I like CoinTerra and generally find them to be credible. I do not like the insanely risky pre-order model that encourages investors to make poor decisions based on murky calculations about future profitability. The pre-order model would die a quick death if people would stop feeding it...then we could get vendors that were willing to shoulder some of the risk themselves.
theres really two models that make sense for a new asic company :-
1. the equity investment model. ie: investors buy equity in the asic company. said company then has all the funds it needs to cover the NRE (non recurring engineering fees) and start production. Most likely, once the company can afford to make its own asics then it will go directly into mining with them, which is the most profitable use for them. There's no reason for the company to sell its asics if it could make more money just mining with them.
2. the pre-sales model. instead of equity investors, the company takes pre-orders. Those pre-orders are effectively crowdsourcing the funds required to start production. That way, the company's production will be sold to its customers. Since the company is focussed on crowdsourcing to raise its production costs, the customer is able to buy miners at a lower price, than if the company could afford to be mining with the hardware instead of selling it.
there may be some hybrid models too.
the pre-order system will probably remain for the forseeable future until such time as customers stop pre-ordering. when that happens, the only asic mining companies will be those that make the asics purely for themselves, and only sell them to the public when they can make more at retail than they can mining themselves (asicminer for instance).
