Philips has a net worth in the billions, $20.67 billion as of July 12, 2023. (Source link) Yet they decided to create a kickstarter, charging “early bird” buyers these earphones that’s designed for wearing while sleeping, basically the same as any other earphones, just slimmed down and cables running around your head.
What’s infuriating is that there’s dumbasses who actually gave them money to make a product ($500k million in total), so Philips is most likely not taking any risk making this, but will enjoy the profits.
The kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kokoon/sleep-headphones/posts
I thought the whole point of a kickstarter was people with a product, but lacking the funds to get the project actually going getting a kick start to get going… Not for billion dollar companies to beg for cash.
It’s not begging for cash, it’s seeing if there’s a market before they sink a bunch of R&D dollars into it.
Yup, just imagine a world where companies launch a Kickstarter for a show that is on the chopping block to give fans a chance to pre-pay for an additional season (with blu-rays or something as rewards).
Same deal with some tech. Big company, lots of potential products, but many are axed if they don’t think they can market them.
Philips can afford to take a chance on a product and risk losing money much better than regular people suffering from the combination of runaway inflation mostly caused by corporate greed and stagnant wages can.
Phillips CAN, but in a large organization like that there are a lot of politics going on.
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that this is someone’s pet project, but they can’t get funding for it because the higher ups don’t see there’s any interest in it…
“Well I’ll prove there’s interest!” (funded in 1 hour).
But why should they take a chance? You’re saying that like it’s surprising but I don’t think it’s unethical
They are protected from losses by their existing profitable market share ( in the billions) so it is unethical to use a tool created to help negate risk for those without the safety of an existing profitable market. There is an immense privilege in being the current dominant party in a market, and we live in a world that has put laws in place to protect companies who become the dominant party in a market instead of laws that equalize the market.
If we were all playing this game as kids, what phillips is doing would be seen as totally unfair, so why is it okay now that we are adults?
There is still risk even if you’re profitable now? If you don’t use mechanism to protect against risk you won’t be profitable for long. Nobody is harmed who didn’t consent to it by buying a Kickstarter project.
If anyone should take a chance, it’s the ones with vast resources that are increased by billions every quarter, not the people alreeady struggling to get by.
When you launch a product, there’s always a risk that it won’t be successful and offloading that risk on people who can’t afford it anywhere near as easily as you can while keeping all the profits if it succeeds is as unethical as consumer banks gambling with people’s life savings and then being bailed out at the expense of the same people they bankrupted.
Of course they can, but why should they? There’s nothing to lose for them (or anyone really) if they crowdfund it instead. It’s essentially a preorder and market research.
Like, you wouldn’t catch me dead paying into it but there’s nothing wrong with this strategy, until they steal the money and run, which they won’t because companies care about PR more than KS scammers do.