Crowdfunding Promises and Pitfalls
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 12:55:55 PM

Our CTO, Steve Penrod, shares our crowdfunding policy on our blog.

In this post I want to talk about crowdfunding and address some questions we’ve been hearing from a few backers. I’ll also introduce our policy allowing a backer to change their status.  

Promises of Crowdfunding  

Kickstarter and Indiegogo have created a fabulous mechanism for individuals to voice their early support for ideas and products they want to see created. Decades ago people had little power. They could consume what large companies decided was worthy of mass production, or buy artisan products. There was no in-between and neither of these options gave the consumer a voice at the “idea” stage.  

Like so many other areas of our lives, the internet has changed this. Inventors and entrepreneurs can present new ideas to thousands of consumers around the world and have feedback in a few days before building anything. “Bad” ideas can be abandoned quickly and “good” ideas are validated. This eliminates wasted effort and helps them focus on viable concepts.  

Pitfalls  

The success Kickstarter and Indiegogo have had in making this possible is also their biggest pitfall. They’ve make it look so easy to buy the future! It feels like you are walking into the coolest store in the world full of the neatest ideas ripe for the picking. But it is easy to forget to you are walking into the store of the future. And predicting the future has always been fraught with problems.  

Kickstarter does post its Trust and Safety policy under a small link when you choose to back a project. And they do say “estimated delivery”. Slightly worse is when you pick a Perk on Indiegogo. There is faint text on the side that reads “you are contributing to a work in progress and not making a direct purchase”, along with a link to a dense page of Terms of Use. Really, who reads those when excited about getting something new and cool?  

Building something new requires doing things that have never been done before. Creators have to make best guesses to provide a delivery schedule, but they truly are guesses. The more challenging the project, the more guessing is required. So the world of tomorrow might not actually arrive until the day after tomorrow. Or next month.  

Community Responsibilities  

Getting back to the crowdfunding world, there are two sets of responsibilities if you choose to take on when you join a community by backing a project.  

1) Responsibility of the Project Creators  

The project creator has accepted an investment from all of the backers. Their responsibility is to realize the idea and vision that was show in the crowdfunding project. This seems pretty obvious.  

2) Responsibility of the Project Backers  

It isn’t as obvious, but by deciding to join in a crowdfunding project a backer also is accepting responsibility. At the moment they pledge to the project a backer has committed to the entire group that they are supporting it. The effort the backer has to exert largely ends there, but the responsibility endures. This is what distinguishes a “backer” from a “buyer”.  

The money backers provide at that moment is being counted on by the creators and other backers. Each small piece combines into a larger sum that can then fund the effort to bring about the joint vision of the future. No single backer can pay the $20,000 to manufacture an injection mold or any of the other large pieces or collections of small pieces that are needed to realize a project. Rather, their commitment allows hundreds of backers to join with a creator to make something substantial.  

Time Goes Marching On  

All of this is complicated by a world that changes outside of the project. Good ideas are rarely unique, at least not for long. When I first conceived of Christopher two years ago, I had never heard of Joshua Montgomery. But he was having the same thoughts I was. And apparently so were a few people in Seattle at Amazon and San Francisco at Google.  

After time has passed and new options appear, it is human nature to re-evaluate. The circumstances of a person’s life might change, so a product that previously felt vitally important might no longer be needed at all. And, of course, delays that arise which push back the original predictions intensify the questioning.  

We understand all of this. And we want to provide a mechanism to allow backers who have shifted their priorities to do so in way that doesn’t abandon the responsibilities they took on by joining a campaign. So…  

Mycroft Backer Change Policy  

To those who have backed the Mycroft project on either Kickstarter or Indiegogo, we are now offering three options:  

1) Continue to support the project. We thank you for your belief in our vision and your patience!  

2) Donate your device to another. For those who no longer need a Mycroft device for themselves, we’d like to offer the option to donate it. This can be to an organization of their choice, such as a school, robotics club or community makerspace. Or we can match them with a group and make the donation in their name.  

