Lessons learned from an unusual investment
Warning: this story has no winners.
In December 2018, my partner was learning Chinese. His birthday was approaching, so he suggested I invest on his behalf in a project on Indiegogo (crowdfunding platform). He found a ‘smart speaker’ in development, that was supposed to help people learn Chinese organically. It was scheduled to be sent to backers around April 2019. That’s what he wanted as his present.
I checked it out, and it looked impressive. A company called Maybe had asked for a modest $10k, but managed to get over $1M from more than 6000 backers. They were posting regular updates, videos of the speaker, and were even open about issues they were facing.
Lesson number 1: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
Around early March 2019, there were first updates signalising that the delivery of the product will be late. Not by too much, just couple of months. They seemed very upset that they won’t deliver as promised, and I actually thought it was a good sign, and that there are finally some honest and hardworking people in the world.
Lesson number 2: If someone is too defensive, there is likely a good reason for that.
At the time this update was posted, most of the backers were still extremely supportive of the Maybe team. There was no reason for the announcements such as “We’re not going anywhere”. Nobody thought they would run away with money. However, by the end of this story, you will learn that it’s exactly what happened.
Three months later, when the first batch was supposed to be shipped, we got another update:
I started getting suspicious, while my partner continued believing in the product. In his day job, he is a software developer, and he seemed confident that they are recognising the right tech issues, they were being thorough and that they have a good strategy to solve them.
But this leads me to the next lesson learned from this experience…
Lesson number 3: Trust your intuition (or at least explore why you feel the way you do).
Next couple of months, Maybe made sure to show us how hard they were working to build Lily. They even sent photos of their team members from factories. They acquired raw materials, and they are ready to start.
Maybe were good with sharing monthly updates until February 2020, although all updates just contained complaints and excuses why they weren’t able to ship.
As expected (and particularly as they were based in China), 2020 brought new challenges, but in all honesty — everybody understood and nobody pressured them. Pandemic was difficult on everyone, be it mentally or financially, so backers mostly supported them.
Until July 2020. Here’s why:
Everyone was completely shocked. We paid $184 to receive a speaker, not an app. That would probably be the most expensive app anyone has ever bought.
Maybe had a plethora of excuses, but there were two main themes:
- It’s not buying, it’s crowdfunding.
- It’s not like any app on the market.
The answers to these statements are simple: everyone knew it is crowdfunding, but that doesn’t mean it’s free money for the company. Both parties have signed up to the Terms & Conditions, among which the campaign owner has to provide regular monthly updates and cannot change the product without discussing it with backers. They failed at both.
However, since then, as backers, we have received another two updates: in January 2021 and in August 2021 (after Indiegogo somehow forced them to provide an update). No real information though.
Since then, they have closed all portals of communication — not a single email address is now available to reach them. They claimed that they received horror messages and threats from backers — and that is never, never, never okay. Some backers even managed to get a refund. Not all.
I have sent them messages many times, sometimes not very polite (but never ever threats or anything similar). I have posted countless comments on the platform. I requested refund, I copied Indiegogo and their CEO at the time, but I never got a response. I never got anything more than automated answer from Indiegogo.
I even tried to put Indiegogo on the spotlight by commenting on their Linkedin and Twitter page — but they would just delete my comments.
And then I gave up. I still sometimes check on the campaign, but I lost any hope that we might ever get our $184 app.
As of right now, this campaign is officially under review. Backers have alerted Indiegogo over a year ago, but it seems that lack of updates from Maybe triggered something in the system to initiate an official review. My guess is that we will all soon be informed that we lost the money, because nobody can contact Maybe (all their email addresses are still closed).
As I said at the beginning, this story has no winners:
a) Simple and measurable: backers who believed in Maybe’s Lily lost money. Approximately $184 per speaker (some ‘bought’ more than one). We also lost time thinking about this scam and discussing between ourselves what to do. We have been tricked.
b) Indiegogo lost their reputation: there is at least 6665 backers from this project (+ everyone they told the story to) who will never again support any other project on their platform.
c) Maybe accomplished nothing. They did become richer, but there is a lot of backers who talk about potential lawsuits. Personally, if I ever see any of their names connected to another scam, I will speak up. I know many others will do the same.
Nobody likes to think or write about failures, but they often hide valuable insights. I hope these lessons will stay with me, in whatever challenge comes next. I also hope this will be a good case study for anyone else who considers crowdfunding in the future.
Edit: As of late June 2022, IndieGogo has started refunding the backers. All of a sudden, one morning I received an email that I have been refunded without even officially asking for it in the recent weeks (last time I asked for a refund was months ago, and after that I gave up). Something is still really strange in that whole story, but I feel better now that many backers received their refunds. The thing that really worked was a private Facebook group set up by backers, where we exchanged our experiences. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned from that too.
