Introducing Alan

Good luck in the future with Alan, Will. I think it is a wonderful product and still hope to own one some day. Keep following your dream.

thats what Im talking about all the time. Alan is a cool looking bust but only for robot makers, no other people need him. there are a lot of toys with same futures like iphone app robots for 90 bucks. Alan is something special like a sculpture but not a toy for everyone. nobody who invest in alan can make money with him. Kickstarter was not the wrong place.. your end-product and prices are only for a few people in this world. nobody buy Alan to learn french. for 700-1000 dollar you can buy a teacher with the lighting eyes the most children are scared and not happy. in your video he looks more like a demon as a storyteller this head is a special thing for special people. again, I love him!

someone on your kickstarter page asked you: "How do I convince people that ALAN can do much more than Siri or Echo by Amazon? Any quick examples?" That's what everyone thinks, "what can I do with the 1000 Dollar Alan Bust" ?!?!

there are two options: reduce the price and productions-costs extremely or make a real robot with body, arms, hands etc. the bust is not enough to make a own business.

the next problem: a complete body kit will be much more expensive.. 2015 is the star wars- but not the humanoid-time.. so only a hand full people buy a big complete animatronic robot who comes from a printer.

2015 wowwee sold cheap pvc children toys only. with cheap child-toys you can make money, with a RS MEDIA V2, NOT.

thats why sony kill AIBO and Qrio.

the robot business is a hard business.

good luck!

I appreciate your point of view. But my intended target audience was not the general consumer. If it was easy and cheap to produce serious robots then there would be plenty of heads, bodies and arms to purchase for everyone on the cheap. As I had said before I was able to take something that would have costs tens of thousands of dollars to produce for tv or a film and bring the price waaaayyyy down. And the companies that have contacted us about how to use ALAN could see that and want more.

Kickstarter was the wrong place. In 20 days we only had 5,000 people visit. Imagine if we had 1,000 a day or 100,000 hits in 30 days? With 5,000 views we still managed 38 backers at $31,000. One word VISIBILITY.

I guess for consumer consumption ALAN would have to be a Chinese manufactured watered down vacuum formed/pressure injected piece of crap. Something I'm not interested in. ALAN will still be produced, but it just won't be in the marketplace.

Robotics is a hard business, but I believe I'm still paving the way for a better aesthetic robotic world. Something I think most can appreciate.

B of A and Merrill just predicted that the robot industry will be valued at $125 billion dollars in just 5 years. Plenty of room for my good looking robots

And Smarty remember this: Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

Will,

I liked very much the last paragraph, i think is very positive.

It's easy to predict failures, products like Alan, EZ-AI and others (integration products) are not easy to sell, they are not consumer friendly, and not final products.

There are 2 social robots coming out (2016) Jibo and Buddy, different products, different audiences and different investment strategies, i think it will be a good way to understand and learn about the trends.

I presume Alan project will be off for at least 6 months ?

Best Luck

Yes there will be a bit of restructuring, meeting with investors and travel. By the time I'm finished with this film we will have a better view of ALANs direction and development.

@ ptp

you forgot Alpha 2: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/alpha-2-the-first-humanoid-robot-for-the-family#/

Alpa 2 looks like a child toy cost 700,00 bucks but a lot people want him! $1.066.838 in 20 days :O

Will, I imagine that there are more people than Smarty thinking they are dancing on Alan's grave. Personally I think he's just taken his first step into the world and has a clear path ahead of him (even if he doesn't have feet). That's why I decided to invest in your visionary journey. Seems to me that Kickstarter was a needed first step. It may have given you just the right amount of exposure and credibility. You now have lots of high profile investors, potential partners and news exposure.

Good luck on your continuing adventure.

Will,

This is just a first attempt at publicity. 5000 people saw ALAN that previously probably had not seen him. That is okay. There are other opportunities available to you.

There are not many people who have the ability to envision a product and bring it to market. It is a tough thing that only a few people attempt and very few are successful at. Pushing technology allows it to grow. Sitting back and waiting for others to push technology is a much easier thing to do. It is easy to sit back and say this or that will fail. Failure isn't the end. It is just a learning process. Most fail initially. Some fight through the failure to become successful. Many sit back and encourage. Many also sit back and are critical.

As far as EZ-AI not being a consumer product, you are correct at this point. Without saying too much, EZ-AI is software that will be able to be integrated into a wide variety of products by design. The client is 350 lines of code that will run great on Android, Windows, Linux and Mac. It runs on very small devices (routers, cable boxes, TV's and other light weight computers). My interest is in robotics so that is the first place that it will be released. There are many other things that will come later for this software.