3) Transferring backing (refund) For those who no longer want to be involved with the project, we want to provide a mechanism so they can withdraw their support in a fair way. Once devices are available for delivery, we will begin working through the list of these former-backers replacing their backing commitment with new orders. At that point funds will be returned to the former-backer, minus the percentage that went to Kickstarter or Indiegogo.  

We believe these options provide an option for everyone that is fair to all. For those who want to continue their support of Mycroft, you don’t have to do anything. For those who wish to either donate their unit or get on the backing transfer list, please email us at [email protected]. Include whether you used Indiegogo or Kickstarter to originally back us, your name and email, and the selected option to either “donate” or “transfer backing”.  

Regardless of which option you choose, we appreciate everyone who has chosen to back us at all the stages of this project. Your support makes a big difference. We will continue to do our very best to live up to our responsibilities to you. 2017 is here, and I believe it will be a exciting year for all of us as our original vision is realized and grows!

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
over 7 years ago – Thu, Dec 29, 2016 at 05:39:54 PM

We finally received the first articles from the board house in the first week of December. We opened the box to find ten main boards and ten front panels. All of the issues I’ve mentioned before with incorrectly oriented connectors had been corrected and they looked pretty good. So we began to assemble the boards using first article injection molded plastic enclosures we had received back in October.  

While assembling we noted a few things (see below). But we got everything connected, plugged it in, and … voila … Mycroft was listening and answering us! That was a huge relief.  

The Bad  

However, there were a few minor but significant issues we identified as we worked through the entire batch.  

One board was completely missing a component. Upon close examination we could tell the component was there at some point, but somehow broke off. The first article boards were packed in simple anti-static plastic and then placed in a box, so we suspect it was broke off during shipping. The actual production run will be packaged completely differently with individual boards protected by foam, so we believe that problem has been dealt with. Check.  

The Neopixel “eyes” were mounted incorrectly. Each eye on the front plate is actually a small round sub-board, and we designed them to be mounted using simple standoffs. This provides an air-gap which prevents shorts at the sub-board test points. On two of the ten boards there are dead or discolored pixels in the eye which appear to be from these types of shorts. Plus that extra eighth of an inch positions the lights just right to get the diffused effect we intend through the plastic front plate. The four standoffs were not listed on the Bill of Materials (which was our mistake), so the board-house improvised and soldered the sub-board directly to the faceplate. This mistake was easy to document and won’t be repeated in the production run. Check.

The rotary encoder was just plain wrong. They had swapped to an “equivalent” component, and it was a bad choice. The feeling of the rotation and the button click was nowhere near as smooth and definite as the part we had specified, resulting in missed clicks and inadvertent selection of the wrong item while pressing the button. And the worst part — the rotation encoding was reversed. Fortunately, this was again easy to identify and they will use the specific part originally specified. Check.  

One of the matrix “mouth” displays has a dead column of pixels. At the time of initial manufacture we hadn’t provided them with a test-jig that allows them to power-up and exercise the units. This failure was at the component level, so that testing would have quickly have caught the issue as all components in the production run will be fully tested. Check.  

A few of the hand-soldered components didn’t have a really clean cone of solder. It wasn’t quite a “cold solder joint”, but odd enough to note. We were told these boards did not go through the QA process they normally follow, as they consider this a functional validation more than a production run. We’ll keep an eye on this promise, but for now I’ll consider it checked.  

To be fair to the board house, this really isn’t that unusual. This is exactly why the concept of “first article” exists so we can spend a shorter time clean up problems on a very small batch, setting things up for a smooth big batch. Subsequent to this we have performed sound tests, heat tests, and general usage of the boards. Aside from the dead eye and mouth pixels, all devices have held up and are functioning perfectly for us. Which also goes in the “Good” category.  

The Ugly  

One of the things that originally attracted me to the software industry was the clean nature of it. In programming bits are beautifully discrete. 1 or 0. True or false. Yes or no. Software does exactly what you tell it to and once it is working you can digitally “ship” and reproduce it nearly instantaneously. But building hardware to run that software is a completely different thing. We are now pushing through these ugly real-world bits.  

