個人積分：28分
文章編號：61999829
個人積分：2分
文章編號：62502087
個人積分：0分
文章編號：62670956
個人積分：0分
文章編號：63030448
個人積分：62分
文章編號：63239444
個人積分：2分
文章編號：63715982
mail去問到底是什麼問題，隔一禮拜才收到mail說產品有問題，財務有問題，也沒錢給預購者refund.信沒逐字看，但大意是公司也倒了開始走法律流程. 所以不要太相信這種集資預購，當買一次教訓.
Critical Company Update
This update provides serious and unwelcome news.
Based upon your support, we have spent the last year continuing to develop our vision for “always-on” mobile solutions. Our goal was to solve three fundamental issues with today’s smartphones: we wanted to simplify access to information, increase battery performance, and improve readability. Unfortunately, the significant development hurdles that we have encountered have completely depleted our finances, and we have been unable to raise additional funds in the current market. As a result, popSLATE does not have a viable business path forward.
This marks the end of a 5-year journey for our team, which started with a seed of an idea in 2012 and led to our quitting our jobs to start the company. Although we are very disappointed by the ultimate outcome and its implications for you as our backers, we are proud of our team, who worked tirelessly over the years to commercialize the first plastic ePaper display, globally ship thousands of popSLATE 1 devices as a first-in-category product, and re-imagine & further extend the platform with the second generation product. Despite a strong vision, high hopes, and very hard work, we find ourselves at the end of this journey.
We are out of money at this juncture for two key reasons. First, we have spent heavily into extensive development and preparation for manufacturing [click here to see one the latest units in action], but we hit several critical issues that extended our timelines and multiplied the spend. These issues have included:
Identifying a reliable set of materials and manufacturing method for our curved screen design (solved)
Iterating upon a complicated and multi-path power management circuit (solved)
Unexpected failure of a critical Apple iPhone test, related to reliable transmission and receiving on the iPhone. Passing this testing is a hard gate from Apple for shipping devices (not yet solved)
For the Apple test failure, we conducted extensive root cause analysis and learned that passing the test would involve a significant redesign. While we initially suspected that the Lightning circuit was the culprit, it turned out that it was a much more fundamental issue. Namely, our housing material is not compatible with Apple OTA requirements. You may think, “Wait, isn’t it just plastic? Why would that be a problem?” While the housing is indeed largely plastic, we used a very special custom blend of materials that included glass fibers. The glass fibers were used to solve two issues, both of which were related to making the device super-thin: a) they enabled uniform, non-distortional cooling of the housing mold around our metal stiffener plate (the key component that makes popSLATE 2 thin but very strong) and b) they added tensile strength to the very compact form factor. Unfortunately, we have concluded that these added fibers are attenuating the RF signal and that we would have to spend additional cycles to tune a new blend with required modifications to the tooling. This would be an expensive and lengthy process.
Second, we have been unsuccessful at raising additional financing, despite having vigorously pursued all available avenues over the past year (including angels, VCs, Shark Tank and equity crowdfunding, both in the US and abroad). Many in our network of fellow hardware innovators have encountered this difficult new reality. You may have also seen the very public financial struggles of big-name consumer hardware companies—GoPro, Fitbit, Pebble, Nest and others—as highlighted in this recent New York Times article [link]. The most dramatic example of this phenomenon is the recent and sudden shutting down of Pebble, paragon of past crowdfunding success.
--待續
個人積分：2分
文章編號：63716112
There is no way to sugarcoat what this all means:
- popSLATE has entered into the legal process for dissolution of the company
- Your popSLATE 2 will not be fulfilled
- There is no money available for refunds
- This will be our final update
While this is a very tough moment professionally and emotionally for us, it is obviously extremely disappointing for all of you who had believed in the popSLATE vision. We are incredibly grateful for your enthusiasm, ideas, and support. Just as importantly, we deeply regret letting you down and not being able to deliver on our promise to you. We truly wish there were a viable path forward for product fulfillment and the broader popSLATE vision, but sadly we have exhausted all available options.
