What's wrong with saying sorry?

[Slatye]

Being this far past a deadline is usually considered a catastrophe.

I don't think that's true for Kickstarter projects. For Kickstarter projects, shipping anything at all to the customer counts as a major achievement - even if it's late, even if it doesn't work as well as it should. There's no shortage of projects that fail to get this far; some are outright scams, but most are just people who hopelessly overestimated what they could achieve in any amount of time, let alone within the planned timelines.

For the Peachy team to be shipping anything to the customers is very good. Assuming it works reasonably well (unlike, say, the Makibox) it's a pretty exceptional result for a Kickstarter project.

The Peachy team definitely has underestimated the number of problems (and the time taken to solve those problems), but unlike so many other projects they haven't gone and made shiny new problems to solve half way through the project (eg. by adding major new features). The only thing I can think of that's changed in a big way is the control circuit (from analogue to digital), and that seems to have been done for logical reasons (it would replace a few potentially unsolvable problems with solvable ones).


With regards to saying sorry: I think you'd get away with saying that once. Maybe twice, if you were lucky. However, if you say "sorry" every time there's a delay or something doesn't work out quite right, the project timeline starts to look like this:

"sorry, circuit board design took longer than expected. Delayed one week."
"sorry, circuit board design took longer than expected. Delayed another week."
"sorry, didn't realise that the parts weren't in stock at Digikey. Delayed three months while Digikey finds more stock."
"yay, parts turned up!"
"sorry, parts don't behave how we expected in this application, redesigning the board."
"sorry, redesigning the circuit board took longer than expected. Delayed three weeks."
"sorry, it's Chinese new year, it'll be six weeks before the new boards turn up."
"sorry, didn't realise that power supply brownout was such an issue for this circuit, redesigning the board."

... and so on, every few days for two years. It's very easy for even the most avid backer to get discouraged by so many bits of bad news, especially since good news is pretty rare (after all, it only takes a couple of major breakthroughs for the project to be complete). There's a fine line to tread between giving the backers insufficient information (so they assume that the project is a scam) and too much information (so they assume that the project is never going to be completed). I suspect that this is a major cause of the scope creep mentioned above - the team is desperate for some good news to give to backers, so they come up with a "free addon" that makes the device much more attractive. Of course, it also doubles the number of problems, but it achieves the short-term goal of making backers feel good.


Better to focus on the good bits when those occur, and right at the end make an apology for everything that isn't right (since by then you know what isn't right). In the case of the Peachy, the apology is (as above) essentially "sorry it took so long". In other projects it's "sorry we didn't manage to produce what we planned", or even "sorry we took all your money and ran (suckers!)".

[Mjolinor]

The 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration that Einstein said is so true and unless you have been down that road you do not realise how conservative he was with that statement.

[jamdis_the_mandis]

Rylan, thanks so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate the sentiment here, and that (as stated by others) apologizing isn't without risk to yourself and to the project.

I have absolutely no problem with you or your team experiencing this learning curve. I'm enjoying going on the ride with you. Some people might prefer for you to pretend everything is perfect, but I am much happier knowing that you are communicating honestly with us, and not (as some have suggested) so enamored of perfecting your own work that you cannot see that you failed your promise on the timing. I'm looking forward to receiving my printer. If it comes in December, great. If it comes next December... okay. I trust you guys.

[iplayfast]

There is no gain for anyone by an apology. Rylan has kept updates going on an almost monthly basis, and has been very open about the trials he and his time have gone through. Yes he underestimated his timeline, but that's a relatively minor glitch in the whole process. It looks like we are going to be getting a fantastic printer, and the community got a birds eye view of the R & D that went into it. Anyone who watched the video the kickstarter knew that this was a risky project, and the fact that one of the awards was a beta version should have clued everyone in. The project was still in development.

[dunginhawk]

lovely....""" Unfortunately we ran into a delay in the process of finalizing our packaging. Our styrofoam insert samples took weeks longer than expected to show up, and upon arrival we found that we’d been sent incorrect samples. This resulted in a substantial delay in our ability to finalize our packaging and order the boxes. While our box order has now been submitted, we don’t expect them to arrive until late November. That means we won’t be able to start shipping until sometime in December,provided no other issues arise."""

[cephdon]

I kinda find it funny how many people whine about the length of time these things take to finish, when they have no clue about the hardships experienced in the process of actually doing it.

It takes quite a bit of effort and not a small amount of courage and persistence to achieve something like this. Personally, I think anyone who can't afford to contribute to a project, kickstarter or not, and tolerate the loss if it doesn't pan out...probably shouldn't contribute.

In lots of ways, this is not unlike gambling. You take a risk for the potential reward, if it is worth it in your mind. Like gambling, you have no guarantee of success. If you can afford to gamble, don't do it. It's that simple.

This isn't Amazon.com where you are purchasing some product and they didn't ship it for two years.

[dunginhawk]

I just signed up yesterday and paid my money.. i can deal with delays, its only a couple hundred bucks... Ive been a backer on dozens of kickstarts, so im used to the delays.. all good here