We’ve been negotiating with the board house to ensure they have incentive to produce boards correctly and as quickly as promised. This is tricky for a small business (one that doesn’t have $500,000 sitting in its bank account) which is placing relatively small orders (less than 10,000 units). We have finally come to terms which aren’t perfect but are acceptable for both of us and created the production PO.

However, we are are now facing the scariest holiday in the electronics manufacturing world. No, not Christmas. It’s Chinese New Years. At the end of January thru early February, production and shipping in China literally shuts down. Even if you are building everything in the US (as we are with out board house and enclosures) you are still impacted. Many of the basic electronics components like a 40-pin header are manufactured in China and only in China. These two weeks cause ripples for several months before and after the holiday. The board house tells us one of the component has jumped to a 40-day lead time. This means it would be 40 days before they even begin manufacturing the boards. We are beating the bushes attempting to shrink this lead, but we don’t have a better answer yet.  

So we are looking at the real possibility that board manufacturing will be 40 days plus 4 weeks. This isn’t the message I was hoping to share, but I also don’t want to leave everyone wondering what is going on. Trust me, nobody wants to start shipping more than we do!

Thanksgiving and Shipping Update
over 7 years ago – Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 12:31:13 PM

Update from our CTO:

In the United States, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season running to the end of the year. Today I’ll reflect on the year that has nearly passed as well as update you on hardware production.  

Shipping Update  

Before I blather on I’ll get to what many are most interested in — the hardware shipping update. As mentioned in my last post, we’ve hit a bumpy patch getting the custom circuit boards for the Mycroft Mark 1 manufactured. Ultimately responsibility for this falls on us, but not telling you what is going on isn’t reassuring either. So here are some details.  

On September 2nd we learned the quoted three week pre-production run would be done in four weeks. That was to give us 10 “first article” boards to assemble and thoroughly test so we can OK the production run. Somehow the board house produced a six-month old quoting design instead of the final one we provided, resulting in a useless batch. Next they told us of newly unavailable components (so we overnighted extra stock we had in our office from prototyping); then incorrectly inserted/aligned connectors (fortunately caught during our photographic reviews) and incorrect resistor chip substitutions (also caught during review). They have also confessed that the physical build has been more challenging than expected when quoted to us. However as of Friday night we believe boards are built as designed and the 10 first articles are being overnight shipped to our office as I type this update.  

We have all the other pieces sitting here waiting to assemble these first ten production units. We’re keeping our fingers and toes crossed that everything checks out so we can release the full production run. This process has been frustratingly slow and painful and we offer our deepest apologies to all our backers. Your faith in our vision got us started and we do not want to disappoint by either delivering a poor product or failing to deliver at all. (We’ve learned from the painful lessons of failed campaigns like Zano.)  

I hope this transparency fortifies your trust. I will post soon with results from our first article testing. We thank you for your patience.  

Thanks Giving  

There is a lot to be thankful for here. First, I want to repeat my thanks for all of the backers from Indiegogo and Kickstarter. These funds got this project off the ground, this very post wouldn’t have be possible without you. I again thank you for you patience while we build a quality Mycroft product and sustainable Mycroft ecosystem.

Secondly, thanks to everyone who participates and contributes to the project. We have been fortunate to be able to meet and work with incredibly talented and passionate people from around the world. We’ve spoken to people from Brazil, England, Portugal, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, Russia and more. Pretty incredible for an idea that germinated in Kansas. Without your contributions of time and ideas we wouldn’t be where we are today. We absolutely need you to get to the future we all have imagined.  

Next, I want to thank the investors who believe in Mycroft’s potential. We aren’t promising an easy to implement app or yet another API. Investors in Mycroft are making a bet that open software will have a significant place in the future of human machine interfaces. Our entire team is thankful for the support of those who share our vision for a technology that interacts so naturally you can’t tell if it is a machine or a human. That is a big vision and we are thankful for investors who believe our community can make it a reality.  

