LUCY - Der Digitale Buttler

[Percy]

Update Nr. 13:

Dear backers.
It is terrible to wait - we know that very well since we are waiting here every day, too. The hardware somehow takes more and more time but we still want to do it right.

Software
The process of making everything generic to be able to switch from Alexa to another service made us somehow stall for the last weeks. We have tested the Google speech API, Microsoft Cortana and some other open source tools. Somehow they are either not affordable for us or not good enough. Alexa seems to be the best fit. Anyways we are trying to verify that this doesn´t come back to us soon.

Hardware
We had to tackle the issue that the suppliers want more money and more time. This on top of the development cycle takes more energy from the team than expected, but we are on it. It just seems to take so much time.

There are also good news.
The designs from the packaging came and we are happy to tick that one of.

We as a part of the investors team have given L.U.C.Y. additional funds to ensure we can continue to refund people on the give rate and also help to fill the gaps in funding of the hardware. These funds may not last for ever but looking at it today they ensure that there is sufficient money there to deliver the product we are looking for.
And the most important ToDo for you was to ensure we have a closer communication with the backers. Since I am having difficulties with that we are already looking for help here. Is anyone here located in Singapore?
Thanks for your support.

[Gubbo]

Das sieht echt prima aus. Will ich auch haben!

[CooperCologne]

Das sieht echt prima aus. Will ich auch haben!

Und was genau trägt das jetzt zum Thema bei, ausser das wieder alle eine unnötige Email erhalten?

[Percy]

Nächstes Update:

Dear Backers.
It has been a couple of weeks since the last update. But there is just so much to do here. Things seem all to be in the air and with a team working all over the planet it is hard to get an update together and signed off.
First things first. We should clarify some topics that popped up.

Campaigns: It might look like we made three campaigns but in fact it was just one. The first one in August was cancelled by ourselves and the money was sent back. The second one was this one where we have refunded more than 50% of the backers already. And the Indiegogo InDemand campaign was for the ones who missed that campaign.
Refunds: We keep on refunding the backers that want refunds. Most of the money assigned to the project was already spent. Anyways we continue and try to top that with our very own money so that we can at least refund a good part of the pledge. But it takes times since we have to source those funds. Our intention also is, that once L.U.C.Y. goes into sales and we have some cashflow that you will get the rest which was not refunded.

Updates: It is not a good idea that the business angels try to help here - we know that. We do not have full access to the information and without input we cannot keep everybody easily updated. In the end the pressure on the team rises when the backers are not happy. To give you an idea of the work here: I personally have received 4,697 mails last month and I have still more then 2,000 mails to answer. It is by far not a 30 minutes job and unfortunately it is not feasible to do that as often as needed with our setup. To get an agreement on this update it took me around 2 weeks of work.

The team is mostly taking care of these things these days:

Investors: We are still negotiating with investors but still we remain one signature away from ticking that off. This is a major task for us since the budgets are very tight and our own funds are limited. We have invested more than 500K on this project yet and there is still some relevant work to do. This also is the reason why the refunds are taking time.

Software: We decided to go with Alexa but still we need to find a way how we can easily change that if it happens that AVS stops working with L.U.C.Y. . This is also the most relevant task for the investors and for the delivery dates since we do not feel that we are safe yet. The work here will take another estimated 4 weeks including testing.

Hardware: Delivery dates unfortunately keep changing. We do have an agreement on the additional costs but we did not get the Pre-release version yet. The main issues here is the internal bandwidth of the components that seems to slow down L.U.C.Y. to a level that is not acceptable.

Delivery: We need more time. As of today we estimate delivery between July and August. We are sorry about that. But we rather wait instead of delivering something like the famous Ronaldo statue at the madeira Airport.

Thanks Team L.U.C.Y.

[Percy]

Das war's wohl endgültig:

Dear backers.
It has been a long journey but we have reached a point where the team faces more new issues every day than they can solve. We are keep paying more and more people to get this idea to work and it does not get better.
The new Echo from Amazon made partners back of, the face recognition cannot be implemented without licensing even more expensive software, the voice recognition has to work with and without AVS which drags us into a very complex development, trolls are sending letters asking for money and finally the hardware might cost double of the negotiated price when we started the campaign and nobody is willing to return our money back until today even though the delivery has not happened yet. This means we have to spend even more time in negotiations and with lawyers.
For us as business angels and the LUCY team this is a situation where we must do the maths. We have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and without a new capital injection or suppliers changing their attitude this project is at a huge risk. I cannot see that happening without changing some core ideas.
Also we we feel that we are unable to make everybody happy. Either people want refunds or they want us not to refund others or we do not pay them fast enough. Just to confirm - since this project is so costly and the major part is payed out of our very own pockets we don´t think that the money we already refunded makes a great difference. But our funds are limited.
The next weeks I will negotiate with the other Angel investors and the suppliers to agree on your refunds, how much the different stakeholder have to bring in and when the money finally comes since we want to solve this quick even though we know that things always take more time.
We are also trying to offer an Echo to all remaining backers as a compensation. Depending on your Kickstarter pledge it will be either a Dot, the original Echo or the Echo Show for those who want one. Please keep in mind that this depends on the deal we can achieve with the stakeholders and the sellers.
Sincerly

[Percy]

Insolvenz:

Dear backers.

Last week the shareholders have decided to send this company into liquidation including all its assets and values. Unfortunately we were not able to convince them to give us additional funding to finish the project under the given circumstances. We have tried to find a solution with our suppliers, the teams, the patent owners and all those who are not delivering on the previous agreed terms and without their help we were not moving forward at all.

What does that mean for everybody? Sending a company into liquidation means that the company and all its assets are now under supervision of an attorney until all open issues are sorted. The attorney will take ownership of the negotiations and has by law more rights to enforce solutions that please all participants. The attorney has not been appointed yet but the process has started and here in Germany it usually happens fast. The complete liquidation must not take longer than a year here by law. The reasons for this step are the following:

1. We want to make sure that everything is done correctly and under supervision so we do not run the risk of taking wrong decisions at any point.

2. We have been trying to get the money back from the providers for more than 6 months now and we have come far. An attorney has a much better leverage here and we hope that he can get your money back from the firms that did not deliver so you can get fully refunded.

3. Sending the company in liquidation also allows us to use the remaining funds to refund the remaining backers soon. Once we have information about this we will let you know.

The main goal remains - we want to recover the outstanding funds and refund you backers. We are very sorry this had come so far and we keep concentrating our efforts to keep you with the least possible harm.

The LUCY team