Pre-orders that aren't even due for 4 months are a huge risk to the customer. Why are you putting all that risk on the customer for the SP30? That's not how you did the SP10.
Spondoolies-Tech has more than enough money in their various coffers of various concerns to not need to take pre-orders. They are in a unique position to end this pre-order bullshit once and for all.
You did see Spondoolies-Tech account specifically say 5000s of SP30s and "do the math". You also saw they publicly disclosed they had $5.5m in venture capital. BUT they have been running for 9months (employees, equipment, travel, rent etc), they funded the NRE dev costs for SP10 and SP30. They pre-paid fabrication costs for SP10 (and maybe some SP30 also?) When they say do the math... DO THE MATH.. its gotta be like $20m or something. Have $20m to lend them? Maybe get some bitcoin bazillionaire could front it?
You cant just materalize $20m to give to TSMC.
Even with huge funds like that its work and time to ramp up production pipeline. Minimum order time.
Up to here, is doesn't matter whether you are a pre-order company or not. This is just what needs to be done to get off the ground. However, its impossible to do any of this part if you don't have VC, those companies have to do pre-orders to raise the capital to do this part of the business process. Spondoolies didn't, they had enough VC not to do pre-orders. Now maybe they ran out of cash, maybe they didn't, its just as shame they couldn't take that extra step and sell from stock.
The other thing is like Spondoolies-Tech said: however many they make, they'll probably SELL OUT immediately they get any stock, if they delayed sale and stock-piled. At any production rate there is a rate of fabrication/assembly per day. Suggest you make suggestions. What would you do: run a daily auction for those assembled on the day?
Disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to Spondoolies, BUT I do not have knowledge of the finance specifics, the above is from public information they intentionally posted to this list to enable readers to do the math, I just got impatient and did the math for you.
Adam
Disclaimer I am a crypto consultant to Spondoolies, BUT I do not have knowledge of the finance specifics, the above is from public information they intentionally posted to this list to enable readers to do the math, I just got impatient and did the math for you.
Adam
This here is irrelevant to whether they do pre-orders or build up supply and sell from stock. Once the initial supply of units is in stock you start selling, then once you start selling you start making more units to restock your product ready for new sales. Once you get going you have a constant stream of manufacturing, a minimum level of stock to supply your customers, and a stream of sales that most probably will grow exponentially IMHO.
As a business whether you choose to go down the pre-order route or to sell from stock depends on whether you want your customers to bear the burden of risk or whether the business bears that burden.
For many people I would imagine that they would prefer the latter not the former, especially considering the history of this particular industry.
That being said there will always be people willing to pre-order. What I *hope* starts to happen is that as Spondoolies get into their stride and have more confidence in themselves as manufacturers and their sales numbers continue to rise they will quickly start to shorten the pre-order gap. Bring it down to a week or so and then its not really a pre-order business. Either that or adopt the deposit methodolgy already discussed.
