alt Hacker NewsThis is the first time I’m hearing about “Precious Plastic”, so my comment is entirely based on this one article.
The real problem here is that they are lacking a clear and well articulated roadmap.
If we give them money, what will they use it for? Will they make new opensource tool designs which has bigger capacity? Easier to maintain? Or smaller and easier to manufacture? Or safer by design? Or lower energy? Or easier to transport? Will they use it to develop forum and wiki software? Will they throw all the donations into a litigation pit? Will they use it to microfund workshops all over the world? Are they planning to do more outreach? If so where and how?
I’m not looking for a detailed step by step project plan. But something directional would be great. What will “version 5” give to the world compared to “version 4”?
If they can’t answer that then Precious Plastic is indeed in trouble. But the trouble is not from any of those mentioned stresses, but from a lack of vision and direction.
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Precious plastic has been around for a long time and has a pretty global community behind it. One of their big goals is to create a network of microfactories around the world (basically maker spaces). You can see a map of relevant and existing nodes here:
> lack of vision and direction.
I've seen this play out more than once during my career and startups with otherwise great concepts end up treading water because the founding team or leadership fails to execute.
Being a charismatic sales person might work wonders in terms of attracting funding and talent but it's not enough if you lack the capability to follow through with it. I'd wager that lots of the latest batch of startups that want do-it-all 'product engineers' will collapse for the exact same reason: delegating vision.