Well you usually get a deliverable for the type of stuff I back. Examples: an album from an artist I like (pays for studio costs, production of the physical deliverable); video games (finish development off of concept art, production of the deliverable), a book (cost of pressing).
kickstarter works best as pre-sales.
here, they used the money for r&d.
if they had a working prototype and a plan to mass produce but only lacked the considerable funds necessary to get a factory up and running with their machines, that would have been fine.
it’s for the better - the espresso industry has lapped them in the time it took them to fail. so even if they would have shipped, the machine they actually delivered was already 3 years old as far as current tech.
I think you get Kickstarter.
Bump dat.
I’ve used kickstarted for a lot of projects, but all things with actual hardware. The one thing I backed that was specs only ended up being delayed for a long time and then being a complete disappointment