Lost-and-Found Bluetooth Accessory 'Tile' Passes $1 Million in Pre-Orders

And am I the only one bugged by their blatant attempt at making it sound altruistic like Kickstarter*? They even call it "Selfstarter" with a capital letter, like they're operating through a third-party.

This is a pre-sale of a not-yet-complete product, that won't ship for another six months.

Yes, companies that are making physical products have used Kickstarter (to much success,) but this is just silly. Arbitrary $20,000 "goal"? As in "Holy crap, we've reached 8494% of our goal!" Except it's arbitrary. If they had really only gotten exactly $20,000, would they have continued? If they had gotten only $5,000, would they? (This isn't Kickstarter - they get your money no matter what.) They offer *NO GUARANTEE*.


*I am not saying Kickstarter is altruistic, just that it has a air of altruism. Which I firmly believe is completely misunderstood.

Anonymous Freak said:

And am I the only one bugged by their blatant attempt at making it sound altruistic like Kickstarter*? They even call it "Selfstarter" with a capital letter, like they're operating through a third-party.

Click to expand...

Yes, you're the only one bugged by that. They claim they're using Selfstarter because they are using Selfstarter. If you go to the page for Selfstarter, you'll find out the history and other details of that crowdfunding platform.

Yes, companies that are making physical products have used Kickstarter (to much success,) but this is just silly. Arbitrary $20,000 "goal"? As in "Holy crap, we've reached 8494% of our goal!" Except it's arbitrary.

Click to expand...

All of the goals for all the crowdfunding projects in Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Selfstarter, etc., are arbitrary: they're always set by the creator of the crowdfunding project. I personally think setting a small goal and exceeding it by a large amount is a smart marketing technique. No matter what their original goal, they're currently at $1.75M (and $2M looks rather likely in the next 48 hours).

You forgot to mention that—gasp—these individuals are aggressively advertising their crowdfunding project. They're promoting it on MacRumors! When I call up this story on MR, I consistently see an advertisement for the tile on that page. Conspiracy!

If you suspect these people won't deliver on the promises of their product, then don't participate in the pre-sale. I didn't. I prefer to wait to see how the shipped product works. At the same time, they seem to be completely straightforward in their presentation. And complaining that they described their Selfstarter project as a Selfstarter project is rather silly.

FloatingBones said:

Yes, you're the only one bugged by that. They claim they're using Selfstarter because they are using Selfstarter. If you go to the page for Selfstarter, you'll find out the history and other details of that crowdfunding platform.

Click to expand...

I was not aware that Selfstarter was its own thing. I thought it was purely Tile's own goofy "Kickstarter-like branding". That makes it a little better, but still seems janky.

Then again, even after backing a few hardware projects on Kickstarter, the idea of "crowdfunding" a hardware startup seems a little "off" to me. Just say you're doing preorders, don't sell it as "crowdfunding". Either that or sell stock. Crowdfunding just seems much more suited for artistic projects and nonprofit attempts.

Anonymous Freak said:

I was not aware that Selfstarter was its own thing.

Click to expand...

Hey how about doing some research before posting useless BS?


Seriously. It's not that hard.

Edit: Removing my message - replying to a troll isn't worth it.

I'm going to regret doing this but...

Pompiliu said:

Hey how about doing some research before posting useless BS?


Seriously. It's not that hard.

Click to expand...

Yea like your post added anything useful. Going by your post history, you're on a bit of high horse aren't you?

Anonymous Freak said:

I thought it was purely Tile's own goofy "Kickstarter-like branding". That makes it a little better, but still seems janky.
Then again, even after backing a few hardware projects on Kickstarter, the idea of "crowdfunding" a hardware startup seems a little "off" to me.

Click to expand...

That's your prerogative. I personally see no problem with crowdfunding the original manufacturing run of a product -- and those ordering $2M+ of this product clearly disagree with this point of view, too.

Just say you're doing preorders, don't sell it as "crowdfunding".

Click to expand...

It's fine for you to not like something, but it's very difficult to argue against the results this and other hardware crowdfunding operations have achieved.

Either that or sell stock.

Click to expand...

Why? Why sell stock? Do you have any idea how much time, man-hours, and expense it takes to create a public stock offering? Why would anyone buy stock in a company with no track record of any product sales?

Perhaps you're talking about private stock -- VC funding. But that has already happened: this company has $200K in venture capital. There's no conflict between having a funded business AND crowdfunding a manufacturing run. There are many advantages to crowdfunding besides simply getting funding: publicity, etc.

Crowdfunding just seems much more suited for artistic projects and nonprofit attempts.

Click to expand...

If you don't like crowdfunding of hardware projects, then don't support them. Simple. Clearly, tens of thousands of individuals disagree and do support this product.

