NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
CastAR pledges to return $1M to its Kickstarter backers
A pile of money can’t always solve everything (sometimes you need several piles), and that is a lesson that many successful Kickstarter campaigns have learned the hard way, including Technical Illusions, the creators of an augmented reality device called castAR.
The original crowdfunding campaign for castAR successfully raised over $1 million in November 2013, after which Technical Illusions raised an additional $15 million in a funding round led by Playground Global. Despite all of that cash, however, the company has announced that it has had to delay the launch of the product.
While delays for Kickstarted products are a dime a dozen, Technical Illusions is doing something a little different than most. The company has announced that it will be refunding all of its crowdfunding money to the people who backed its campaign.
“It’s safe to say that the Backers’ enthusiasm made castAR one of the first Kickstarter projects to raise over a million dollars,” Technical Illusions said on its website. “Kickstarter was the foundation Jeri [Ellsworth] and Rick [Johnson] used to begin building both castAR the company and castAR the product. Since castAR’s Kickstarter campaign wrapped, the company has learned a lot about the AR market and the Backers expectations. In addition, castAR raised an A round of venture funding.”
“After much discussion, castAR has decided to offer Backers who pledged at the hardware tiers a free consumer castAR at release and will be fully reimbursing those Backers’ Kickstarter backings. Our Backers were the first to believe in us, now they get castAR for free once the consumer product is released.”
Getting your refund
If you are someone who backed castAR’s original Kickstarter campaign, Technical Illusions will be reaching out to you through an email that will include a survey that will ask for your Paypal email address and your shipping address.
Technical Illusions said that the Paypal information is needed for the refund, as there is no direct way to return money through Kickstarter. The company said that the shipping address is needed so that it can send “some special thank-you gifts.”
For more information on whether or not you qualify for the refund and how to get it, you can refer to Technical Illusion’s Kickstarter FAQ.
Screenshot via CastAR | Vimeo
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
