You may recall my three sons ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall for their $99 Mineserver, a multiuser Minecraft server the size of a pack (not a carton) of cigarettes. On the eve of their product finally shipping here’s an update with some lessons for any complex technical project.
At the time we shot the Kickstarter video my kids already had in hand a functional prototype. Everything seen in the video was real and the boys felt that only producing custom cases really stood in the way of shipping. How wrong they were!
First we needed a mobile app to administer the server so we hired an experienced mobile developer through guru.com. His credentials were great but maybe it should have been a tip-off when, right after we made the first payment, the developer moved from Europe to India. The United States Postal Service guaranteed us it would take no more than five days for our development hardware to reach Mumbai. It took three weeks. And our USPS refund for busting the delivery guarantee has yet to appear.
We were naive. The original development estimate was exceeded in the first week and we were up to more than 8X by the time we pulled the plug. Still the developer kept trying to charge us, eventually sending the project to arbitration, which we won.
Our saving grace was we found a commercial app we could license for less than a dollar per unit. Why hadn’t we done this earlier? Well it wasn’t available for our ARM platform and didn’t work with our preferred Minecraft server, called Cuberite (formerly MC Server).
Enter, stage right, the lawyers of Minecraft developer Mojang in Sweden.
Mojang is a peculiar outfit. They are nominally owned by Microsoft yet Redmond is only very slowly starting to exert control. I’m not sure the boys and girls in Sweden even know that. Minecraft server software is free, Mojang makes its money (lots of money) from client licenses, so they and Microsoft ought to want third-party hardware like ours to be successful. But no, that’s not the case.
I’ve known people at Microsoft since the company was two years old so it was easy to reach out for support. Maybe we could do some co-marketing?
Nope, that’s against Mojang rules, Redmond told us, their eyes rolling at the same time.
We urged them to consider a hardware certification program. We’d gladly pay a small royalty to be deemed Ready-for-Minecraft.
Nope, Mojang refuses to have anything to do with hardware developers. Oh, and both our logo and font were in violation of Mojang copyrights, so change those right away, please.
Swedes are very polite but firm, much like Volvos.
Minecraft, which is written in Java, is nominally Open Source, but there are some peculiar restrictions on distributing the code. The server software can’t be distributed pre-compiled. For that matter it also can’t be distributed even as source code if the delivery vehicle is a piece of operational hardware like our Mineserver. Our box would have to ship empty then download the source and compile it for our ARM platform before the first use, making everything a lot more difficult.
Now let’s be clear, this particular restriction technically only applies to one version of the Minecraft server, usually called Vanilla — the multiuser server distributed for free directly by Mojang. There are other Minecraft servers that, in theory, we ought to be able to ship with our little boxes except Mojang has all the developers so freaked that nobody does it. Besides, Vanilla is the official Minecraft server and some people won’t accept anything else.
But our experience shows Vanilla Minecraft isn’t very good at all. In fact it is our least favorite server, primarily because it supports only a single core on our four-core and eight-core boxes. As such Vanilla supports the lowest number of concurrent Minecraft players. A better server like Spigot can support 2-3 times as many users as Vanilla.
The best Minecraft server of all in our opinion is Cuberite, which is also the only one written in C++ instead of Java. Cuberite extracts far more performance from our hardware than any other server, which is why we chose to make it our de facto installation. We’ll also support Vanilla, Spigot and Tekkit Lite (you can switch between them), but Cuberite will be the first server to compile on the machine.
The only problem with Cuberite is that the off-the-shelf admin application we discovered doesn’t support it. Or didn’t. The very cooperative admin developer in the UK is extending his product to support Cuberite. This should be done soon and waiting for Cuberite is a major reason why we haven’t shipped. We’re hoping to have it in a few more days.
But waiting for Cuberite wasn’t our only problem. We had to develop a dynamic DNS system, WiFi support, and make sure the units were totally reliable.
Oh, and our laser cutter burst into flames.
Understand that for a Mineserver or Mineserver Pro, the sysadmin also typically goes by another title — Mom. Our administration tool allows her to control the server from any Internet-connected computer including Android and iOS mobile phones. She can bump or ban players from the frozen food aisle, monitor in-game text chat, reboot the server — anything. It’s a very powerful and easy-to-use tool.
While we were waiting for Cuberite support we added something else for Mom to worry about, a Mumble server. Mumble is open source voice chat with very low latency. We were able to add Mumble to Mineserver because the CPU load is very low with all encoding and decoding done in the client and the server acting mainly as a VoIP switch. If she wants to, Mama can listen to the Mumble feed and step-in if little Johnny drops an F-bomb.
Every Mineserver has its own individual name chosen by the customer. This server name, rather than an IP address, is how whitelisted players find the game. Consulting with dynamic DNS experts prior to the Kickstarter campaign this sounded easy to do with a combination of A records and SRV records. But it’s not so easy because Mom doesn’t want to have to do port forwarding, so that meant adding other techniques like UPnP, which is tough to do if it’s not turned-on in your router. We eventually developed what the boys believe is a 95 percent solution. In 95 percent of cases it should work right out of the box with the remaining five percent falling on the slim shoulders of some Cringely kid.
Every Mineserver is assembled by a specific child who is also responsible for product support. His e-mail address is right on the case and if something doesn’t work he can ssh, telnet, or VNC into the box to fix it.
