Editing The Pen Addict 116/transcript (section)

== Kickstarter Project ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm, I've just, I've just watched that part of the video. It's super sketchy. Super sketchy. There's no way to say that anything comes out of the pen.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Not at all. And the drawing she's on is, is, is not marker. It's like a colored pencil. They're making this, they have this beautiful drawing out there that, you know, it makes you, it kind of alludes to the fact that I've drawn this whole drawing with this pen when, you know, that's clearly not the case.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, you know, I posted all these things on Twitter. The next, that night or the next morning, um, friend of the show, Jimmy Reeks, he goes, here's another red flag. And I missed this on the front and on the first time I went through it, this is a ginormous red flag. So each Kickstarter, uh, project, they have to put a timeline of events. Okay. You know, here's when we get the money. Here's when we start production. Here's when we expect delivery. So every project has a timeline. On their timeline in December of 2014, it says we have beta prototypes ready to be tested.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, first trial runs will be carried out and all feedback carefully assessed. The meticulous process of calibration begins.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They're using Kickstarter to fund the prototype.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That doesn't make any sense.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Which is not allowed under Kickstarter rules. That's a, I mean, that's a huge, huge mistake.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So what this boils down to, in a nutshell, this is a, this is a prove it Kickstarter, right? Prove to me that this pin is real and it works as you say it works. And the comment section is just filled with people saying, tell me how this works. Show me how the ink switches. Tell me how the ink's going to get cleaned from the yellow ink I just used to the purple ink that I chose next. And it's not going to be a brown ink. Tell me how it works. Show me how it works. They could never do it. Not once. They ignored those questions. They avoided them completely.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' They don't, because they don't even have a prototype.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't believe. If they, if they did, they could show a quick iPhone video and no one would care. Show me. Prove it. And they couldn't. And not only could they not prove it, they could not answer a question about it. And when that, like I said before, that volcano, man, it's just gurgling to the top because the questions keep getting repeated. Everyone has the same question and they're not answering it repeatedly, repeatedly. And it finally blew up in their face. And now as of the day we're recording, which was last Wednesday, the project was cancelled about three hours before we went to air.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I had no ideas that happened until I pulled up the show notes. Like just before we started talking about this. I didn't know they cancelled the project. This is the thing. So their statement for cancelling the project is Kickstarter wants a, Kickstarter contacted them and want a video made. Like a descriptive video.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Of the real pen working.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. So it's like, they're like, oh, it's, you know, they want it in 24 hours. So we've had to cancel the project with hopes of restarting with a much more detailed video. If you have the product and you're sitting on $366,000 with like a few weeks left to go. If you have the product, you're just going to make a video. You're going to stay awake all night. You're going to make this video. You're going to recut the original video and just show people using the pen, right? Because you're sitting on what could potentially be a million dollar Kickstarter, right? That is what you've got in your hands at this point. For you to cancel that project means you have not got the product.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's exactly right. This is a horrible answer. And it actually answers all the questions that everyone had about this project. You don't leave this money on the table if that product's sitting there in your hand and you can shoot a video in a 30 second shot, a one minute shot of the pen actually working. They do not have this product. Nothing that they've done says that they actually have this product in hand. And that's why they got canceled.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' And it's unfortunate. You know, we don't no one wants these things to be scams or jokes or failures. I mean, I would like this to succeed. If this is legitimate, it would be great. I would never use it, but some people will. You know, you want to see, you want to believe that there's, you know, great design and technology and these new ideas coming up and you want to help support them. That's what this Kickstarter platform is. But when you have the nerve to launch a product, I mean, a project on Kickstarter and not be able to fulfill the, to answer the basic question of show me how it works, then there's no other way that this is going to end than in failure. And that's what happened.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, I don't know where it goes from here. They've certainly given themselves a huge black eye when, I can feel confident

'''Myke Hurley:''' that there's not going to be a massive change between the time we're recording this and the time this episode goes out.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I don't think we'll see this relaunch before. Yeah, this is actually live.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' But what's funny is, and Jimmy just tweeted me while we're talking now. He said, or actually, no, it was someone else. It was, it was Curly McD said, the comments make for interesting reading. The difference between experienced backers and people new to Kickstarter is striking. Like, I'm looking at one of them, one of these responses and actually the, in their, their post today, you can actually comment directly on their update. Number three, one of the replies says, do you have, is there an email address at Kickstarter where we can write to protest this demand decision? It seems like they're not being reasonable. And, I don't know what to say to people like that. I mean, if you want to light your money on fire, I mean, go for it. But, to not realize what's actually taking place. People are mad at Kickstarter for canceling this project. They should be mad at Scribble for not having a product. But, it's funny. There's a bunch of people like that.