Sadly, after more than 3 years of hard work, we have failed. We were unable to build a viable business with PlantMate.

We were able to fulfill more than half of the Kickstarter orders. Unfortunately, we will not be able to continue because we’ve run out of money and can’t afford to invest more into the startup.

Since we’ve always wanted to be fully transparent, we’re starting by sharing how much the entire team personally invested, and how much was lost. In total, the team invested CHF 103'600. This is close to double the amount we received from Kickstarter after all the fees.

What went wrong?

There wasn’t one single thing that killed us. It was more a death by a thousand cuts. Since we didn’t pay ourselves any salary, our only real fixed cost was office space, so we did actually have a large runway. We planned for an even longer one, but due to unforeseen costs, it ran out earlier than expected.

Here’s a quick recap of what went wrong:

• Multiple redesigns were needed, each costing time and money
• A fine from China’s border control for counterfeit power supply certifications (we didn’t know about this until border control informed us, but still had to pay to receive the rest of the shipment)
• Incorrectly calculated shipping costs for the alpha units, meaning we lost a bit on every shipment
• Leaks in the pipe fittings, which cost both time and money
• US tariffs

What was the plan?

Our plan was to start selling PlantMate while fulfilling Kickstarter orders, in order to generate income and make it possible for 1–2 people on the team to work on this full-time. As mentioned in previous updates, all of us were working full-time jobs and building PlantMate on weekends.

However, all of our marketing efforts proved ineffective. Because of this, we were never able to hire ourselves to work full-time on PlantMate. As a result, we weren’t able to fulfill all units within the expected timeline.

Unhappy backers with shipping prices

Since we weren’t able to sell PlantMate effectively on the market, we never grew in terms of logistics volume, meaning our shipping partner discounts never improved. Even though we clearly communicated the shipping cost situation, it still resulted in many unhappy backers, which hit team morale hard.

What happens to the servers?

If you already have your device, you might be worried that you’ve paid for shipping and now own a product that will stop working once we shut down the servers. Rest assured: we will keep the servers running, and our founders will personally cover the costs for as long as there are active PlantMates being used.

What now?

At this point, our entire team would like to thank all of our backers for supporting the project. We truly gave this everything we had, in the spirit of Kickstarter, trying to turn it into a real business.

We sincerely apologize to all backers who weren’t able to receive their reward and for not being able to deliver. It truly pains us. We hope you enjoyed our updates and felt like part of the team throughout this
journey.

PlantMate-Team