Somewhere in this mix of challenges we lost our primary Linux consultant. We still don’t know what happened to him, he just stopped responding to e-mails. The next consultant really didn’t have enough time for us, but finally we found a guy with the help of our admin developer who has been doing a great job. He helped us switch our Linux server distribution with several positive results and helped come up with the custom distro we use today.
But still there were problems, specifically WiFi.
WiFi was something we’d rather not do at all, but it has become the new Ethernet (even Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe pretends WiFi is Ethernet, which it isn’t but we still love Bob). Many home networks are entirely WiFi. We feel the best way to use a Mineserver even in WiFi-only homes is by plugging the included CAT6 cable into a router or access point port and using the router’s WiFi capability. But some customers don’t want to plug anything into anything, so we’ve included native WiFi support in some Mineservers and all Mineserver Pros. That sounds easier to do than it actually was.
Mineservers are headless so how do you set an SSID or password the first time? Good question, but one we finally solved. Mineservers can be configured and administered entirely without wires if needed. In most situations the customer will plug-in their Mineserver to power and it will just work. If it doesn’t, then an 11 year-old will fix it. That first power-up will involve downloading and compiling the selected server software, which can be changed at any time. It’s a process that takes 5-10 minutes and then you are up and running.
What we hope is our final technical problem has been particularly vexing. We now have three Mineservers and three Mineserver Pros running at the sonic.net data center here in Santa Rosa. All six servers plus a power strip and a gig-Ethernet switch fit on a one foot square piece of plywood. The truly great folks at Sonic gave us half a rack and we fill perhaps one percent of that, meaning you could probably put 1200 Mineservers in a full rack — enough to support up to 60,000 players. But operating in this highly-secure facility with its ultra-clean power and unlimited bandwidth we began to notice during testing that sometimes the servers would just disappear from the net. One minute the IP would be there and the next minute it would be gone.
We’re still waiting for Cuberite support of course, but we even if we had that today we still can’t ship a product that disappears from the net. We’ve tried swapping-out boards but the problem still occurs. Maybe it was the gig-Ethernet switch, so we got a new one, then a bigger one, then an even bigger managed switch. We changed cables. We started fiddling with the software. Each Mineserver board has a serial port so we converted an old Mac Mini to Linux, added a powered USB hub and six UART-to-USB adapters so now our consultant in Texas can use six virtual serial terminals to monitor the test Mineservers 24/7 without having to rely on their Ethernet connections. Everything is being logged so the next time one goes down we’ll know exactly what’s happening.
We’re also in touch with other users of the same board like Lockheed Martin and Lawrence Livermore Lab where they have a cluster of 160. But that’s nothing compared to three kids in Santa Rosa who are right now burning-in 500 boards.
It’s the final bug, we’re approaching it with planning, gusto, and plenty of Captain Crunch, and fully expect to solve this last issue and start shipping next week when the kids are off school for Spring Break.
Mineservers as a business so far aren’t quite as good as the boys had hoped. The Kickstarter units are losing an average of $15 each (so far). But $7500 in the hole is not much cost to start a technology business. And with their marketing strategy (called “F-ing brilliant” by a VC friend) the boys are hoping to sell 100+ post-Kickstarter units per month to eventually pay for college.
That’s awesome. I don’t play minecraft or I’d pick one up just as a show of moral support. 🙂
Your kids sound truly awesome, and I wish them the best. Sounds like they are learning an incredible amount of great lessons.
I’d say, gee, I hope this shuts up the people who were slagging on the project, but, of course, it won’t. Thanks for the update!
I’m not surprised at the problems – every startup project of any significance has these problems and worse, but the difference is that most people/startups don’t talk about them. A few startups succeed and bury their history underneath the footnotes in the corporate history, while others fail and sink without a trace leaving very few people the wiser. It’s only the winners/success stories that get the press so the myth is that a startup is easy.
It sound like your kids are learning some great lessons – I sincerely wish them the best of luck with this project and commend you for encouraging and jumping in there to help out.
Thanks for the update. I doubted it could be as easy as you wanted it.
No link to the Kickstarter campaign? I know it’s not active, and it’s easy to find.
John
Thanks for the update, glad it’s only the usual startup trauma and it was not lost in the post.
Your kids will be fully fledged startup jockeys when they have finished this. Who cares about merit badges from the boy-scouts when they can pay their way through college with this startup experience.
Great life adventure for your family.
Thanks for the update
As much experience as Cringely has had with various projects and startups, this just shows that start-ups are not for whimps. There’s always some curveball. I find it shameful when folks post comments like “Bob, are you and your kids ripping us off on our Mineserver!” Shameful. You should do an Elon Musk and give them their money back with a “No soup for you! Ever!” note.
I applaud you at the education (and father time) you are giving your kids though. Surely makes Mama Cringely proud.
An Elon Musk would be to have the government give people tax credits for buying MineServer, Cringely subsidies, and give other hardware vendors a mandate that would incentivize them to give Bob money.
Some well-earned battle scars for all. Thanks for sharing the lessons learned! No desire to see you make a loss on my unit – extra $’s jsut sent via donate button
I know that this post is ostensibly an update for current and prospective Mineserver customers, but as a non-customer I still find this subject to be incredibly interesting. This is at once a story about technology, gaming, business, startup/VC culture, and youth. Even Bob, with his significant industry experience, is learning a lot from this venture.
In many ways this is a pretty cool time to be a kid…for example, this project beats the hell out of having a paper route (speaking from experience).
