Yes they should have done it from day one. Throughout this wait people have endlessly asked for an idea of when they will get their machine and GF have up until now always flatly refused to say, other than all will be shipped by a certain date, which has never been true.
AKA âthe old methodâ
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I received my email asking if I want to take shipping on 9/11/2017 to which I said yes. It is currently 10/15/2017 and I have yet to receive another email with tracking information.
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I apologize for not following the posts of actual product owners closer, as Iâve selfishly been focused on my delivery date. Have there been any significant software updates in the past 4-6 months? These might include fixes for the cutting area, accurate scan and cut alignment, alignment for 2-sided cuts, etc. Has rollout of those updates been smooth and effective? Is there a roadmap for implementation of the new (or promised) features?
At this point, I do believe Iâm secure enough in the shipping order to actually receive a unit (Nov. 3 ânotificationâ). My concern is that, while the cloud approach theoretically offers numerous software updates, that many of the promised software features may never materialize. Iâve used other laser cutters before, so as cool as lasers are the glowforge wonât wow me with just basic cutting/engraving functionality.
Thereâs been some talk of the delays leading to a higher quality product. What evidence is there of this? Maybe Iâve been missing that in the monthly updates? I donât consider reducing shipping damage and the occurance of DOA units to be âhigher qualityâ. Receiving an undamaged, functional unit in exchange for thousands of dollars is the minimum we should expect. Iâve actually been tempted to upgrade from basic to pro, but Iâm wary of sinking more money into something thatâs not going to deliver on all the promises.
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Honestly, I donât think theyâve had reasonable enough data until now to provide more individual estimates. If thereâs anything with patterns itâs that @dan is wildly optimistic about generalities but guardedly conservative about specificities.
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And to be fair, the bulk of that rests with whoever the courier is(hateful looks at UPS for 1 bounced and 1 utterly destroyed units).
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Do you also promise that youâll have your clients wishes sorted in a few months? Do you also say âsorry, a few more monthsâ at the last possible date? Over and over again? In that case, you deserve all the love (to keep things civil) I feel for @Dan right now. If you, on the other hand, try to manage their expectations from the get go, keep thing real, then youâre nothing like @Dan. Why would you compare yourself to someone who promises the moon, over and over again?
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They marketed the Glowforge well in advance of the development on purpose. They did this to test the market, ensure demand existed, and get the advertisement out before chancing development of a product unsure of what demand was out there. We were lied to for sure. Iâm sure their investors were fully aware of where Glowforge stood. It was smart from a business perspective, but the âsorry we let you downâ talk is all b.s. This was the plan all along.
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I think itâs fairly clear that GF have a strategic focus on the US market for the foreseeable future. This is probably an appropriate survival reaction- IMHO they seem to have underestimated the complexity of servicing a global consumer base with a physical product in many areas, but once the money was taken and the contracts made it was too late.
There is a deal with the devil here: the massive success of the crowdfund was at best based on hopelessly optimistic estimates, at worst a knowing misrepresentation, and in reality a likely a bit of both. It gave them the momentum and credibility to establish VC funding, I suspect on favourable equity terms, but also a huge set of headaches and overreaches which they are now struggling to manage. The separation of crowdfunded capital is very smart- now that they have built a product, a production line and an order book of full price units, the long term value of the business has been created and they can let the crowd pre-orders go with limited impact.
Personally Iâm feeling a little used, but you have to hand it to them for an audacious strategy.
It will be a text book example of the reality of the crowdfund dynamic of transferring business risk to a customer base who is under informed and ill equipped to manage it, and responsible legislators (if any still exist) should be thinking about how to protect consumers from the predatory aspects of this model.
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Ah ha. So the theory behind this is that the company is intentionally delaying and withholding units from early pre-order customers in order to fulfill deliveries to later, higher paying customers?
Canât comment on their actions, only suggesting that there is a commercial case for this approach
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Very interesting findâŚ
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No. You are interpreting that very loosely to claim thatâs what the preorder was.
Iâve also worked at Amazon and been through this process. You seem to be focusing on this paragraph From @danâs blog, emphasis added:
Put all this together and I have a modest proposal: if you are creating a new startup, you should figure out your marketing first. Create your Kickstarter video (the nickel version, shot with dummy props on your phone and crudely edited together) first and see how many views you can get for it on Youtube. Mock up the app store page and A/B test it against screenshots of competitors using a survey. Write the press release, post it online, and see how many people would buy. Run some ads and see how they convert. Write up a blog post with the idea and see if it goes viral.
What he is saying, and what the Amazon process is all about, is creating an understanding of the value proposition to the customer before you do the initial work on the product. It helps you refine the product, the feature set, etc.
The âKickstarter videoâ he mentions above is a mock-up of the videoâas stated in the highlighted textâwhich again helps to refine the concept. This is a Zero-budget video, not the highly polished video used during the crowdfunding.
This is all a process to follow before going for the first round of VC funding, possibly even before Angel Funding.
We know from contemporaneous videos that they had working prototypes at the time of the preorder campaign.
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I think youâre being a bit too kind here.
Glowforge isnât Amazon. They only drew inspirations from some of their processes and applied them to a crowd funding campaign.
I didnât focus on that one paragraph. I read the whole thing and combined it with everything else that has happened. Like for example⌠advertising that shipping would start in December 2015.
Also, not to bring up Lilly Robotics again, but the slick advertising videos donât carry much weight with me anymore. Iâm not saying without a doubt Glowforge faked their videos (itâs been forever since Iâve even watched one), but there has been a precedent set in this whole crowdfund industry.
The funny thing is I have mixed emotions on this whole thing. The deceit was wrong, plain and simple. But what better way to just get it done? The Glowforge probably would have never existed without such shenanigans.
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Oh man, one more delay and Iâm canceling. This is getting ridiculous. 2 years plus and an additional 7 months for a filter. A filter. You teased us with what appeared to be a working machine on your site, demos to people like Tested, and thenâŚnothing. What the heck!!! Clearly you needed to get your act together before you advertised this thing.
- Jon
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Thank you, it still seems surreal. I hope you and all your family and friends are safe. Itâs going to take a long time before things get back to normal, but its a good community and I know weâll all come out stronger. Stay Safe.
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I feel similarly, there is a grudging respect for the entrepreneurial cahones that it takes to magic this out of nothing, despite the compromises and close to the bone practice at the expense of the customers who made it possible.
Your clip from Danâs blog shows clearly that the marking strategy was to establish need before commitment to full production, which is actually quite sensible- the alternative being the traditional western corporate engineering approach to invest massively upfront and risk a flop.
But I donât see it as a smoking gun- we canât know how much GF knew about the actual lead time and how ready the prototype actually was. I suspect they knew that there was risk but dramatically underestimated how much and how much time and money it could really soak up. In other words, fast and loose, rather than directly malevolent.
But that was then and this is now. Many customers have been badly let down, especially internationals, and the bandaid fixes deployed so far are clearly no longer sufficient. Question is what more can GF do to make good, and show the people that have been the springboard for their effort that they are actually valued as customers and investors.
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That appears to be the case!
Alpha â interesting term for suchâŚI donât think that means what you think that means, but it is an often held misunderstanding of the term. Ran into that a lot with clients and dog training, too.