Lima, tech hardware described as a DropBox Killer, is finally shipping to the backers of a crowdfunding campaign that closed in the fall of 2013 raising over $1.2 million. Lima was an ambitious project that struggled to achieve its claims of providing an integrated personal cloud based storage experience that improved upon current market options. The campaign had promised to first start shipping to backers in December of 2013, but unforeseen challenges caused repeated delays that forced thousands of Kickstarter backers to wait.
In a backer update the Lima team announced;
The update you were waiting for: we’re shipping everyone!
We’ve been waiting for this day since we’ve started our journey on Kickstarter. We are now ready to ship the Lima devices to all of our backers!
We’ve released the Lima 0.9 software version last week. As we were explaining you in our weekly updates, this was the last essential step before we could move to mass shipping…
…Lima is an ambitious project. As you know, we’ve been going through some challenges in the past year and a half. I would like to sincerely thank all of you for your patience, support and also for your questions and feedback.
We’ve been learning so much along the road, it has been an incredible experience. I would like to congratulate the whole Lima team for all the efforts, the energy, the time they’ve dedicated to this amazing product, the great ideas and massive work they’ve produced to make it happen.
Gawen and I are very proud of this first achievement and we’re convinced we’re just at the beginning of the next revolution in computing.
Lima should be given Kudos for its ongoing and frequent updates to the over 12,000 backers. The entire saga played out in the campaign updates as Lima shared the highs and lows of creating, manufacturing, and fulfilling a hardware tech product.
Like many delayed tech products the rest of the world has not stood still. At the time of the product launch Apple’s iCloud was a fragmented and poorly integrated service. That has since changed. Other cloud based services have improved their offerings and competing hardware products have entered the space.
Lima’s concept was impressive enough that it received additional funding in 2014 in the amount of $2.5 million led by Partech Ventures. The Lima team still notes that “the Lima software isn’t at its final stage yet, and will gain stability and features in the coming weeks and months”. Users of the product will continue to receive software updates addressing existing bugs.
While it is difficult to quantify (one backer did compile a refund list of disgruntled supporters), some backers felt the campaign failed in its promise and requested refunds. Others were ready to accept the elongated delay and a buggy product. While Kickstarter says “it is not a store” the truth is most backers treat it the same as Amazon – with an extended ship date.
Will Lima become the iCloud, DropBox, GoogleDrive killer it wants to be? I have no idea. It will be interesting to see user response once the thousands of backers try this gadget out.
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