No one twisted his arm to try this startup, that's on him. If selling one's home isn't an option and you can't seem to manage to come up with a prototype before going to KS with your hat in hand, then maybe...just maybe...he shouldn't have started this trainwreck in the first place.
While there is a point there...it may seem impossible to sell your mansion and move into a smaller home, but it has been done. Would I have started a new venture with my own funds? Only if I was serious and had researched extensively. We know neither is true and so he went with whatever option helped pay the bills.
Maybe not fund entire project maybe, but I certainly think that he should pay his outstanding personal bills with his own funds. To take money OUT of his start up and claim bills are piling up as the excuse is where the real problem lies. I can't wait to hear your incredible business prowess explain that logic.
Leveraging your personal assets for a high risk startup venture is one of the most unwise moves you can make in entrepreneurship. This isn't a movie, it's real life.
Leveraging your personal assets for a high risk startup venture is one of the most unwise moves you can make in entrepreneurship. This isn't a movie, it's real life.
More and more assumptions keep piling up. It's entirely possible that he owes more against his house than he could get out of it. Google the term 'mortgage' to be enlightened.
Did you not read what I posted? I never said he should have, but that is simply one option amongst many. If none of those options were palatable to him then maybe he shouldn't have tried doing this in the halfass way that he did.
The guy has no technical skills... He needed crowd sourced money to pay the people who did have them to produce this prototype. Selling his home to obtain the funds for said prototype would have been incredibly stupid. I'm not sure what you aren't putting together here...
Scam? No. Totally ill conceived business plan? Absolutely.
If it were a scam he wouldn't have gone through kickstarter in the first place. I believe he started out with good intentions, either through inspiration or desperation.
Tis my point of bringing it up. If your house is worth $1.2m (the counties tax assessment) then you could afford to not take 45k. His house was bought in 2007, so assuming he either paid cash or doesn't owe that much on it anymore. Seems like a raw deal for the other guys.
Just a point of clarification: No one is going to pay taxes on Pantheon's KS(except for nominal listing fees which could be business expenditure written off I assume). It failed to fund so all pledges reverted back to the pledger as per KS's system. Donations were essentially paypal/private after the KS failed and still on going via McQuaid's website.
Let's not forget his multiple sports cars of which he once stated if I remember correctly that he was going to sell to help fund this or that motor cycle he posted and bragged about with pics smack dab in the middle of the controversy's start, either.
Just because it was on KS doesn't preclude it being a scam.
Never said it did, but this wasn't a scam. The guy is still desperately clinging to some ridiculous notion that his current team can put out something of decent quality for fucks sake.
