I'm not sure I absorbed the message as it was supposed to be put across. The video showed a (seemingly) quite advanced prototype, and they expect to be able to ship before the end of the year. So what is the $200k for? Seemingly to "make it happen" but it appears to be happening already, so it's kickstarting a hefty salary?
If I did somehow miss the point and this seems like a cynical response then obviously I apologise in advance, but that's how it came across.
Edit, cancel the nicety... I just saw that it's retailing for $299. It all feels rather cynical. Perhaps I have too much of a rose-tinted view of the attraction of Kickstarter?
Kickstarter is being used, more and more, as a way to build interest and create revenue before the official "launch" of a product; even a product that would be produced anyway. It seems to be a rather effective way to get press coverage for a percentage of projects, and presents a clean interface on a trusted system for interested potential purchasers.
The risk, of course, is that a huge goal is less likely to be reached than a smaller goal. The ideal situation is that you have a reasonable goal that will actually help maybe some outsourcing or consulting costs or distribution set-up or what have you, blow away the goal early, and keep interest to drive revenue.
Personally, I don't find this kind of Kickstarter project very interesting, and I believe it's a suboptimal way to launch a product that could instead just be released as a MVP and iterated on based on user feedback.
It feels like a lot of kickstarters are barely more than a "pre-order" mechanism. I'm not sure what happens if a project gets funded but then fails to deliver. It seems like when you give to a kickstarter, you should go into it fully prepared to never get your money back and never get the finished product.
It's a cynical way to pre-order, because you're not really pre-ordering at all: you're giving some money and the rewards are a side-effect. You don't get any of the usual consumer protection at all.
You mean like the Astronaut MMO that got all the press earlier this year, and now even the forums are gone?
Yes, that is the risk with Kickstarter and any other investment. It's just there seems to be less visibility into the viability of the company or person behind the project than most investments. Since I rarely go beyond the $20 range, I only feel mildly burned on the ones that don't go anywhere. For folks who hit the maximum (I've seen some with $10K options), I suspect the hurt is a little more real.
Running a Kickstarter project early on in a product's life allows anyone to see what kind/size of audience they'll be dealing with.
I don't believe all products should do this, but they'll receive valuable feedback, and if they don't meet their goal, they'll be better off with decent feedback from potential customers.
To participate in YC you need to accept a very small equity deal from YC - this is usually around $17,000 for 7%, but I believe it can vary depending on the stage of the company.
You later get the option to take a $150,000 convertible note at extremely good terms. This isn't mandatory, but the terms are designed to make it almost a no-brainier to say yes.
I'm getting the same vibe. And I'm beginning to think that allowing this kind of thing will be the downfall of Kickstarter. Yes, I will explain.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the Kickstarter concept. But in practice, their scaling seems to quickly be turning hem into a sales platform that has no controls or accountability.
And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash". And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that -- by all means, people should be free to do what they wish with their money, and the Kickstarter campaign will probably work out beautifully for them. That's great.
But this whole perception of Kickstarter being a place for bootstrapping interesting projects is turning into a dangerous myth. Like many things before it, Kickstarter is becoming a place for people with money (and/or obvious ability to make money), to make even more money, though marketing under a vague guise of "bootstrapping", with no checks or balances to keep people honest.
This isn't an accusation leveled at Pixate -- I don't believe they're doing anything wrong and I have huge faith in YC's filtering. But once enough clever people figure out that you can earn a killing or huge bonus on top of anything, just by tacking on a nice Kickstarter campaign, it will become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then people will move on to the next thing, and the cycle will repeat.
> And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash".
I fully agree. Honestly, I hope both that this campaign fails and that the guys at Pixate are able to develop and launch their product successfully. The point of Kickstarter is to enable creative endeavours that would have trouble succeeding in a market environment -- a talented friend of mine financed his first short film via a similar site, which will hopefully get him a foot in the door of filmmaking. In his case, the Kickstarter idea is a great thing: It guarantees artistic independence and audience involvement.
This app, however, already has backing and will easily make plenty of money on the market. It's not a catastrophe in the long haul, but I sincerely hope this doesn't catch on: That's not audience involvement, that's a commercial transaction. You give me money, I give you product. On a larger scale, it's abusing opportunities for people who have few, which is particularly nefarious if it comes from people who have no need to beg.
In just a month or so I've already found myself developing an almost habitual response to Kickstarter software things posted here. Like you say, there seems to be a pattern of trying to cash in.
I see an interesting title on HN. I visit it and start reading. I start reading the copy and see some interesting screenshots/mockups, keep scrolling, and then realize a bit later that there isn't actually anything ready for me to try out, but they want me to give them some money.
Then I close the tab.
