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Imagine how they must feel. If this falls through their reputations will never recover.

They'll go down in the tech history books as one of the biggest failures ever.




Not to be unfair but it could be sort of like with Diaspora. The inability to deliver on the kickstarted campaign caused one of the founders to take their own life. It would be very sad if something like that were to happen again only because a group massively over promised and was unable to meet their own goals.


> The inability to deliver on the kickstarted campaign caused one of the founders to take their own life.

You don't know why he chose to end his life -- nobody does -- and making up stories about it is irresponsible. Even those closest to him have competing explanations, e.g. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/on-diasporas....


I read a CNN Money article which said suspect suicide (with confirmation from coronar coming later). If I am incorrect I will edit my post and apologise.

Articles: http://money.cnn.com/2011/11/14/technology/diaspora_cofounde... http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/249210/20111114/ilya-zhitomi...

Edit: "The San Francisco Office of the Medical Examiner formally ruled the death a suicide last month." - http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/on-diasporas...


I'm not disputing that it was suicide. I'm pointing out that your claim as to why he committed suicide -- an "inability to deliver on the kickstarted campaign" -- is pure conjecture.


Right, sorry I misunderstood you. Yes it is pure speculation from everyone.


In what way didn't they deliver? I got my t-shirt and use the service every day.


I think they were expecting something hugely successful. When it turned out to be just average with so much publicity attached it must have been difficult.


I think they might actually be able to pull it off. $99 is probably too low a price point, but they might be able to attract some investment based on this so that they can get away with selling the first million at a loss. In that scenario there is a good chance the company would eventually go bankrupt, but they would still be able to ship what they initially promised. So in short, I think there is a fairly good chance of at least a break-even scenario.




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