Perhaps the most famous Ukrainian hardware startup, Petcube, says the release of its remote laser pointing pet-playing device is now at least six months behind schedule. Selling at a pre-order price of $179 on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, the group said the latest delay – deliveries are scheduled now for the end of November, – was due to the bankruptcy of the Chinese manufacturer that was contracted to supply camera modules, according to Petcube CEO Yaroslav Azhnyuk.
In an official update on Kickstarter, where Petcube raised about $251,000 in November 2013, the startup said that the “delay will only take up to a month,” adding also that during the initial testing of prototypes the team also improved the device’s overheating protection. Earlier this month, UADN.net reported that Petcube is preparing for a $1.5 million seed-stage funding round, however Azhnyuk declined to comment on how the new delay can impact these plans.
The reaction of backers on Kickstarter, who have been waiting for their Petcubes for almost a year, has been mostly supportive. “(It’s) really not fun having all those setbacks but I’m sure we will appreciate the quality of the finished product,” wrote a customer named Evan Urquhart, for whom Petcube appears to be the first and only backed project.
“I don’t mind the wait. I’d rather have a quality product over a rushed half-assed product,” said another funder, Brad Williams, for whom Petcube is one of 18 Kickstarter projects in which he invested.
The least supportive comment as of Oct. 27 was “I can sympathize with you. But only so much. You always need a plan B and probably C,” said someone nick-named herbclouds, a Kickstarter veteran with 29 backed projects.
Late shipments is not something unusual for crowdfunded projects. In November 2012, CNN analyzed the top 50 funded projects – which are mostly tech projects like Petcube, – and revealed that only eight of them delivered their goods on time, and another eight were three to seven months late. The median delay for projects shipped by that time was two months.
Internal changes
On Oct. 22, Petcube also announced that new marketing director Oksana Zhuravel joined its team after working for four years at the same position in another Ukrainian startup, business-to-business marketplace Prom.ua. In addition, Petcube hired a designer and iOS developer, who joined their office in Kyiv, while co-founder and creative director Andrey Klen moved from the Ukrainian capital to San Francisco to join Azhnyuk.
In addition to raising money on Kickstarter, Petcube received a $18,500 grant from GTF Foundation at the IDCEE conference that took place on Oct. 9-10 in Kyiv. It has also won several local startup awards and became the Best Hardware Startup at The Europas 2014 competition.
Andrii Degeler is the Kyiv Post’s information technology reporting fellow. Degeler has been covering the IT business in Ukraine and internationally since 2009. His fellowship is sponsored by AVentures Capital, Ciklum, FISON and SoftServe. He can be reached on Twitter (@shlema) or [email protected].
