In crowdfunding, when is a failure actually a success?
Ubuntu’s Edge is on the brink of something unusual
As I type, there are just 41 hours left in what many are calling the biggest crowfunding campaign ever: the Ubuntu Edge project from Canonical, which has already raised nearly $12 million on Indiegogo.
In fact, that’s exactly how the proposal — for a high-end smartphone—that is now being marketed. I got back from holiday last week with an email from Indiegogo headlined “The Biggest Crowdfunding Campaign of All Time”.
The problem, however, is that $12 million might be a gigantic sum of money, but it’s only a portion of the $32 million that Ubuntu says it needs to produce the Edge. And under the rules of its campaign, unless the projectraises another $20 million in the next day or so, presumably from some crazy techno-fetishist sugar daddy, it gets nothing.
So does that make it the biggest crowdfunding campaign of all time, or the biggest miss ever?
The entire enterprise is slick, although a little obtuse. The video is presented by Mark Shuttleworth, the man behind Ubuntu (and, note, a crazy technofetishist worth some $500 million) and it’s strong but also incredibly slow at actually telling you about the product you’re meant to be funding: after all, it’s a full two minutes before they actually trade in googly-eyed nonsense about “convergence” and start actually using the words “Ubuntu Edge”.
But the message gets through.
“In the motor car industry, we have Formula One to test new technology,” says Shuttleworth. “But the mobile industry … there’s no premium segment for expert drivers. It’s like everyone is driving mass-produced sedans. We don’t have a consumer test bed for cutting edge technologies — but we do have a new mechanism for driving innovation: crowdfunding.”
There are problems with that analogy (is F1 really the area that pushes innovation? Aren’t road-worthy sedans like the Tesla really doing the most exciting work right now?). But what he’s really saying is a brilliant appeal to vanity: if you want to be at the front of all this, you should support us. We’re pioneers.
It’s the kind of message that has resonated with a significant number of people. For example, nearly 4,500 people have chipped in for a $700 handset that they only get the merest glimpses of.
But remember. Unless something radical happens now, those 4,500 people have committed to nothing more than an idea.
Even in the project video, Shuttleworth seeds the prospect of failure, dressing a new handset up as some sort of spectacular moonshot.
“To make it happen we’ll have to smash every record in crowdfunding history,” he says. “It’s a crazy, beautiful idea, but if there are enough of us out there — enough enthusiasts who want the ultimate in performance, storage, screen, battery and bandwidth—then the Ubuntu Edge will be the catalyst for awesome innovation and a taste of the future of the phone.”
One concept has been proven: 25,000 people who know next-to-nothing about the device have prepared to shell out large sums for it. But the other part of his callout — “if there are enough us”— has been proven too. There aren’t.
Ubuntu Edge is not going to reach its target.
On the one hand, that seems particularly dumb since Indiegogo campaigns don’t have to be “fixed funding”. I’ve supported other projects where they opt for “flexible funding”: that means if the project creators raise anything, whether it’s five percent or 50, towards a total, they get to keep the money.
On the other hand, that’s smart maths: the cost of producing 5,000 phones is presumably much higher per unit than 15,000 or so it would need to make if it had reached its goal. If $32 million is genuinely what it would cost, then so be it.
So what can be salvaged? Can this project actually live up to the “biggest ever” claim?
Well, maybe. Ubuntu’s failed to reach its target, but there are positives. On a practical level, it’s got a great set of marketing data, email addresses, and letters of intent from a large base of users. And it may well be that a theoretical $12 million from 25,000 people is enough to get the manufacturers to negotiating table. Or it may be that they try to take another, lower-scale crack at things.
Perhaps Shuttleworth will come out and say “but we planned it this way”. Fine: it’s smart to plan for failure in crowdfunding, because hitting your target is rare.
But even if there is a plan B, even if there has always been, it would be retconning of the highest order to suggest that a project which never actually crosses the finish line can be classed as a success. Credibility has bounds, and even a crazy, beautiful idea has to obey the rules.
In any case, as part of my Year of Giving Dangerously, I have contributed a mere $20 to Ubuntu Edge just to get on their mailing list and see what happens next.