I hadn’t even heard of this Kickstarter project until I saw a link to this article. It’s very useful and informative to anyone interested in startup projects. Especially home brewed ones. Though the Cringely clan has a lot of advantages the average Kickstarter user probably wouldn’t. And that’s deep networking connections within the industry. And they’re still having a lot of issues to deal with.
It’s fascinating really.
Business is hard. Great education for the kids.
no doubt the family VC has imparted much unexpected wisdom into the adventure. as for your first software specialist, hey, join the club. you need to develop in-house expertise as the years go on.
Nice update, but after all of the other sunshine filled updates that you have previously made, why should we believe you this time?
None of the above issues account for the unprofessional way you have managed updates so far.
I’m assuming that the “F-ing Briliant” marketing strategy was “fake it until you make it”.
How many more weeks/months until your next update?
This is simple: we aren’t professionals. Few startups are. In fact one of the greatest strengths of technology startups is their LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM. If we were professionals we’d never even try doing something like this, much less do it with pre-teens. If we were professionals we’d be more (not less) likely fail. Instead of $99 the boxes would cost $299 and the Kickstarter campaign would have failed. None of which makes you feel any better, I know, but frankly making YOU feel better isn’t my priority. My priority is finishing the product while making a living and keeping my kids from doing too much work on it. You’ll get your product (a lot quicker than many crowdfunded projects) and a month from now all will be well with the world. As for those cheery updates, well when a problem has been solved you DO feel cheery. And no company anticipates every problem.
No offense, Cringe, but you should have taught the kids to write a business plan. Soliciting money without a f***ing clue is unethical.
–
It’s one thing to play with hardware and programming. It’s quite another to con a lot of trusting people into donating. Myself, I wasn’t fooled because I’ve read your prior nonsense and I have a good dose of skepticism. Junior sociopaths like you are why we have so many stories about tech companies that screw their customers and employees.
God bless America – you probably vote for Trump as well…………..
Oh grow up.
Looking forward to getting our Mineserver!
You are making a lot of negative assertions about Robert here. I bet these ad hominem attacks aren’t restricted to just him. What makes you so sure successful businesses start with a business plan? I’ve written many and have had two successful companies that I sold, and I disagree with most everything you say here. Transparency and honesty are missing from most businesses and Robert and his sons are being open about creating something, and this should be applauded. So easy to be a critic.
Yeah, based on what he’s written before (fake parrot-care testimonials being ok) I wouldn’t trust him either. But he’s right, crowd funding doesn’t always go right, and it’s not usually malevolence.
Does anyone here know what the accepted spelling for blowing a raspberry is? I usually go with “thrrrrp!”, but it somehow always leaves me feeling a little flat.
Opinions/thoughts/ideas gratefully accepted. Not yours, though, @Mark or @cruncher. You’re mean.
Go team mini-Cringley!
On a related note, what’s the accepted spelling of the sound of people clapping?
I can confirm, as a professional working for a big company I wouldn’t touch this idea with a ten foot pole. It’s a niche product that would most likely die in the research and discovery phase, when it proves unsustainable on some angle, or in legal. Which explains why you haven’t seen anything like it on the market. For some things it really takes a start-up to jump in head-first and throw the dice.
🙂
Wow, some of these comments are brutal. Even personal attacks. I’d think if people had a low opinion of your work, they wouldn’t be hanging around your site, or giving money to a project with your kids. I doubt it was ever possible to please everyone no matter what your efforts were.
This sounds like a typical day at IBM. Promises are made. Customers have expectations. Unforeseen problems arise. People you need to do the job vanish. Their replacements may or may not have the skills to finish the jobs. Things get delayed. Customers become upset. Management gets upset too. The team is forced to go with a product in whatever state it is in, and then try to make it right after the fact. If it crashes and burns, which happens most of the time — things only go from bad to worse.
.
For those of you expecting Mineserver boxes, you will probably be very pleased with the result. Bob and son’s resisted the temptation to ship the product until it was right. They didn’t settle with poor help. They looked for and found better help.
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Bob and son’s have accomplished much, especially when you consider dad typically works 80 hours a week. This is a great object lesson for those starting a business or working a project. Thank you Bob for sharing this with us,
Thanks for the update. Tell your sons we admire their perseverance.
> The Kickstarter units are losing an average of $15 each (so far).
“We lose money on every sale but we make up for that on the volume!”
There’s a mechanism for Kickstarter updates, so why not use it? Why nearly two months of silence and a blank website?
I consider your first sentence deliberately misleading. “a successful Kickstarter campaign”. To be successful it’s got to deliver the goods. What you did was to extract money with, at best, misleading information. I quote: “The Linux OS, Minecraft server, and admin apps are tuned to operate well together. The dynamic DNS service is globally distributed and protected from DDOS attacks. All that still needs to be finished is the final case tooling, which is coming from a U.S. supplier.”
This post shows that wasn’t the case.
I still hope to get the server but it’s the last time I’m influenced by tales of enterprising kids.
I am an investor in two other Kickstarter projects. Putting money into a Kickstarter project is not like placing an early order at Walmart for the next Star Wars movie. There is a good risk of failure and/or the loss of all of your money. Both my Kickstarter investments have pretty much vanished from the face of the earth without a word. I agree it would have been better if there had been a few updates. In the end it is results that really count. Bob, Son’s, and Co may actually be shipping out products that really work. They could have given up and walked away. So you have to give them some credit for their honesty and dedication. If you’re still mad and upset, maybe YOU should try to do something like this.
