News and research

Alpakka 2 crowdfunding fail

2 March 2025  <- Previous

Results of the campaign

From the 2nd of February to the 2nd of March we ran a Indiegogo campaign to fund the Alpakka 2, unfortunately the campaign was not funded, as it did not reach the target we set.

We needed about 900 backers, but only 115 people backed the campaign. So it only reached about 1/8 of the goal, which is still a significant amount of money, but not enough to justify the cost of injection molding and certification. This also means the campaign is cancelled from the Indiegogo point of view, so no money will be taken from backers, and we will not receive any funds.

This surely is a big letdown for us. We still want to thank to everyone that backed the project, and say sorry to them because we failed at making this product a reality (at least for now, more about future plans below).

Why we think it failed

We believe the Alpakka 2 features and design were on point, as it received a lot of positive feedback, and the pre-campaign had 800 followers before the launch (we needed 900 backers), which is above average for most campaigns. But something went wrong, very few of these followers converted into backers. Why? Here are our theories:

The price was too high

• The cost for an Alpakka 2 PRO was 220 euros + VAT, but this price tag was not visible during the pre-campaign. While people in our community knew more or less what price to expect, people less familiar with our project were likely surprised, expecting a pricetag around $70 (the cost of basic controllers).
• We knew that the high price would be a friction point, but as an independent developer we were caught between a rock and a hard place, the relationship between unit price and funding is not linear, so for making the cost per unit half the price we would have to secure ~10x the total funds. We tried to balance these numbers into a ratio with a realistic chance of success.
• A lot of people understood that an independent company cannot manufacture small product batches for cheap (because we lack the economies of scale of bigger companies). But ultimately a dollar is a dollar, and we failed to provide an interesting value proposition given our limited reach.

Lack of reach and visibility

• Several content creators talked about us, and we would like to give special thanks to them: NerdNest, FlickStick videos, Hackster, Reseñas Cortas, Ciudadanos de Gotham, FPS Gyro, IPlayController.
• But overall very few media outlets talked about the Alpakka 2. This wasn't because we didn't try, we reached out to a hundred of these outlets multiple times (if you can think a name, we contacted them) and we were either ghosted, or asked to pay.
• There is a hard lesson to learn here: Most gaming media will only talk "for free" about products and companies that are already successful (since it generates traffic). So it creates a rich-gets-richer situation that is extremely hard to overcome for indie devs.

Lack of funding

• There is a common theme for both of these previous points, they could have been alleviated if we had more initial funding... to create a funding campaign... well, the Catch-22 problem is obvious.

A retrospective of Input Labs shop

Selling controllers was never a goal for us, but a means to keep our research into input methods and accessibility going. In fact when we started Input Labs we did not even have a shop, our only income came from Patreon supporters.

We opened the shop only after people showed interest on getting electrically conductive filament from us (since it is tricky to source). Later we introduced more 3D-printed parts, PCBs, pre-soldered kits, and ultimately full DIY controller kits.

Managing the shop, fulfilling orders, and supporting customers was progressively taking a bigger chunk of our time, with a promise of becoming a sustainable way of funding.

But the sad truth is that selling DIY kits in the shop was never a good source of income, and while it helped paying the bills, it was only viable by having underpaid workers (the 2 founders!). Our attempt to grow sales by having a more mainstream, streamlined, and scalable product (the Alpakka 2) also failed.

So at this point we can argue that funding Input Labs via hardware sales failed, or at least we have to accept that we are not able to pull it off while remaining independent.

Previous efforts to fund Input Labs

Something we mentioned when talking about last year goals was to find alternative ways of funding, and during 2025 we put a significant amount of effort talking with:

• Social foundations.
• Government funding representatives.
• Angel investment organizations.
• Venture capital firms that matched our principles.

Unfortunately none of these materialized into getting any financial help, but wasted a lot of resources, the effort was barely visible in the community, and it took a big chunk of our sanity 😫... I mean "— It required significant resource allocation but had a negligible impact".

Options moving forward

The ambitious way / Venture Capital

• Take venture capital to fund Alpakka 2 development.
• This would require a bigger scope, growing the team, getting a bigger lab, more tools and cool stuff.
• But would also require aggressive marketing, more focus on the core business, bigger sales expectations, and less margin for error.
• Ultimately VCs expect their investment back with interests.
• This approach is exciting but also risky, we make it big or bust.

The modest way / Videogame hardware partner

• Accepting our limitations as a small team, and focus on our strength: Engineering.
• Entering a partnership with a videogame hardware maker.
• The partner would take care of the commercial aspects (manufacturing, logistics, marketing, support) and monetize our innovations and patents, while we focus on the research and accessibility aspects.
• We could consider Input Labs making the DIY version of the devices, while a partner makes the PRO version.
• In this scenario the Alpakka 2 as a concept might take a different shape or name, depending on the nature of the collaboration.

The community way / Open source as a hobby project

• Giving up on the idea of Input Labs as a full-time job.
• We (the founders) will be back in the job market, most likely with boring corporate jobs as we had before.
• We keep contributing to Input Labs as an open source project in our free time.
• The lab (our office) and the shop would be closed.
• In this scenario the Alpakka 2 PRO would not happen. The Alpakka 2 DIY might happen later, or not.
• Input Labs Oy. (the company) would still exist, and still own the patents. We believe gyro is inevitable, so maybe in a few years we come back.
• We can be proud about what we built: a very successful open source project, an amazing community, and having helped a lot of people with disabilities. All of these will keep going. (or IDK, maybe we are coping)

The immediate future

During the next months we are going to explore partnerships and venture capital options more intensively. If none of these work, we might go for the open source as a hobby project approach.

Please share your feedback about these options with us on Discord, we are legit interested about what do you think.

Thanks for the support! 🤍
- Marcos and Michael