Light Table IDE Finds Funding Success 94
omar.sahal writes "Chris Granger's Light Table IDE, covered here previously on Slashdot, has been successfully funded by a Kickstarter campaign. 7,317 backers brought in $316,720, obliging Chris to support the Python Programming language with his first release. Chris and his team have also been successful in being funded by Y Combinator. Here's some more background (video) on the concepts developed by Bret Victor found in Light Table.
Re:Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but all of those were developed for static languages in mind. Using them for dynamic languages is uncomfortable. This project might become for Python and Lisp what those environments are for C and Java.
Re:A little late (Score:2, Insightful)
As a customer, if I can find out about something awesome you've done and I want to give you money for it how is that bad? As a business owner, how is it bad if people discover you through kickstarter and want to give you more money for something you've gotten off the ground?
Supply Chain.
If the project deadline arrives and you use the money to buy enough supplies to make a product for everyone +10% failures just to be safe. If another 100 people come along afterwards then you don't have the supplies to make and deliver the goods. If you got a bulk discount, ordering small boxes of supplies as people dribble in over a few weeks could destroy your profit margin.
In short: Kickstarter is not a shop. You don't place orders for goods, you donate in the hope of getting something back. If you want to give money after the project is completed, go to the creator's website and see if they have an online store, if they do, buy it from there, otherwise, tough shit.
sell off your extra inventory from canceled orders
You can't cancel a Kickstarter donation. Once the money is delivered, there are no refunds and there's a two week holding period before the creator gets the cash in case someone does a chargeback on their credit card (Two weeks is apparently the limit, Visa and Mastercard will tell you to fuck off if you try to cancel a charge after that). Once you're committed, you're committed, no take-backs.