Only two! I’ve put money into 58 over a period of over 3 years so I know what Kickstarter is about. Apart from one where the creator just vanished, this is the worst case of communication I’ve seen, also one of the worst cases of overstating the degree of readiness.
As for your last point, I’m not mad and upset, I just feel very let down, and I’m realistic enough not to embark on something like this.
Two months of silence? Try EIGHT.
Have you heard of the TextBlade, by Waytools? It was supposedly the bees’ knees of pocket bluetooth keyboards, and it was READY. All they had to do was do some pre-order funding and they’d start shipping in a month or so…
…a year later, after much screaming, yelling, and begging, all of which was answered by Waytools with precisely BUPKIS, I asked for a refund, which I thankfully got. If they ever ship a product that is available at retail, I may consider getting it. But the “pre-order” experience was dismal. And that was from an actual company, run by adults who had run other companies! It wasn’t some kids and their Dad! (Loved reading you in Infoworld, Bob, it was the high point of my week back then.)
I backed a few films that looked really good. One is supposedly still in production 4 years after the original delivery date. Another is getting close to release “real soon now”. Yet another was hit with a lawsuit from CBS and is in limbo. And still another finally delivered, but I haven’t been able to download the thing from their substandard server.
So having a delay on a new hardware/software combination with a couple of months of quiet from the devs makes you think you’ve been ripped off? Ask for a refund and go away. Or wait patiently and finally get your product. Or not, if it fails — the risk of which you assumed when you backed the project. Did you even READ the risks page?
And just for the record, I am not a backer. I just really love Bob’s columns, and am glad to see he’s still kicking.
Good grief, John. These are kids. Children. And you make it sound like the delays are on purpose, just to pull your lariat.
Makes me glad I am not in retail.
Thanks, Bob, and tell the kids good luck!
Thanks for the detailed and transparent update. Much appreciated.
I’m guessing this post took you 30-90minutes to write.
Your kickstarter backers would have been much happier if you had spread that 90minutes out over the past 6 weeks and spent 15 minutes posting a 5 sentence update explaining the latest hurdle and resulting delay.
Please educate your son’s in the power of communication. If this is really your son’s project, they should be making the updates…
I ordered one as a show of support for Bob and his kids – Mr 13 in our house was into Minecraft a few years ago. What a fantastic experience for the family.
Sure these are some speed bumps; hope they are solved soon.
“…in war…the simplest thing is difficult.”
-Von Clausewitz.
He could be talking about tech startups too–if they’d had those in the 19th century.
Reading the posts about updates and reflecting on my own experience with design and product delivery I humbly offer the following advice (for the next time). A. Keep everyone informed and updated even when the news is not good – people will usually work with you if they know what’s happening – it’s not knowing what’s happening that gets people upset. B. Build prototypes and get them into the customers hands – you can learn a tremendous amount from discovering what a user does with a prototype – stuff that you can fix in the production units. C. When you screw up – admit it and apologize (which is what your post is doing although a bit late for some people). Good Luck and Best Wishes!
“my three sons ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall” — actually, no. A successful Kickstarter campaign involves not only the VC phase (when the project is live on KS) but also the development, production, and distribution phases as well as — and I cannot stress this enough (and, really, you, of all people, as a professional communicator, should know this better than anyone) — the ongoing communication with backers.
Over and above the moral imperative to keep backers updated, I’m flabbergasted that one so adept at marketing yourself would completely and utterly miss the opportunity to build your brand (as well as your boys’) by abandoning the kickstarter project comment area and update functionality. It’s mind-boggling, really.
Nonetheless, this is good news and I’m looking forward to getting the mineserver that was supposed to be a suprise holiday gift for my kids.
P.S., if you want examples of a successful KS campaign, check out DoubleSix dice — yes, there were problems and delays, but the constant and open communication ensured that the backers were supporters rather than litigants.
Take a look at the Peak Designs Everyday Messenger Bag campaign as well, especially the comments. Early on, they benefited from the assistance of a loyal supporter who acted as a liaison between commenters and the company. Your project hasn’t generated anywhere near as many comments and discussions as their project did, but there’s still a lot to be learned there.
MyKee is another great example (and one that I backed). They had a multitude of issues and ended up behind schedule, but have continued to be open and transparent, and have still yet to ship all orders related to the campaign.
I have to agree with many here – it is the lack of communication that has frustrated me more than anything; to the point of wanting my money back. I have begged for updates and been refused to even be acknowledged. I would have been a completely satisfied backer and have been willing to hold on many many months past the deadline had I just heard what was going on. In that I am throughly disappointed in the Mineserver brand, but hope any potential reviews can be recovered by a great working system. While I have no problem “holding feet to the fire” when it comes to being informed, I LOVE to give credit where credit is due. I hope that communication is free flowing from this point on, and that I can report that this is an amazing, easy to use, and stable system.
Here’s to working for a better business.
Best education ever for your kids! My 15 year old has moved on from Minecraft, now learning Java. I’ll have him writing websites by summer. But probably not good enough to be a consultant, just yet. Maybe by the time he’s 17… Me, 20 languages, 10 operating systems, lots of middleware, and database experience with multi-threaded systems. Even high-availability enterprise stuff. He should be an expert by the time he’s 21, if he can stay with me.
