Instacube - When KickStarter Is Not Enough

KickStarter has turned out to be a fantastic place to launch a product. We often like to follow up to see what has happened with successful campaigns to follow them once they get the funding to the scheduled shipment of the product as listed on KickStarter. One that I have been looking at with interest this year is Instacube as it is one that caught my attention last year as a truly unique product. One that would fit on my desk or table to stream pictures for viewing. It is a very simple concept which proved to be of great interest to a large number of people.

A year ago, the Instacube exceeded the stated goal of $250,000 and received contributions of $621,049 demonstrating the interest they generated. By having Instragram feeds being shown in the Instacube, one could enjoy their own stream of great pictures. And with them exceeding their goal, they are to be including Facebook integration as well. The goal with the money raised was to ship the cube shaped product in March 2013. For those who contributed, that has long since past.

While starting a new product launch, one determines the funding to get it launched and when receiving 248% of the goal, you would think they had everything they needed to get the Instacube off the ground. But it is not. The company is looking for about $1 million in additional funding and the original designer has resigned from the company behind Instacube. The last update on KickStarter was July 3rd and the future for the Instacube does not look promising.

In that update, they are looking for more funding which does happen on other KickStarter projects. What is of concern is the explanation about a lot of money going to pay salaries for the people in the company. With a new product, there is either enough funding planned to cover that or people are working for equity in the company. Since so much has gone to pay salaries, was there a failure to plan the overhead for Instacube? Much of the future work described in the update talks about more money paying employees and contractors.

Additional money that we raise will be put directly towards completing the manufacturing engineering, software development, tooling and testing, and then towards buying components and materials for production and shipping the final goods to you.

There have been other issues, such as finding a manufacturer who then pulled out. Probably because of the financial aspects for Instacube and the need to raise more funding. The process of finding another manufacturer has started over, but until they receive more funding, it does not seem like that will get very far. It makes one wonder what the future holds for Instacube. Will they get the funding necessary to produce a product and deliver it?

The bigger question is why was the KickStarter campaign not enough? There have been failures on some campaigns to deliver which can be attribute to the inexperience of the individuals behind it. But in this case, DM2 has been around for years creating products, so this is not a new process to them. They had to know what it would take to bring a concept and deliver the Instacube close to the estimated date. We hope they can get the necessary funding and complete the manufacturing process to deliver the Instacube in the coming months.

The Instacube is a great product which needs to come to market.