Very few of the software projects I've seen linked there have seemed interesting or novel enough for me to care to put up some cash up front. There are tools that cost hundreds of dollars out there that will let me try them, fully-featured, for free. These guys want $50 for beta access or $100 for a full license for something that doesn't exist yet?
It's probably somewhat irrational, but I'm even more annoyed by the ones with real slick demo videos and such. Why not put the time spent making that towards making a product I can actually try?
It is very very easy to create a nice demo, the difference beteween that and a nice product is lots and lots of time, effort and money.
There is a balance to be made between 'we have this idea and need money to build it' and 'we are serious about this, we have done X much already, we need money to go over the finish line'
"I just saw that it's retailing for $299. It all feels rather cynical."
Huh? For a $99 pledge, you get the $299 license when it launches, it looks like.
This looks like every other product kickstarter, which essentially are saying, "We've invested considerable time and money. We're committed. We'd love to have you pitch in to help accelerate us and get us over the finish line. In exchange, your pledges entitle you to discounts and other favors."
Why don't they just create the product and have me pay for it? The company is already funded, why should I go ahead and pre-order something now, knowing it might not work as advertised when it's ready. I'd much rather pay $300 when the product is on the shelf, when I can evaluate the pro's and con's. Sure, if this was a project that hasn't been started and looked very promising, I would give it some money, for a chance to get something great. In this case, it seems I don't have to risk, but rather just have to wait.
I'd love to see complete or nearly complete software on kickstarter. One could finish a software project, then recoup all of the development costs plus profit and then offer the final product for free since you have already made all your money. This model allows the people that are most interested to fund the entire development cycle of the software and pay for everyone else to have it too. It also avoids all of the immoral intellectual property laws.
I'm interested in how animations work with Pixate. Would they also have to be in CSS, if not, then how smooth/seamless would transitions be? Looks good so far though, but 200k?
Feedback on the Listr (ugh, that name) re-imagining: the little icons weren't particularly informative in the original, but at least there was some text to try and explain. Now I get to guess what each icon means, plus instead of everything fitting on one screen, you apparently must scroll down to select e.g. "Projects".
By the way, what is up with every project talking about "beautiful"? "Beautiful Javascript", "Beautiful native apps", "Beautiful text icons", etc. Is this just the Steve Jobs school of selling?
My exact thoughts on the "re-imagination". Drop-shadows on disabled-looking and misappropriated icons that wouldn't even have made sense on the original had there not been labels for them.
I agree with all the current opinions, but I still donated, an iOS dev friend of mine really misses the three20 libraries ability to apply CSS.
I like the idea of doing it properly but to be honest I'd expect that someone would release an open source version that does something similar that I can contribute back to.
So does it compile to Objective-C? It sounds more like an 'engine' that is a part of your actual app and interprets the CSS realtime. Sounds more processor intensive than just loading up flat graphics. (not an expert, please chime in)
They are somewhat vague on the technical details - however, it sounds like they are indeed basically rendering out their own graphics context and not using Apple's native UI components ("[a] 2D graphics engine facilitates the rendering of scalable, resolution-independent vector graphics).
As to performance, it depends how they do it. I wouldn't want to comment until they revealed some more technical details about this 'graphics engine'. They say 'style native apps and components', but it's unclear to me whether this means they are interpreting CSS and applying these styles to UIKit elements or rolling their own UIKit-like elements (I suspect the latter, but I might be wrong).
The Pixate Engine styles native controls using the standard iOS bitmap approach. Bitmaps allow your controls to take advantage of the speed offered by the GPU. However, in contrast to today's workflows, the Pixate Engine renders and caches content to bitmaps dynamically as needed at runtime, giving you the ultimate in flexibility in your designs.
I doubt they will reach $200k, but this is sorely needed for iOS apps. If they had launched this without kickstarter, and at a reasonable price, I bet developers would be flocking to it.
Needed? It looks to me like a terrible idea not very well implemented. It's easier (and more WYSIWYG) to style controls in Interface Builder using the properties. It's probably just as easy to write NIBs by hand.
It's not like this eliminates any of the complexity of ios development. Stuff like animating properties of controls is one of the things iOS handles beautifully. Any graphic workflow that doesn't eliminate rework and isn't WYSIWYG is a step backwards.
same feeling; you either develop native apps and deal with the provided options or you move to html5 and css3. why create a frankenstein solution by botching native apps together with a css engine; feels like an intermediate and futile attempt.
To me, this kind of product needs crowdsourced equity financing (that's becoming legal soon, right?), not Kickstarter-style.
I have a hard time imagining there are, say, 2000 people willing to pay $100 in advance for this with no guarantees. This isn't a sexy video game which can build up lots of viral demand...
Despite that, I wish them the best of luck! From what I understand, CSS-style formatting of native iOS components is sorely needed...
Yes, it's becoming legal sometime later this year or very early next year. SEC is currently working on the regulations that we'll all have to follow in making use of it.
