Tile Pre Order

Have you all seen the many many ads for the Tile? Its a doohicky that you stick on things that get lost often and you use an App on your smartphone to locate them. It sounds like a great idea, and I really need something like that.

Thing is, it is one of these crowd-sourced deals. You can pre-order it and if they get enough money, they will build it. Eventually. But no guarantee on if or when. And no word on what happens to your money if they don't. I asked, and got no reply.

Which makes me wonder, is this the new Nigerian Scam? I mean, I could put out an idea that looks almost too good to be true (like the Tile) and collect tons of money (over $2 million for the Tile so far) and get tons of free press coverage (like the Tile) and have no intention of ever actually making anything. Every person I collected money from understood that it was a donation (kickstarter) or a pre-order with no promise of actual delivery or refund (read the Tile website, no guarantees at all) so I am under no obligation to send them anything. And when people ask, I will ignore their questions (like Tile).

Best of all, other than some outlay for a slick video and banner ads, it's pretty cheap. No overhead of an office or staff. And the money is collected completely legally. I never promised to send you anything, I said I would try if I got enough money. I can always claim the development costs were higher than expected and I didn't collect enough and just move to an island and live off my $2 mil.

I don't think anything on that scale has happened yet on any crowdfunding sites, but there have been many smaller projects, like indie video games, where the developer has fallen short on promises given and simply evaporated into thin air. Most of the time it appears a solid effort was actually given, and the funded project simply got too complex and failed, rather than someone with ill intentions came along and stole peoples' money.

There are other kickstarter projects though that basically read like "give me money so I can have fun." Some actually get funded - like people biking from one place to another and blogging along the way. A few people have walked away with people's money from a couple of those kinds of projects. That seems like a bit of a joke to me, but hey it's your money, you can give it to whoever you want.

Hmmm, "Want to fund my NASA TT build?"