How difficult is it to sell Social robots through Crowdfunding?

Introduction

Most of the social robots are going through crowdfunding (Indiegogo being the main platform).  

However it is important to notice that ALL of them are delaying the shipping to their backers by a significant amount of time (6 to 12 months or even years in the some cases).

The consequences are not negligible:

• Lot of backers ask for refunding meaning that the real number of people willing to acquire such social robot is diminishing;
• Lack of trust/credibility in the ability to deliver such social robots and new projects will not be able to reach their funding target through crowdfunding like Yumi from Omate which failed to raise US$ 100 000 despite quite attractive features and a nice design.

It is important to understand why because if these companies are not able to deliver, the “social robot” market will be badly considered by the public and it will be harder for new startups to come with a real product and convince that they can deliver in time.

In order to go further, let us pick the most popular projects that have raised more than US$ 500K through crowdfunding the last 3 years:

• JIBO the igniter of the “social robot wave”;
• BUDDY from a French startup Blue Frog Robotics;
• ALPHA 2 the humanoid robot from UBTECH, a Chinese based company;
• AIDO from InGen Dynamics, a US based company.