I'm very impressed by your demo, but I'm also skeptical about performance, how well this integrates into existing apps, and what happens to my apps built on your framework if you go out of business or get acquired.
Along the same lines, I'd love to be able to pitch this to my clients, but I can't in good conscience without knowing that they're never going to get screwed in the process.
Can you address these concerns? I'd love to back your project, but I need to know I'm not going to be left holding the bag in 12-18 months.
Agree wholeheartedly. The tradeoff for cross platform is tying your fate to these guys.
Also code once run anywhere doesn't work for native apps. You usually get an Android app that looks like iOS. Barf. Or your have to use some new UI paradigm foreign to both. Chance of being featured in either market without conforming to UI guidelines: 0%.
This only really works for games and Unity has that covered.
Currently there are very few styling options for iOS and Android app dev. That results in an incredible amount of grunt work that really shouldn't be necessary. At least if you make apps commercially, a quality app that solves this would be huge. It looks like they are adding a lot of features beyond styling, and even moving beyond mobile... so hey, no question, sign me up : ).
I know I'm missing something here, but if they get enough money, they'll add Android support - but doesn't Android already do this (not with CSS, but with XML, like everything else in Android)
The CSS part is particularly interesting, and has a ton of potential. But frankly, I don't like nor would I use a proprietary library like this.
Also, I don't see why they need Kickstarting at all. If they are going to sell the product, then sell the product. They appear to already have a product that is finished or near completion, and are in Y Combinator and thus have funding. It doesn't make sense.
My real hope is that one day we get an open source tool like this for writing native UIs in CSS.
This feels like a marketing fail. Kickstarter is supposed to be about helping people create things who would normally not have the resources to do so. Impressing the audience by showing off expensive luxury items (player piano, supercars, etc) does not help this cause.
They also failed to really communicate how the app changes your normal development workflow. Does it replace interface builder processes? Besides styling with CSS, how does it help in creating complex vector elements that would normally be made in Photoshop? Is it a standalone dev environment or a lot of pieces? Can you mix assets (pixel and vector)?
While I'm totally stoked for seeing this concept come to fruition, these are the worst reward tiers I've ever seen on a Kickstarter campaign.
The $5 minimum should be $10 or $15, and there needs to be a tier between this one at the $50 tier.
And the rewards themselves? For $2k, I get "Access to a private forum to influence product direction." For two grand, I can't get a phone call to the CEO? I get access to some forum?
When committing to CSS, isn't the natural way to go the HTML5 + CSS3 way? Currently it is all about performance. I would like to see better solutions than phonegap and titanium.
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[ 47.4 ms ] story [ 379 ms ] threadAlso, does it provide any benefit over Quartz2d other than familiarity that comes with CSS?
If I did somehow miss the point and this seems like a cynical response then obviously I apologise in advance, but that's how it came across.
Edit, cancel the nicety... I just saw that it's retailing for $299. It all feels rather cynical. Perhaps I have too much of a rose-tinted view of the attraction of Kickstarter?
The risk, of course, is that a huge goal is less likely to be reached than a smaller goal. The ideal situation is that you have a reasonable goal that will actually help maybe some outsourcing or consulting costs or distribution set-up or what have you, blow away the goal early, and keep interest to drive revenue.
Personally, I don't find this kind of Kickstarter project very interesting, and I believe it's a suboptimal way to launch a product that could instead just be released as a MVP and iterated on based on user feedback.
Yes, that is the risk with Kickstarter and any other investment. It's just there seems to be less visibility into the viability of the company or person behind the project than most investments. Since I rarely go beyond the $20 range, I only feel mildly burned on the ones that don't go anywhere. For folks who hit the maximum (I've seen some with $10K options), I suspect the hurt is a little more real.
I don't believe all products should do this, but they'll receive valuable feedback, and if they don't meet their goal, they'll be better off with decent feedback from potential customers.
Q. What's your background?
Paul and Kevin were accepted into Y-Combinator this summer to launch Pixate into it's current prototype phase
You later get the option to take a $150,000 convertible note at extremely good terms. This isn't mandatory, but the terms are designed to make it almost a no-brainier to say yes.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the Kickstarter concept. But in practice, their scaling seems to quickly be turning hem into a sales platform that has no controls or accountability.
And I have nothing bad to say about this project in particular, but they are a YC company, and the state of the prototype shows that they already have all they need to make it happen. This project doesn't need money. The campaign seems to me to be nothing more than a simple "I'm making something cool, so give me cash". And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that -- by all means, people should be free to do what they wish with their money, and the Kickstarter campaign will probably work out beautifully for them. That's great.
But this whole perception of Kickstarter being a place for bootstrapping interesting projects is turning into a dangerous myth. Like many things before it, Kickstarter is becoming a place for people with money (and/or obvious ability to make money), to make even more money, though marketing under a vague guise of "bootstrapping", with no checks or balances to keep people honest.