Congratulations on a successful Kickstarter campaign! You raised the funds you needed to ensure you could launch your business initiative, you’re seeing it through to completion, the backers (even the ungrateful pricks) will get what they were promised, and as a generous bonus, you’ve shared some incredibly interesting and valuable insights into the challenges of starting a successful small business. Well done!
Before you complain about “ungrateful pricks”, maybe you should check into the actual issues.
Here are just some of the lies, so far:
This kickstarter started with a lie that only cases were needed, all engineering had been done for some time
Shipments would begin in November
Dec 14, sorry for not shipping but we are just waiting for batteries to arrive from China, software is complete, deliveries to start in one week
Dec 21, software is done again, shipments will start in another week
Jan 28, software is almost done, test units will be online in 7 days, they apologized for the lack of updates
AND THEN NOTHING UNTIL TODAY
There have been numerous comments on the official kickstarter page pleading for the promised updates. This update still hasn’t been posted there.
Cute kid (in the picture — I bet the others are too), great story. However, if Bob, who knows what he’s doing, can, along with his smart crew, get into as much of a mess as this, what does it say for the other 99.999% of Kickstarter campaigns out there? The old adage applies: “do not invest more than you can afford to unquestionably lose.”
Let us know when it finally succeeds.
— Ron
Why is this update still not on the Mineserver KickStarter page? I don’t see ads so why do you need the clicks on this page? Your backers should not need to come to your personal blog for an update to your ‘kids’ project. I’m sure KickStarter would prefer to have the click traffic you are stealing from them.
Bob,
I recently watched an old episode of Law and order SVU
and I couldn’t help but noticing how similar the picture
of your
son looks like a younger version
of the actor John Karna.
The exception is that your son is much better looking.
John played a character named Holden March who because of frustration
went crazy and started killing people.
with everything that you guys have been going through if
your boys decided to make that enhanced model of the hardware,
one that shot lethal laser beams in all directions and sent it
to the folks at Mojang for testing, no jury would convict.
iDave
Subject: holden march svu actor – Google Search
https://www.google.com/search?q=holden+march+svu+actor&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari
Really sorry people have been harassing you about what is clearly not a simple project. I’ve been burned on a couple Kickstarter things, so I avoid them now…but those projects were far easier or had far more resources (no excuse).
Could you elaborate more sometime on things to avoid when hiring tech help online? It seems like educated guessing at best to find decent help. Yikes.
That’s just great Bob……,can you now post the 2nd part of your IBM story that you said would be out last week?
Thank you. Seriously, this would be one of your better books, “inside a tech start-up”. Lessons learned.
1) The prototype is the beginning not the end. Most times, not even the beginning
2) It’s always longer and more expensive than what you think
3) Those third world types are actually like Donald Trump says they are ?!?
4) You can have dozens of failures, be thousands in the whole, no end in sight and VC’s will still say “Your development plan is F’ing Genius!!!” and they STILL might give you boatloads of money.
Minecraft itself is not open source in any sense. What it is, is thoroughly reverse-engineered and decompiled by the modding community. Regardless of the lack of access to source code, every client mod, and nearly every server, is a derived work of Minecraft and thus subject to whatever licensing policy Mojang likes.
Luckily for us in the community, Mojang has been extremely laid-back about modding for many years, so we’ve seen a great flowering of creativity.
Bob,
Have you thought about doing a ‘postmortem’ with the kids on the project? Consolidating thought on ‘what we did right’ and ‘what we did wrong’ will help them in the future on projects.
[…] when their runner is inexperienced. For example, Robert X. Cringely recently posted a look at a number of unexpected excess costs accrued by his sons’ Minecraft server Kickstarter. It’s not impossible that something similar could happen […]
This whole project seems like a train wreck.
From your Kickstarter page:
“There are thousands of Minecraft servers on the Internet but most of them are in some way commercial, typically ad-based. That means advertising to your children.”
Umm, what? I have been playing Minecraft and hosting servers for over 5 years now and I have NEVER seen a server using advertising as a funding method.
“A big commercial Minecraft server can have thousands of simultaneous players and if you are a parent there is no way of knowing who is that knave with the diamond sword killing your child and stealing his or her stuff.”
Then why are you letting your kid play on such servers? There are extremely-easy-to-find family-friendly Minecraft servers (hint: Google search for “kids minecraft server” returns about 20). Sounds more like irresponsible monitoring of your kid’s online activities.
“It’s cheaper to buy. Try finding another brand-new dedicated plug-and-play server for $99. If you take energy costs into account that old PC in the closet isn’t so cheap after all.”
For $99 you could just host with someone else. Take Beastnode for example, one of the biggest Minecraft hosts in the world. At Beastnode, their basic plan (1GB of RAM, Xeon processors, 5GB storage) costs $3.49 a month. You could run that for 28 MONTHS (2 years, 4 months) for less than $100 (also important to note you could get Minecraft Realms, Mojang’s official hosting service for over a year, and still pay less). And, to be honest, the Raspberry Pi’s ARMv7 processor (I’m assuming that’s what you’re using based on your Kickstarter page) is pretty awful for running a Minecraft server (trust me, I’ve tried). The server-grade hardware at a professional hosting company will actually give you a playable experience. Yours will not.
“It’s easy to find. Every $99 Mineserver™ has a unique name chosen by its owner (wildweasel.mineserver.com for example) and can be discovered by players you like (more on this below) from all over the Internet without ever using an IP address.”
Pretty sure almost every (good) hosting company has something like that.
