Item — HN Reader

- So A partnered with B and made a kickstarter campaign. From everybody's point of view, A and B is one entity.

- The campaign was successful (funded), but B ran away.

- Kickstarter is aware of that, but told all backers to remain calm, saying that the project will still continue.

- A is upset, because not only he's screwed by B, now he needs to fulfil his promise, but without seeing a penny.

I don't understand, can't A get his shit together with B, or whatever, and still deliver, since well, you know, it's funded? From the perspective of everyone else, A/B is one entity, no?

6 comments

> I don't understand, can't A get his shit together with B, or whatever, and still deliver, since well, you know, it's funded?

From the post:

> Kickstarter is vastly informed with the current situation. They KNOW that Richard (the creator) stole the money and ran.

How does "the other guy took all the money" work out, in your mind, to "but you're still funded"?

> don't understand, can't A get his shit together with B

That's easy, B isn't communicating with A anymore. It's funded ? sure, but B has the money and has no intention to give the money back or actually create fulfill his promises.

The question is, what kind of venture is it? (between A and B). If A and B are part of the same business then he can totally be sued by backers. If that's not the case,then A isn't responsible for the money being stolen.

Is there a page or an archive of the project page available? I wanna know who created the project, A or B? it's seems like B since A has no access to the Kickstarter account.

A and B went to offer this together. If B ran away with the money, A is responsible as well. A lawyer might help.

Next time, A, pick your partners more carefully. Sorry, but this is the real world. I understand if you feel screwed, but get your things together and fight to make things right, one way or another. And remember, if Kickstarter is really one of the issues, I give you one word: lawyers.

Well A lives in Canada while B lives in US. Good luck on suing A anyway. And it looks like business B was in charge of the Kickstarter campaign, not business A. B is responsible for the backer's money , not A. That's my understanding of facts so far.

You cant sue business A because business B was in partnership with business A but business B robbed you. A contractual obligations were toward B, not the backers. A didn't launch the kickstarter campaign nor was responsible for managing Kickstarter's money.

While that's all true it looks like the intellectual property belongs to A. So while A isn't responsible to the backers, B is, it's A's IP and reputation which is being damaged.

Presumably "everyone" includes Kickstarter --- that is, as far as Kickstarter is concerned, A & B are the same entity as well. I'm not sure I see how it could work otherwise (but I don't know Kickstarter that well).

On top of that, B was a dear friend of A. Lesson: never trust anyone in business. Only the paranoid survive.

Judging from her previous posts, I guess B had some sort of mental breakdown. Maybe too much stress, it often happens with hard deadlines. $182,000 don't make for a life changing hustle.

>> $182,000 don't make for a life changing hustle.

You're kidding right?

Even in the rich western world 182 grand is a massive amount of money for most people. A large number of people in our societies have negative net worth. Many are living paycheck to paycheck. An extra 2 grand a month for almost 8 years is very much lifechanging money, if you get away with it.

I think this is a big factor in crime.

For most here, $182,000 is definitely not worth the risks. They have good secure jobs where they could save that over a few years, where taking the money would not cost just their job but their entire career. Right or wrong doesn't even factor in, taking that money and running it a bad business decision.

But there are others, dirt poor, who live off of less than $20,000 a year. Some live off even far less than that. They have no career. To them this is 10 years of payment with vastly little risk. It is nowhere near the as bad a business decision to take the money and run. In the more extreme cases, there is so much to gain with little to lose.

And this is completely ignoring those who don't make this much in their lifetime.

"First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics." -Bertolt Brecht

> A large number of people in our societies have negative net worth.

While this is true (for some value of 'large'), a lot of those people with negative net worth are by all indications very wealthy. You don't hit a net worth of minus 50 million by being poor.

True, and I didn't necessarily mean (for instance) homeowners with mortgages, though the house usually offsets that.

A lot of folks live with debt. A lot of folks don't make anywhere near Silicon Valley money even in a decent career, and many, many people don't have a career to speak of.

I have no idea of the personal situation of the person that actually walked away here, of course.

> $182,000 don't make for a life changing hustle.

That's half a millennium's income for the billion people on the planet who live on a dollar a day. There are plenty of folks for whom a few thousand dollars is life-changing.

Unless the person in question took the money and ran off to join a tribe in Africa or similar for the rest of their days, the point still stands.

I've been to a lot of places in Latin America that have roads, and modern construction houses, electricity, water, and cell connections where $182k would last you a very VERY long time. decades easily. I met a man in Peru with a restaurant directly on the Panamerican, and two taxis who was doing very well for himself earning $5k a year...

And it's pretty easy to leave everything you have and know behind, and start over in a new country where standards of living are totally different.

With the principle of charity in mind I'd interpret Red_Tarsius's comment as saying "$182,000 don't make for a life changing hustle under B's circumstances", not "$182,000 don't make for a life changing hustle for anyone".

Anyone who thinks $180,000 is not life changing: please feel free to send me just 0.55% of that which would make my life considerably easier for at least the next year.

There are many Americans for whom $1,000 would be actually life changing -- allowing them to escape the bizarrely restrictive chain of courtroom imposed debt found in places like Fergusson.

Yes, if you were a Chinese peasant maybe making $8 an hour at McDonald's would sound great too, but that's not really meaningful to most of the people posting here.

In a country where people would kill you just for an iphone(and I'm not talking about China here), $182,000 is a lot of money.

> but that's not really meaningful to most of the people posting here

not sure on what planet you are living on. Most people here don't make that kind of money in a year.

I'd bet the vast majority of people here see $180k in four years or less. Talking about it in terms of people living on less than a dollar a day isn't really that meaningful for us.

180k$ USD, if I plan well, will last me ten years. By third-world standards, I live like a rich noble from Siliconvalleystan. If I didn't have a SO and knew where I could get a fake replacement identity quickly enough? Yep, the 180k sounds pretty good. Especially since going to "prison" for two years where I live is the worst punishment I'd get, and that's basically synonymous with "Big Continuous Frat Party with Free Room & Board, sports fields and exterior barbecue (with weekly beer party) included!".

I'd bet the missing creator just moved to Canada.

Oftentimes its not so easy to "get your shit together".

When you've already misjudged the character of your partner to such a degree, you most likely didn't judge other aspects of the project as competently aswell, especially those in the domain of your partner.

Without knowing any internals, funding sum, scope, what actually happened to the money, we can do nothing but speculate which is pointless.

I don't think Kickstarter is aware of any of that. They have received some DMCA complaint for a project, and so they have made it private and sent out an automated email to all backers that the project isn't gone.

I don't think their semi-automated DMCA system cares much for the drama that happened before here, even when the mail is somewhat unfortunate in these circumstances. I guess this can be confusing for people that are as computer-illiterate as to not have access to their Kickstarter campaign.

who sent the DMCA takedown? If it's B ,that's pretty clever.Not only he defrauded the backers but he also removed all trace of the scam from the internet.

A asked B to make a game using A's IP. B ran a kickstarter to get money to create the game. B has gone silent and no game has been produced. A is trying to make things right and wants to communicate to the backers to fulfil the orders - albeit with a cheaper version of the game. KS are saying they will not allow A to communicate sith all the backers and that KS cannot transfer the project from B to A.

A is worried about their name continuing to be used to collect money (B's website is still taking orders for the non existant game) and with a non functioning KS campaign, so A sent a DMCA notice to KS.

(My As and Bs might be differet to those used by other people in this thread.)

It is kind of embarrassing for kickstarter after they've earnestly assured you that they have no way to send a message to every backer of a project.