Reminds me of Noria (later Kapsul), a somewhat early Kickstarter darling that promised to have revolutionized window air conditioners. Theirs would be quiet and light, and inexpensive ($250!), and would ship within a year, all they needed to do was raise $250,000!
They raised nearly $1.5MM, because as it turns out, people will throw money at a solution that sounds amazing, regardless of their understanding of manufacturing and physics. They finally started delivering some five years later, and what they delivered amounted to a repackaged traditional window air conditioning unit. Still noisy, still heavy, and the build quality wasn't great. Cf. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/06/23/kapsul-air-conditi...
Johnson Controls does $20-$30 billion in annual revenue. They've swallowed up all kinds of other HVAC companies over the decades. Turns out, there's not a whole lot of innovation to be had in the HVAC world, because of the limitations of physics.
Nest, on the other hand, did some wildly overdue disruption on the control side of things, doing a little bit of math on historic local data to help figure out how to cycle radiators more efficiently, but for the most part, the cost savings tended to be from Nest suggesting that it's silly to be running your AC at 68 degrees F on a 98 degree day.
I appreciate there's an attempt to be transparent at the cost here, but "shipping winter 2024 even though we don't have a physical prototype" for an HVAC system is as big a red flag as there is, to me.
I was reminded of Noria/Kapsul as well. I paid the $1 for the chance to opt in later, so I was still getting their apologetic emails to customers as of last year, six years after backing.
The last email (May 2022) said they had delivered to ~700 backers, and had "a long way to go."
The timeline graphic is still up here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kurt/noria-cool-redefin...
They raised nearly $1.5MM, because as it turns out, people will throw money at a solution that sounds amazing, regardless of their understanding of manufacturing and physics. They finally started delivering some five years later, and what they delivered amounted to a repackaged traditional window air conditioning unit. Still noisy, still heavy, and the build quality wasn't great. Cf. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/06/23/kapsul-air-conditi...
Johnson Controls does $20-$30 billion in annual revenue. They've swallowed up all kinds of other HVAC companies over the decades. Turns out, there's not a whole lot of innovation to be had in the HVAC world, because of the limitations of physics.
Nest, on the other hand, did some wildly overdue disruption on the control side of things, doing a little bit of math on historic local data to help figure out how to cycle radiators more efficiently, but for the most part, the cost savings tended to be from Nest suggesting that it's silly to be running your AC at 68 degrees F on a 98 degree day.
I appreciate there's an attempt to be transparent at the cost here, but "shipping winter 2024 even though we don't have a physical prototype" for an HVAC system is as big a red flag as there is, to me.