“It’s easy to administer. Most Minecraft servers use a Command Line Interface. How are your Linux sysadmin chops? Not so good, eh? So most home Minecraft servers aren’t effectively administered at all. But our $99 Mineserver™ comes with a tiny web server that allows the server to be monitored with a graphical interface from a parental PC or from our free iOS or Android phone apps.”
First off – there are plenty of good server management GUIs and apps out there. To name a few: McMyAdmin, Multicraft, PufferPanel. McMyAdmin even has an iOS/Android app that’s fully GUI! Second of all, if you host at a Minecraft-specific hosting company, they GIVE you a panel like this to use, and usually have a complete wiki on exactly how to use it.
“And our $199 Mineserver Pro™ is even faster! We got a little carried away one day and built a Minecraft supercomputer for those who want even more performance. With twice as many cores and twice as much memory running at a clock speed that’s a third faster than our $99 Mineserver™, the $199 Mineserver Pro™ could easily handle 100 players but we limit it to 50 players just to keep things running a bit cooler.”
Let’s go back to Beastnode, shall we? Their 2GB plan costs $5.99/month with an unlimited player count. You could have this plan for almost 3 years (33 months) for less than the Mineserver Pro™. Same great hardware, support, panel, etc. as the other Beastnode offering, and you have the advantage of running on enterprise-grade hardware instead of a desktop computer sitting in the corner of your bedroom.
“They worked through several generations of hardware and software looking for the right combination at the right price point — $99.”
Really now.
“The result is that, unlike many Kickstarter hardware projects, for the $99 Mineserver™ virtually all development work is already done so risks are minimized. If we had cases we could start shipping tomorrow.”
Except that if something goes wrong… who do you turn to?
This project is a mess, and is a horribly inaccurate portrayal of the Minecraft server hosting world. Save your money, folks.
For the ‘device disappearing off the network’ issue … are you sure your NIC isn’t going into some kind of ‘power saving mode’?
Discussion on Hacker-News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11313871
The hassle and expense of negotiating for other people’s intellectual property is part of the cost of doing business, as you and your kids found out. The expense cuts profitability and reduces the incentive to enter the market. Then there are government imposed costs of doing business. For example, is your interface ADA compliant? Is any of the technology export controlled? Once on government radar, you will have to pay their price too.
IP concerns are a fixed part of our system of business. But government imposed regulations are like a tax on business. While corporate tax rates have not gone up significantly, government regulations have exploded. Like any cost of doing business, they discourage free enterprise.
Congradulations for making it this far. I hope you and your kids can take it all the way to profitability.
In supporting his sons’ start-up, I guess Cringely knew that investors would be able to come to his blog for as long as it exists and give him this valuable feedback about the performance of the project…..
As usual the Kickstarter whiners are out, as usual they have failed to even read the FAQs about kickstarter. KS is not a store front its a way to invest in projects, projects that due to the first time nature of the people running them will almost always run into issues. So ignore the whiners as long as you are moving forward you are (a) not cheating anyone, (b) fully in the spirit of KS. If people want to buy a product go to a store (online or real world), if you want to invest in a project then use KS
I’d change “invest in” to “donate to”, to properly adjust one’s expectations.
“As usual the Kickstarter whiners are out…”
Blahblahblah. And do *you* understand kickstarter? I do. I’ve backed well over 100 projects and am working on getting my second project as a creator ready.
The issue here (and with many other such projects) is not the delays but the lack of communication. Yes, we know it’s not Amazon and we’re backing an idea that may never come to fruition. Heck, I’ve backed projects where I didn’t expect a reward at all; I just wanted to support the creator and their idea. (Consider the guy who just wanted to take a picture of his awesome wife.)
What backers want is to be a part of the process. To share, vicariously, in the creator’s dream. That’s why we take chances on projects — not because we want to buy something we could get six months down the line on Amazon.
(And, yes, I will note that there are often noobs who don’t understand KS and think it’s Amazon, but that’s not the case here where less than a third of the backers were first-timers.)
So, yes, we want more communication. We want more transparency. We want to be a part of this, not sitting outside waiting for our package to arrive.
And in this particular case, the lack of communication is especially egregious since Cringely is, by trade, a communicator. He, of all people, should know better and, frankly, ought to be taking advantage of this bully pulpit.
Hi Bob.
.
Good update. Thanks.
.
Getting a product out the door is a great lesson for your kids. Maybe the cheapest MBA education a parent can buy. I have no skin in this effort, and haven’t been paying attention, so please take with a grain of salt. Your MVP kept getting bigger. Plus, perfection is the enemy of good enough, and all that. The network dropping *is* a show stopping bug. But maybe many of the other features could have been updates.
.
All the best.
.
Cheers, Jason
.
PS- Please fix the CSS for these comments for the paragraph formatting.
From the standpoint of a business “perfection is the enemy of good enough” but from that of the customer “good enough is the enemy of perfection”.
Ah, the joys of start-ups…. I was part of a start-up (decades ago). We were technical professionals and engineers with a good business plan and funded by a VC firm. We learned that no business plan survives first contact with the market. Although conversant with IPR, we were still surprised by the licensing lawyer who told us (in a languid southern drawl, no less): “We’re going to sue your ass!” We had all sorts of unexpected technical glitches but overcame them. Our original h/w products were not successful so we moved into s/w and services and survived.
But really, Cringe, there has been enough written about start-ups that should have warned you about what to expect. Not that you should not have gone ahead — I would given the opportunity — but you should not surprised by events. (Sorry for the double negative, I’ve been around IPR lawyers too long.)
