Companies ship things all the time. They ship to many countries around the world. And they tell you exactly when they’ll ship and exactly when you’ll get your product. It happens every second, of every day, world-wide. It’s not brain surgery. You don’t need some advanced degree in shipping logistics to say “Oh, she ordered first, so we’ll ship her’s first.”
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actually, the “sorry we’re late gifts” have more than exhausted the small interest they made on those deposits, and then some. There were a couple of threads on this a while back.
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Just my personal opinion, but a guaranteed refund is guarantee enough for me.
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Well that a matter of opinion, a professionally run investment should be able to pull 6 to 7% but let say it 5% that’s 2.5 million per year. That is not a lot based on the operation costs, but its a lot to me.
Regards,
David
It is for me as well, but I meant that the crowd funding campaigns are pledges with no guarantee of success. In this case I did not make a pledge a paid for a laser cutter, (okay an awesome laser cutter) which is really a pre-purchase. I expect delivery just like everyone else…
Regards,
David
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Just wanted to interject something here. 2.5 million in interest, with at least 10,000 backers (that’s the “standard” number used around here, I have no idea how many actual Glowforges were purchased). That means the interest so far is only $250 per person.
We are being given $150 in Proofgrade materials, $50 in the Glowforge Catalog, $50 in Inventables gift certificate, 10% discount in Glowforge Catalog, and then $20 per month that they are late (currently we are at 2 months late from the December 2016 promised date, so $40 and counting…). So in my book, we are getting the interest back and probably a bit more from the company because of these delays (currently $290 + 10% discount in the catalog store + all the initial video designs for free).
Don’t just take my word for it, you can look it up here from @dan himself.
Reference threads:
From April '16: Glowforge shipping date, beta releases, and bonus materials
From December '16: Schedule update (December '16)
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That would be if they risked our money on investments.
They are not investing the preorder money, they are holding it.
If they invested it, and something slipped, they would not be able to give refunds. Were they doing that, I would have much less faith in getting a product, and much more fear of the company just disappearing.
The national average on savings accounts was 0.11% APY as of January 2016, according to Bankrate. Some of the biggest banks offer just 0.01% APY.
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Those returns are average of long term performance. Their investment horizon is in months. Even if they knew the day they opened pre-orders they wouldn’t be shipping until 2017, and there is no proof only conjecture on that point, that would still be an 18 month investment horizon. Dan has consistently said you can refund at any time. If the pre-order money was placed in an investment with any risk beyond money market risk that fact combined with Dan’s public statements would place Dan and the company in a legal gray area, aka where a lawyer’s mortgage payments are made. I find it highly unlikely the pre-order money is in anything yielding more than a fraction of a percent.
Happy cake day.
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Hi BDM,
I agree batch shipping is the more cost effective way to ship, and they might do just that, but you have to admit you have no idea if that’s the approach they will take, the felling I get is they are shipping to the people that are going to get them the best exposure for the product. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, in fact it does make the most sense from a business stand point. I may not like it because I want to get my hands on the laser, but I can understand it. What I want to is a little more information even if I won’t like it. Dan has been pretty good about information, but he also has more than he’s willing to tell, and example is the first delay, the power supply issue which we found out about right before things were suppose to ship. The technical details could have been given to us sooner as the original beta units were supposed to go out 3 months prior to the “announcement” …
I guess my point is I think the people who purchased the laser are tougher minded than maybe they give us credit for I would like more information even if I don’t like what I hear. Maybe I want to much but I am always looking for more information. I work at a 35 year old company with a startup mentality, I work in high tech designing silicon but I have also designed card board boxes to do the shipping. The employees own the products and we get what needs to be done …done its probably why I am an information junkie no such things as to much.
Regards,
David
Oh I wasn’t referring to you when I spoke about the crowd funding I was referring to Glowforge in general sorry about the misunderstanding.
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Hi Julybighouse,
Works okay as long as you use low intrest and 1 year, except that its closer to 2 years per the schedule.
Okay lets use 6 % now its up to 600 dollars or if you want to take the partial year 550-ish.
What really kicks in is the discount because we purchased prior to the cost increase I don’t remember the number off hand but that is in our favor for sure… Always love a good discount.
Regards,
David
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HI Carbis,
Actually high rate of returns by professionally managed investor can be 10 to 12% but general investing with a professional can yield around 6 to 7%. I used a lower number for the calculations 5 %. Also most investments don’t lock your funds they only lock your ability to move money randomly like from investment to investment every other day, this keeps the overall investment stable.
Putting monies in a bank right now is not the best strategy for anyone, and since the FDIC is only good to 250,000.00 it would be just as risky…
Regards,
David
HI jbv,
I would hope they would not keep it in a bank, anything over 250,000.00 is not protected and the rates are well…
There are investments out there that can guarantee no lost of capital but they are lower in return value I would hope they would be in these… Bottom line is we don’t know its all guessing on our part.
Regards,
David
Just FYI…It’s 250,000 per investor, so if you have a joint account the limit is half a mil. per bank. 
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That is likely a big part of how they’re picking “pre-release” recipients which are the only ones we know are being shipped now. The other factor is likely “what might we learn from the user that we don’t already know?” so they get useful intel for the software devs.
Yeah, I’m not suggesting they just ran down to the bank with a huge bag of cash and put it in a personal savings account. Just pointing out that the potential range of interest rates that they are getting is not necessarily 5-7%, but maybe more like 0.5 - 1%, based on what @dan told us last year
That was after the first year. I don’t math great, but my calculator suggests that $22 is 0.82% the pre-purchase price of basic+filter+shipping (to Ca), or 0.52% of the pre-purchase price of pro+filter+shipping (to Ca).
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I wasn’t disputing the rate of return of a well managed investment, my point was that the management strategy used for those returns is one predicated on a horizon of years or decades. At any point during the investment period the amount of money under management may very well be less than the starting amount. It happened in 2008 to even the wealthiest investors. This is perfectly acceptable for personal wealth management (they’re doing fine now.) For corporate finance where the money absolutely, 100%, must be whole and available in a short time frame instruments like Treasuries or equivalent funds/vehicles, or accounts at too large to fail banks like Wells Fargo are used. Or as John Maynard Keynes would say, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
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Glowforge is stacked with engineers and S/W people but they still grossly underestimated the time and difficulty in putting a pure technology product out the door. Thank your lucky stars that engineers aren’t picking an investment firm to gamble with our funds.
I’m an engineer that picked poorly. My 401K, after many years, had less money in it than I actually invested. Would have been far better off putting it under the mattress.
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Much smaller mattress.
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I think I could personally make that work 
Best thing to do when it comes to investing is bite the bullet and pay the fees associated with a professional investor. Seems like a lot of money until you see what they end up making you in the long run.