That is an utter shame. I feel bad for the founder. It is however not due to effort as much as its due to poor backing. Funding comes to those who can show solid gains, I belive the funders of this venture had no idea what this business is like. I see models and brands coming and going out in smoke in the same year. Vaporware, crapware etc. Maki was a bit better, it does not deserve to sink. However its still a poor performer. As they said in their website, 800 units a month.... Not sustainable, roi has to be in the 20-30%, that's 84K a month if they have a 30% profit margin. Lets say the have 20 employees with income of 60-80k, and average it to 70k, that puts them into the 1.4 million in expenses a year with an income of 108000 and that does not include any expense like office, facilities etc which can be 300k-1.2mill on their own. This puts them in a very very unpredictable place. No one is willing to fund a growing product for over 3 years that's hemorrhaging money at the rate of over 1.5mil a year. This operation is barely generating the small 2-3 person shop brake even point. The problem is that this type of business does not scale well until you hit the thousands a month range for the same number of employees or you take a cut on the profit margin and outsource almost everything out except the engineer and a few tech staff and an accountant, even then its in murky water.