I think I see where one problem is. Minecraft has never been open source and you made a lot of business decisions based on that invalid assumption. They’ve been very liberal with their licensing terms vs. normal commercial licenses, even allowing reverse-engineering and modding of their own code, but as you’ve discovered to your dismay, it’s definitely not open source
I conceived of, started and ran a highly successful business for 24 years (and retired!) – with no business plan! Warren Buffet was recently interviewed: “You can get in a whole lot more trouble in investing with a sound premise than with a false premise”
Hey guys, I am 13 years old and run a successful minecraft server. I started back in 2013, I make about $200 dollars a week now. I am here to explain to you how to successfully run a minercaft server and make profit (even if you don’t want profit and just want to play for fun). I am also here to explain why this project is whack.
First off why would you want to buy a $99 dollar minecraft server which may only be able to run about 10 – 20 people? You can buy a 1GB minecraft server from a host (which I will list below) for just $2.00 a month. On that server you will at least be able to fit 50 – 70 people and add a bunch of plugins that will enhance your game play with your friends. Plus, I bet this server is going to be very laggy because most server hosts use very high processors to run their minecraft servers. For my server I first started out small (20GB) and kept saving up donations to upgrade. Now the server pays for itself and I get loads of profit. You don’t need a 20GB server to start up, maybe even just 1GB. For more information and if you want help setting up or getting ideas for your minecraft server, email me at – cookieseatingcookies@gmail.com
Some cheap, reliable hosts (I use nodecraft, expensive as hell but amazing) –
Minecrafted| Endermite|Shockbyte|Nodecraft
Always the ‘knarles’ . Got it sorted with great product but some thing comes from left field at last minute.
Could be legal, tech or just market. Weird thing is the more experienced you get the issues get more complex.
Never seen a business plan yet which said ‘we will hit a totally random issue 14 days before launch and this us our mitigation.
I missed the kickstarter campaign but would love to support. How can I buy one?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=mineserver+kickstarter
Thanks Tim, that really helps. “I missed the kickstarter campaign” means: it was already finished when I noticed it. “How can I buy one” means: how can I buy one and support the project today, now that the kickstarter campaign has closed? :-p
The data center isn’t really letting you keep a piece of plywood in the colo cab are they? 🙂
How does it go?:: 🙂
Nothing is as easy as it looks.
Everything takes longer than you expect.
And if anything can go wrong it will
at the worse possible moment.
— Murphy.
“Murphy was an Optimist”
— Anonymous
I’ve backed over 100 Kickstarters, so I’m very aware that there is no guarantee the product will ever materialize. I’ve rarely had a Kickstarter deliver rewards on time, it comes with the territory.
The lack of communication from this project has been among the worst of any project I’ve backed.
While the marketing strategy may be “F-ing brilliant,” the customer communication strategy could use serious work.
Upfront disclaimer: I didn’t back this KS. But, it’s the Internet; so, I’ll throw in my opinion anyway.
A good rule of thumb for Kickstarters is to never … never ever … I said never, believe the proposed delivery dates. I can count on one finger the number of Kickstarters I’ve supported (about a dozen?) that actually delivered on-time. As long as one is cool in accepting that the product will arrive when it arrives, then much teeth gnashing and blood pressure raising can be avoided. The key is communication. To keep pitchforks and torches at bay, the business needs to communicate with the customers in a *meaningful* way. “We miscalculated our costs” is probably the least acceptable answer. It’s a demonstration of laziness or ineptitude. It appears a fair number of Kickstarters get snagged on shipping costs That’s the biggest rookie mistake. Technical issues, such as with this one, are practically inevitable with … well, technical .. projects. Heck, how often does Big Tech deliver their stuff on time? Ever? Why should Kickstarters be any different? Perseverance will win out.
Re: ” It appears a fair number of Kickstarters get snagged on shipping costs That’s the biggest rookie mistake.” I don’t understand how that can be. It’s Box + Packing + Postage.
You’d think, huh? But, there it is. It’s partly not doing their homework (shipping to/from Canada is crazy expensive, not to mention overseas shipping). Then there’s the stretch goal frenzy. If we reach these goals, then we’ll also give you X, Y & Z! … and AA! and BB! and CC! etc. Whoops! Guess what? More stuff increases your shipping costs ya dumb bunnies. Like I said. Biggest rookie mistake.
I’d like a write up, say the 1st anniversary of shipping of every thing the boy’s learned from this experience. From marketing, to Linux, to support. I already forget their ages, but it would be interesting to hear from the boy themselves. How does an 11 year old view, learn, and understand customer satisfaction? Or did they use Linux before all this happened.
When I was in college, My old man and I took a VB class together. It was interesting how we would both get a working program that got a passing grade, but we would approach the problem from different angles. the discussions over dinner drove my Mom up a wall. But I look back on that one semester with fondness.
Cringley and his sons are in the midst of a one-of-a-kind Father /son bonding experience.
I did back the KS and can tell you that few of us are whining about it being so late. But the total lack of communication has been atrocious. And the more that is communicated, the more you realize the initial claims were bogus, perhaps even fraudulent. If I get one of those postcards in the mail informing me of a class action suit at this point I’m ready to sign up. It’s not about the $80. It’s about feeling ripped off.
Great project following the well-worn path of most startups: things take longer, things cost more, humans are unpredictable, obstacles must be overcome, and business plans are mostly useless.
