Philips has a net worth in the billions, $20.67 billion as of July 12, 2023. (Source link) Yet they decided to create a kickstarter, charging “early bird” buyers these earphones that’s designed for wearing while sleeping, basically the same as any other earphones, just slimmed down and cables running around your head.
What’s infuriating is that there’s dumbasses who actually gave them money to make a product ($500k million in total), so Philips is most likely not taking any risk making this, but will enjoy the profits.
The kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kokoon/sleep-headphones/posts
I thought the whole point of a kickstarter was people with a product, but lacking the funds to get the project actually going getting a kick start to get going… Not for billion dollar companies to beg for cash.
If anyone should take a chance, it’s the ones with vast resources that are increased by billions every quarter, not the people alreeady struggling to get by.
When you launch a product, there’s always a risk that it won’t be successful and offloading that risk on people who can’t afford it anywhere near as easily as you can while keeping all the profits if it succeeds is as unethical as consumer banks gambling with people’s life savings and then being bailed out at the expense of the same people they bankrupted.