This isn't an accusation leveled at Pixate -- I don't believe they're doing anything wrong and I have huge faith in YC's filtering. But once enough clever people figure out that you can earn a killing or huge bonus on top of anything, just by tacking on a nice Kickstarter campaign, it will become impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then people will move on to the next thing, and the cycle will repeat.
</bubble-y doomsaying>
I fully agree. Honestly, I hope both that this campaign fails and that the guys at Pixate are able to develop and launch their product successfully. The point of Kickstarter is to enable creative endeavours that would have trouble succeeding in a market environment -- a talented friend of mine financed his first short film via a similar site, which will hopefully get him a foot in the door of filmmaking. In his case, the Kickstarter idea is a great thing: It guarantees artistic independence and audience involvement.
This app, however, already has backing and will easily make plenty of money on the market. It's not a catastrophe in the long haul, but I sincerely hope this doesn't catch on: That's not audience involvement, that's a commercial transaction. You give me money, I give you product. On a larger scale, it's abusing opportunities for people who have few, which is particularly nefarious if it comes from people who have no need to beg.
I see an interesting title on HN. I visit it and start reading. I start reading the copy and see some interesting screenshots/mockups, keep scrolling, and then realize a bit later that there isn't actually anything ready for me to try out, but they want me to give them some money.
Then I close the tab.
Very few of the software projects I've seen linked there have seemed interesting or novel enough for me to care to put up some cash up front. There are tools that cost hundreds of dollars out there that will let me try them, fully-featured, for free. These guys want $50 for beta access or $100 for a full license for something that doesn't exist yet?
It's probably somewhat irrational, but I'm even more annoyed by the ones with real slick demo videos and such. Why not put the time spent making that towards making a product I can actually try?
There is a balance to be made between 'we have this idea and need money to build it' and 'we are serious about this, we have done X much already, we need money to go over the finish line'
Huh? For a $99 pledge, you get the $299 license when it launches, it looks like.
This looks like every other product kickstarter, which essentially are saying, "We've invested considerable time and money. We're committed. We'd love to have you pitch in to help accelerate us and get us over the finish line. In exchange, your pledges entitle you to discounts and other favors."
By the way, what is up with every project talking about "beautiful"? "Beautiful Javascript", "Beautiful native apps", "Beautiful text icons", etc. Is this just the Steve Jobs school of selling?
I like the idea of doing it properly but to be honest I'd expect that someone would release an open source version that does something similar that I can contribute back to.
As to performance, it depends how they do it. I wouldn't want to comment until they revealed some more technical details about this 'graphics engine'. They say 'style native apps and components', but it's unclear to me whether this means they are interpreting CSS and applying these styles to UIKit elements or rolling their own UIKit-like elements (I suspect the latter, but I might be wrong).
It's not like this eliminates any of the complexity of ios development. Stuff like animating properties of controls is one of the things iOS handles beautifully. Any graphic workflow that doesn't eliminate rework and isn't WYSIWYG is a step backwards.
I have a hard time imagining there are, say, 2000 people willing to pay $100 in advance for this with no guarantees. This isn't a sexy video game which can build up lots of viral demand...
Despite that, I wish them the best of luck! From what I understand, CSS-style formatting of native iOS components is sorely needed...
I'm very impressed by your demo, but I'm also skeptical about performance, how well this integrates into existing apps, and what happens to my apps built on your framework if you go out of business or get acquired.
Along the same lines, I'd love to be able to pitch this to my clients, but I can't in good conscience without knowing that they're never going to get screwed in the process.
Can you address these concerns? I'd love to back your project, but I need to know I'm not going to be left holding the bag in 12-18 months.
Thanks! Aaron
Also code once run anywhere doesn't work for native apps. You usually get an Android app that looks like iOS. Barf. Or your have to use some new UI paradigm foreign to both. Chance of being featured in either market without conforming to UI guidelines: 0%.
This only really works for games and Unity has that covered.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html
Also, I don't see why they need Kickstarting at all. If they are going to sell the product, then sell the product. They appear to already have a product that is finished or near completion, and are in Y Combinator and thus have funding. It doesn't make sense.
My real hope is that one day we get an open source tool like this for writing native UIs in CSS.
They also failed to really communicate how the app changes your normal development workflow. Does it replace interface builder processes? Besides styling with CSS, how does it help in creating complex vector elements that would normally be made in Photoshop? Is it a standalone dev environment or a lot of pieces? Can you mix assets (pixel and vector)?
The $5 minimum should be $10 or $15, and there needs to be a tier between this one at the $50 tier.
And the rewards themselves? For $2k, I get "Access to a private forum to influence product direction." For two grand, I can't get a phone call to the CEO? I get access to some forum?