back to article $1m Popslate e-ink screen venture tanks, Indiegogo backers flame out

A popular Indiegogo venture to build a secondary e-ink display for the iPhone has shut down after raising over $1m – and donors will not get their money back. Yashar Behzadi and Greg Moon, the founders of Popslate, the eponymous company behind the popSLATE 2 secondary smart screen, explained that the company will be dissolved …

  1. lglethal Silver badge
    Boffin

    Buyer be wary...

    Be wary of anyone who identifies themselves as a "Storyteller" (Authors may be excepted) or a "Conductor" (unless they actually lead an orchestra).

    They are peddling sh%te...

    1. Andrew Moore
      Flame

      Re: Buyer be wary...

      I'm sure if he was hit by Lightning, he'd be an admirable conductor...

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      $1m says

      he told a damn good story.

  2. Ralph B

    No Working Prototype

    I'm not saying all projects on Indiegogo are deliberate scams, but their failure to require at least a working prototype does encourage the more, ahem, naive projects to get launched there. And the ability to collect any backing received, rather than requiring a fixed (planned) target to be reached, also works in the interest of the more, shall we say, speculative ideas.

    Kickstarter does a better job of keeping their project starters honest, in my experience.

    1. DropBear

      Re: No Working Prototype

      Not in mine. Their "requirement" for a "working prototype" is exactly that - they "require" it, and give precisely zero fucks whether anyone was even listening when they did that. Which is why you can get at least three different perpetuum mobile campaigns going at any given time on KS without any difficulty at all.

    2. no-one in particular

      Re: No Working Prototype

      Kickstarter *used* to vet their projects but a few years ago decided to short-circuit that, leading to a sudden surge in twaddle (the great "making potato salad" days).

      More recently, they instigated the "working prototype" and "more than just renders" rules. That sounds good - and a few projects do get cancelled by KS for breaking those rules. *BUT* it appears to be run as "we will cancel if enough backers complain - perhaps" rather than "we won't allow them to start in the first place".

      Which means that Kickstarter themselves don't (seem to) do much to keep the project starters honest, they have crowdsourced that to their backers.

      Have to say "seem to" as there isn't any visibility of projects that never make it onto the site in the first place.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No Working Prototype

      "I'm not saying all projects on Indiegogo are deliberate scams"

      I should hope not! As I said last week, Indiegogo is a fine upstanding company, and I wouldn't want to see anyone cast aspersions on their standards as supporter of fine, honest projects such as Bleen 3D.

    4. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: No Working Prototype

      "I'm not saying all projects on Indiegogo are deliberate scams, but"

      Ahem, Fontus self filling water bottle, ahem.

  3. wolfetone Silver badge

    Forgive my ignorance, but couldn't you just build an antenna type arrangement around the screen to amplify the wireless signal?

    1. frank ly

      Shhhh. Listen to the storyteller.

    2. c3me

      And how would you connect the new antenna to the radio in the iPhone?

  4. 's water music

    missed opportunity

    Shirley they could have significantly defrayed their expenses by selling off the gen 1 screens as electro-smog-woo attenuators on some new age bullshit marketplace? It's not like their morals or chutzpah would prevent them from taking this path.

  5. Mage Silver badge
    Boffin

    Major mistake

    Any Apple accessory not pre-blessed by the fruity folk.

    Even a BT eInk screen to work as notifications for any phone, tablet, PC ... oh was that the Pebble?

    This was never practical except as part of an entire phone. A major issue too is that proper eink panels are far more expensive than LCD panels (excluding electronics).

    This was doomed because too expensive and complex an accessory for too fussy a company.

    1. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Major mistake

      Pebble watches use a low energy LCD, not eInk

  6. Sharrow

    They ran out of money bigly

    Surprised the story doesn't mention that they're claiming that they ran out of cash after their funding raised over 10 times what they originally asked for.

    1. c3me
      FAIL

      Re: They ran out of money bigly

      Indeed the 'Con' and the 'Story' were in the land of Makebelieve in their 4 month ago update when they cancelled refunds. They did not do themselves any favours by not acknowledging the facts more frankly: 1. what is the actual compromise to the transmit and receive performance. 2. how much time to resolution does their current financing allow.

      Heck they might even have got some sympathy if the straight jacket of Apple's OTA requirements was say no more than 15% degradation and they were at 30%. They'd have to be honest with any new backers they were approaching so why not be honest with the donors of the 1.1m USD that had overfunded them by 1,371%. Again that should have rung alarm bells in itself: they had no idea how much money they'd need and even less foresight about the risk to completion when they did hit a snag!

      1. uncommon_sense
        FAIL

        Re: They ran out of money bigly

        This is what happens when Hipsters think they can do the job of Adult Men (Engineers)..

  7. Grunchy Silver badge

    Yipes - and then I bought into Psion Gemini.

    Shudder !

  8. bradg60

    Send a Message...CLOSE YOUR INDIEGOGO ACCOUNT

    A backer of the PopSlate 2 project, it's been days since the projects demise and not a word from Indiegogo. What I got back from them was a form letter saying to contact the campaign owners. They’re clueless.

    Indiegogo bears watchdog responsibility. A ‘you decide who to trust, we just facilitate’ strategy no longer cuts it. They need stronger/stringent guidelines for transparent reporting of project financials.

    They’ll learn this lesson if users do one simple thing...CLOSE THEIR INDIEGOGO ACCOUNT. I closed mine today after giving them four days to say something. Anything. I recommend highly people do just that…TODAY.

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