The only thing that Tile did that could possibly be construed as creepy was to extend their Selfstarter campaign by 2 days. It was set to expire this AM; they extended it by (I believe) 48 hours early in the weekend. Clearly, Tile wanted to make absolutely certain that their crowdfunding operation exceeded $2M in sales; that greater success should be a good thing for their customers. I'm certain that Tile will get coverage when they exceed $2M in the next hour or so, and they will have 1.5 days to enjoy even more pre-sales. Win-win.

Update: The Selfstarter campaign has now crossed $2M in pre-sales. They have exceeded their target of $20K by a factor of 100.

Kwill said:

..... my concern is the environmental impact of discarding millions of Tiles each year. I would rather see a program in place that allows users to ship them back.....

Click to expand...

I can't find it now but I could have sworn that they did have such a program.


EDIT:
Found it:

Tiles last a year. We'll remind you when it's time to order new Tiles and send you an envelope to recycle your old ones.

Click to expand...

US Centric :-(

I really like the idea of this, plus I'd probably spring for one, until I saw the postage to the UK, nearly doubles the price..

Anyone know of something similar available in the UK?

Tile wound up selling $2,681,297 in pre-orders through their Selfstarter campaign: 49,586 purchasers. The $2.68M exceeded their stated goal of $20K by a factor of 134.

Tile did advertise heavily during the end of this campaign on many websites, including MacRumors.

This was a highly successful campaign. The company was quite agile during this kickstarter-like announcement and pre-sales period. The startup must now deliver on the product.

Aniseedvan said:

I really like the idea of this, plus I'd probably spring for one, until I saw the postage to the UK, nearly doubles the price..

Click to expand...

Things should sort themselves in the next 12 months. Having people complain about the lack of international channels for a startup product is a nice problem to have.

critter13 said:

https://www.sticknfind.com

Click to expand...

More expensive (for now) and only works within range of your own device - no networking with ALL other activate devices within range. Sticknfind may help you find stuff when you know more or less where you lost it, but has virtually no value at all if your stuff is stolen.

Nice Product

I have gone through the complete product.
It is a nice product with nice features.

you can find a similar nice product like ,

Gecko With endless possibilities .. Find me , electronic leash, pill box, camera trigger, music play and many more ..
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gecko-make-your-smart-phone-smarter/x/4732993

Even if I liked Gecko, the sleazy advertising above would put me off buying it forever.

Tile vaporware?

Despite protestations to the contrary, I strongly suspect Tile is vaporware. I ordered four of them eight months ago today. So far all I have to show for it are several links to their blog assuring me that all is well.

pdxphotoman said:

Despite protestations to the contrary, I strongly suspect Tile is vaporware. I ordered four of them eight months ago today. So far all I have to show for it are several links to their blog assuring me that all is well.

Click to expand...

You are not alone.

Dear inventors, you may have heard of this thing called "solar power"

that sounds good .

I just got an email from Tile asking me to confirm my shipping address.
I suppose I'll get one a few months from now asking me to confirm my confirmation.

Has anyone here recieved theirs yet? I just preordered a few days ago and per the tile blog, it looks like I'll receive sometime in September.

Would like to see some actual hands on user reviews.

I just received a shipping confirmation.

Received my tiles today and I've been playing with them for the last hour or two.
I downloaded the app, setup my account, and registered two of my four tiles.
I registered one to my iPhone and one to my wife's.
The tiles actually get registered, or linked, to the device and not your account so even though I used the same account on both my wife's iPhone and my own, her iPhone can only see her tile, and my iPhone can only see my tile.
Both phones show both tiles in the list of devices but each one will only ever detect the one they were paired with.
In my case this will work out well but if you were hoping that every iPhone in your household will be able to track every tile it looks like you're out of luck.
Once a tile is detected you can make it play a sound, similar to the Find My iPhone app.
The sound is pretty quiet and when covered by a pillow, it's almost unhearable at around 10-feet.
Besides the sound, the only other help that the app provides in actually tracking the tile is a sort of game of hot or cold.
It tells you when your "arm's length away" or "a few steps away".
That's it. No directional arrows. No compass points.
The arm's length equates to about 5-feet and the few steps is around 15-feet.
Any further than that and you only get the ever helpful advice to "keep looking".
I got the four for around $50 deal and at that price I suppose I'm satisfied but at $20 each i would have to call these things pretty much of a ripoff. Especially with the non-replaceable battery.

UPDATE
24-hours later and now my wife's phone can find and locate both tiles but my phone can't locate either.
So I guess the pairing is to the account and not to the device. Must have just taken a bit for the tile IDs to populate through the system??
Why my phone can't find either one is a mystery.
Maybe it's an iOS 8 thing but it worked yesterday.
I tried rebooting and I tried signing out and back in to my tile account but no success.
I've contacted tile support so I'll wait and see what they say.

Tile Finds Things

The only thing that I see Tile has found is the $ 15.00 that we paid to be in the beta kickstarter. That is they found it and we have found umm nothing, no Tile, no refund. Oh Yeah and while Tile finds things they can't find the order. Funny thing it shows taken from my debit card.

I wonder how many others have not found Tile with their successful kickstarter program. Scam is also a four letter word.