Fledgling LLC; Legit or Not?

[KodiakWithAK]

I saw this while browsing Kickstarter. This company is crowdfunding a mere $3,000 to start an M.2 SSD Company.

 

As I see it, there is only too options.

 

1. They buy the NAND Flash and PCB and stick a sticker on it. If so, who do they buy it from?

 

2. scam scam scam it’s a scam

 

any insight on this company? If it’s so easy to start an SSD company count me in.

 

[AnonymousGuy]

Report it, it violates 2 of Kickstarters rules.  With 100% certainty this is something they buy off Alibaba and then slap a sticker on:

 

1. Projects that share things that already exist, or repackage a previously-created product, without adding anything new or aiming to iterate on the idea in any way.
2. Resale. All rewards must have been produced or designed by the project or one of its creators — no reselling things from elsewhere.

[KodiakWithAK]

2 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Report it, it violates 2 of Kickstarters rules.  With 100% certainty this is something they buy off Alibaba and then slap a sticker on:

 

1. Projects that share things that already exist, or repackage a previously-created product, without adding anything new or aiming to iterate on the idea in any way.
2. Resale. All rewards must have been produced or designed by the project or one of its creators — no reselling things from elsewhere.

Alright. Other then Kickstarter, is this legal even? Or does it violate counterfeit laws by

 

1. Selling another product as there own

 

2. Putting MacOS natively on their drive

[LionSpeck]

4 minutes ago, KodiakWithAK said:

Alright. Other then Kickstarter, is this legal even? Or does it violate counterfeit laws by

 

1. Selling another product as there own

 

2. Putting MacOS natively on their drive

1. 100% legal if there's a contract with the manufacturer of your components that lets you do that
2. Not by any chance: again, same rule of 1. applies, and I've never heard of Apple making a contract with some company to licence MacOS

[AnonymousGuy]

This is what's known as whitebox production.  Some random company makes you a product with your logo on it.  It's not a counterfeit because it's not pretending to be another brand.

 

I doubt OS is actually preinstalled, probably some typo.  If it was then yeah Apple would have a problem with that.

 

 

Kickstarter in general has a problem with people going on Alibaba and trying to resell wholesale/whitebox stuff as a Kickstarter project.

[seagate_surfer]

Hello KodiakWithAK,

 

Kickstarter is ok and legal, even the people collecting all that money without giving it in return are doing it legally. This sounds disappointing but the money they receive is considered donations for a project and that's not illegal, so if you put your money in a scam project just remember that you won't be able to get your money back applying legal means.

[KodiakWithAK]

3 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

This is what's known as whitebox production.  Some random company makes you a product with your logo on it.  It's not a counterfeit because it's not pretending to be another brand.

 

I doubt OS is actually preinstalled, probably some typo.  If it was then yeah Apple would have a problem with that.

 

 

Kickstarter in general has a problem with people going on Alibaba and trying to resell wholesale/whitebox stuff as a Kickstarter project.

Do you know any companies that are notorious for whitebox production? I have enough money to make a down investment, so crowdfunding isn’t an issue. I’d love to get into the hardware business, and if I could infiltrate it legally and with this small of an investment why wouldn’t I? 

[AnonymousGuy]

It wouldn't be a small investment.  To get good pricing you're going to run into minimum order quantities of thousands of pieces.  You'll basically be a middle man exposed to risk from both sides: your suppliers being independent so you have zero control over the quality of their output, and customers who expect you to handle warranty claims locally.  Plus you're up against a million other Chinese dudes who have the exact same idea and will probably have better funding and connections to destroy you.

 

The dudes from this Kickstarter are "only" asking for $2k because they're just trying to use Kickstarter as a storefront.  They link to their ebay page where they have a different "company name".

[Fledging]

Hi KodiakWithAK! Thanks for asking about our Kickstarter. You are correct about the amount being low and that is because we use Kickstarter campaigns for product announcements and not to make new products. We use the funds from Kickstarter to help with our marketing efforts.

 

HatSSD is our eBay distributor that we work closely with to expand the reach of our products. Fledging is focused on innovation and design and does so in-house with third-party manufacturing partners to help us get our premium electronics to the masses. Our partner HatSSD is focused on sales and customer service. Together, we are the first team to commercialize the NVMe SSD replacement solution for Mac.

 

Our drives do come pre-installed with High Sierra OS 10.13.6 to help ease the installation process for our customers.

 

We are a startup based in Birmingham, AL that formed in January of 2018. All orders are fulfilled for that Kickstarter campaign and our customers love Feather SSD. Our team will have more exciting product announcements in 2019 that we would love to share with you all!

 

I've included some links to our website and news articles below, so you can take a look and learn more about us:

 

Fledging Website
Birmingham Business Journal: How UAB's new commercialization accelerator performed in its first year
Bham Now: These 7 startups are getting attention in Birmingham and beyond
University of Alabama at Birmingham: Entrepreneurial activity spurred by commercialization accelerator program