take many, many forms. In situations where it seems that people don’t have any agency, we can be very surprised at the creativity in which human beings find ways to be empowered and not mere victims.
Often agency is discovered by changing the narrative: many of the forum regulars have had real agency and impact on the development of the Glowforge. that the forum is so robust, and that the pre-orders have some type of agency is demonstrated by the developments concerning replacing the tube.
For over a year, my family just rolled their eyes when I talked about the Glowforge. They didn’t quite understand, but I kept sending them emails and texts of stuff that was going on in the forum. Now I have quite a few people following the forum now because they have found things that are of interest to them.
My last thing is that I just invite anyone with doubts or concerns to start a post on a topic that is near and dear to them that the Glowforge would make easier or better. Get that first post or first topic under your belt and see what happens.
When to say “you can get your money back”
–Someone says they are afraid they’ve lost their money.
–Someone questions how their money is being managed at GF.
–Someone says something that indicates they are not familiar with the refund policy.
When NOT to say it
–Someone complains that the existing features fall short of the advertised features.
–Someone complains that it’s taking far too long to get their machine.
–Someone expresses doubts that some features will ever be achieved.
–Someone says something irritating, unrelated to the security of their investment.
–You’re tired of hearing from a person and want to “nudge” them away from the forum.
…when offered to someone not questioning their investment.