Strong advice: if you are ever about to give up, first seek advice from someone who succeeded in a similar venture.
Yeni tanıtım filmi için web sitemizi ziyaret etmeye ne dersiniz ? Türkiye’nin en kaliteli güzel sanatlara hazırlık kursu olan kurumumuz ile resim kursu alanında kişisel gelişiminizi tamamlayabilirsiniz. Ubeyt ÇAĞATAY eşliğindeki kurumumuz ile sizleri geleceğe hazırlamaktayız.
http://ruyaavcisi.com/
“we began to notice during testing that sometimes the servers would just disappear from the net. […] It’s the final bug, we’re approaching it with planning, gusto, and plenty of Captain Crunch, and fully expect to solve this last issue and start shipping next week when the kids are off school for Spring Break.”
That was two weeks ago. Sure, you said you’d have it fixed and start shipping in a week, but I figured stuff happens so let’s wait two weeks. Now, I wasn’t really expecting Mineservers to start shipping in a week (or two weeks) but I did have hope based on this:
“Sorry to have gone so long without an update. We won’t do THAT again.”
I figured that, after two weeks (when the claim was that shipping would start in one week), we would at least get an update. It didn’t matter if it said “We’re shipping!” or “We still haven’t figured out this last bug”, I was just expecting some sort of update.
From a professional communicator.
But, alas, such is not the case. I don’t know what’s going on in Stephens’ (Cringely’s) head, but presumably Mrs. Cringely and the boys all have access to the kickstarter project (or could get it somehow), so even “I’m sorry folks, but Dad has had a nervous breakdown and is lying curled up in the corner sucking his thumb and saying ‘Atari was better than Commodore!’ over and over again” would be something.
Look, I know it sucks to have to step up, even virtually, and say “We’ve screwed up, we’re still not ready to go”, but sometimes ya gotta do it. That’s a good lesson for the boys to learn — taking responsibility, even when it’s not a good thing. I did it for my project as have plenty of others. It’s definitely something I’ve tried to teach my kids. And, if you are open about it and keep up communication, you might even find that your backer community is a resource that’s good for more than just money.
So, I’m hoping there will be an update in the very near future. Because your reputation is crumbling with every minute that passes. And I strongly suspect that you can forget about those college educations, at least from this venture.
Hayallerinizi somutlaştırarak Dünyanın dört bir yanındaki kişilerin hayallerinizdeki derinliklerden etkilenmesini sağlayabilirsiniz. Ayrıca duygularınızı somutlaştırarak eşsiz eserler üretebilirsiniz. Küçükçekmece resim kursu ile hayallerinize birleşle ulaşabilecek ve şayet güzel sanatlara hazırlık alanında kendinizi geliştirebileceksiniz.
Avcılar ve esenyurt şubelerimiz ile haftanın tüm günü sizlerleyiz sizde güzel sanatlara hazırlık için bizi seçin farkımızı görün….
http://ruyaavcisi.com/
I don’t know if Cringely actually ever reads his site’s comments or if there is a team behind this site but someone needs to tell Cringely that people aren’t happy. His empty promises (“we won’t do THAT again”) and promised shipping dates that ever get fulfilled are just too much for us backers. By the way, for all you people who said you’d show some support if not for the fact that you don’t play minecraft, keep it that way. It has been a HELL of a ride just trying to keep up with Cringely.
I don’t care if this is his sons’ venture or something because at the end of the day, he is still their parent. The boys are still minors and ultimately, guidance still rests on Cringely himself. I don’t know much about Mrs. Cringely so I’m leaving her out of this.
As a student in the Marketing industry, I really wonder how the boys are going to sell 100 units per month to fund collage. They’ve got a crap ton of rebranding to do, with all this negativity associated with them.
So Mr. Cringely, here’s an open letter to you:
I sincerely do hope you give and are giving your sons the right guidance. Please stop giving us silences, empty promises of shipping dates, long intervals between updates and irresponsibly posting updates on your website without informing the community.
Sincerely,
Cheryl
Bob, How about a little exercise in journalism. Step back from your personal involvement, read everything that you and your boys have written and the comments and look at the actual progress. Write an article as a journalist, not a father. Then perhaps you’ll understand why we are so annoyed.
BTW I don’t expect you to publish the work.
It’s hilarious reading all these negative comments from Kickstarter DONORS. Hey knuckleheads: you are DONATING money to someone, not buying a product off the shelf. When I GIVE money to someone, my baseline expectation is that I will never, ever get anything of value back, and possibly never even hear from them again. I guarantee you I’ve never been let down! And every once in a while, I am pleasantly surprised. This attitude does wonders for my blood pressure and general outlook on life.
Now, when I buy a product off the shelf, my expectations are different– it’s an exchange of value, and I expect that the thing I purchase deliver results roughly commensurate with the price I paid. If that’s the relationship you wanted to have with this Minecraft Server product, then maybe you should have withheld your money until it was fully developed and in the marketplace for a while. You would have saved yourselves a lot of unnecessary butthurt.
Re: “DONATING money to someone” True, but Cringely is not just someone. We know and trust him. He actively promoted this server in this venerable Cringely column, as being available in time for last Christmas. All the customers are now asking, is for frequent status reports on the Kickstarter page.
[…] $99 Mineserver: The Devil is in the … – You may recall my three sons ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last fall for their $99 Mineserver, a multiuser Minecraft server the size of a pack (not a carton … […]