Additionally I want to thank all of the people working here at Mycroft AI. Every one of you has sacrificed to get to where we are. With the demand for tech talent, I know every one of you could be making double or triple the salary with better benefits and fewer hours. I appreciate that you have chosen instead to work on something you can point to with pride without any reservations about abusing people’s privacy or trust.

Finally, I personally am thankful that I get to do what I do here every day (and night). When I describe what we are doing, people are amazed by the scope and how we are literally changing the world. I’m grateful that I have been able to bring my own vision and technology into Mycroft. I only regret that we didn’t become aware of each other and start working together sooner!  

New Beginning  

The Monday before Thanksgiving we occupied the new office space awarded to us as part of LaunchKC. We are in the heart of Kansas City’s entrepreneurial community in the Crossroads, and the atmosphere is invigorating. The value of environment is hard to put a price on. It feels like a new beginning.  

Keep listening here and in the Slack channels for imminent announcements. Mycroft will soon be available as a pre-built Raspberry Pi 3 image for any hobbyist to use. The new backend we have been quietly building is emerging from beta, making the configuration and management of you devices simple. We are forming partnerships to get Mycroft onto laptops, desktops and other devices in the world. Mycroft will soon be speaking to you throughout your day.  

Thank you all for your support and assistance as we work together to build a better world.

Trick or Treat
over 7 years ago – Wed, Nov 02, 2016 at 02:02:10 PM

An update from Steve Penrod, our CTO:

I’m a big fan of Halloween. I had over 100 kids come to my door last night displaying their creativity in both the themes and execution of their costumes, and I was happy to reward them with a little candy. But this season is known not only for treats, but also for tricks. Unfortunately this year has brought us both. Let me tell you about it…  

The Trick  

As you may recall, we were expecting to receive the first article circuit boards from the board house last week. Instead they called us and were asking for clarification about placement of some of the components. Their questions weren’t really making sense, and after a few rounds back and forth it dawned on us — they’d built an old revision of the circuit board. The problem finally got tracked down to human error. A technician had simply grabbed the wrong files and they produced the wrong ones. So we’ve been reminded why you do first articles.  

The board house has owned-up to the mistake and are correcting it. We aren’t certain exactly how long this trick is going to take to recover from, but I’m guessing it’ll be a couple weeks. This isn’t exactly a disaster like I spoke of in my September blog post, but it certainly is an unexpected detour on the road to shipping.  

The Treat  

Despite this setback, we are pushing forward with our plan to open source the hardware design. I’m happy to announce the Mycroft Mark 1 now is on our GitHub under the hardware-mycroft-mark-1 repository! Everything you need to build our first Mycroft reference device will be found there. 

Open Source Software is pretty well understood, but Open Source Hardware is still a fairly new concept. The licenses to support it are still being honed. We are using the CERN license, which is often called the “GPL of Open Source Hardware”. It was created by CERN in Switzerland, the folks who brought us the Large Hadron Collider. However you likely won”t be able to build a super-collider — even if it is open sourced — unless you have a 27 kilometer wide backyard; and even if you did the electric bill for running a 6.5 teraelectronvolt experiment is prohibitive. Fortunately building a Mycroft Mark 1 unit is a lot more practical, and nearly as cool. 

We will also be applying to become a member of the Open Source Hardware Certification Program along with companies like Adafruit and Sparkfun Electronics. We encourage everyone to produce (even for commercial purposes) or remix our design, just keep sharing any improvements with the world. 

Two More Treats 

We’ve also been pushing forward on the software platform. On the forums we have published the Mycroft Roadmap for 2016-2017. This document highlights the many areas we see as important technical targets to strengthen today’s Mycroft platform. Portions will be tackled by us here at Mycroft Inc, but we also want and need to work together with the community to tackle many of the tasks. 

Additionally we’ve published the Mycroft Skill Lifecycle on the forums and have begun to fill the mycroft-skills repository on GitHub. This provides a great source of working skills and examples of how to hook Mycroft into home media and IoT devices, and more. Please pop over to the forums, read, and join in the conversation!

Interview with the CTO