Sorry - I didn’t mean to imply GF was a Kickstarter, I know it wasn’t. I’m presuming Glowforge must have been either bare bones at campaign or that going from 0-60 was a big shock because it took them nearly two years to deliver US units and because they still haven’t finished shipping campaign international units.
I agree on the shift to mass production too though. I’ve seen the same with other big projects and I’m torn as to which I’d prefer to be honest; on the one side I really didn’t want to wait 2.5 years for my forge with that money sat in someone else’s account (I’m luckier than many in that regard as we could afford to write it off to an extent), but on the other side, I got a Kudo 3D printer on kickstarter and the build quality is (IMO) awful! I’m over the moon with my forge and although I’m aware that I’ve been open in my criticism of @dan and the team on the handling of the campaign, the product they have delivered it AWESOME and I’d recommend it without hesitation.