Closing out August

@Dan Guy If memory serves me, I think we've signed up for the Beta Bold, and the preceding Alfa. I believe the Beta and Beta Bold are final products in their own right, despite the name. Corey has never mentioned any products following the Betas, other than in theory...

@Adam DB The Beta Bold is definitely a product in its own right, and the one that we paid for, but, like many Google products of yore, it's still called beta.

@Dan Guy To clarify, I meant the Alpha and Beta Bold. From my understanding, the Alpha was going to be the super developmental barebones kit and then the Beta Bold was going to be the more refined product with consumer packaging, etc. However, the Beta Bold is still not the finalized product. I believe the plan was to release these two and additional revisions to the glasses. Once the Beta Bold/behind the scenes manufacturing has been improved as much as possible, the actual finalized Laforge product will be released. At that time, we wouldl be given a higher status than normal customers in the system, and we'll be given a discount for the product, etc. I'm pretty sure it's written somewhere on here.

@Adam DB I agree. That will be Kyle Lux. At the moment, we have a manufacturing plan from our main supplier, we have cash in some of our tier 2 and 3 suppliers' hands, and we are bringing in more funds from some new investors to build a fleet of "cohesive prototypes". We will be spending about $50K on about 5 of these prototypes and ship them to preorder customers so they can try them out. I say "cohesive prototype" because to date we have consolidated about 6 prototypes (each proving something different) into three prototypes: one showing SW, one showing optics and hardware, and another showing lens tech, aesthetics, and hardware. The magic occurs when combining these into one (SW, optics, lens tech, aesthetics, and hardware). So we have another big push before year end. These efforts will be accelerated by new investments.

I do appreciate everyone keeping us honest.

@Corey | Founder | I appreciate the updates, and I know that we're talking about *alphas* by the end of the year, but when I read updates like the above I worry about just how alpha they're going to be.

@Dan Guy I understand. What we are doing is going down two paths. There will be an alpha that shows the "white box demo" and then there are pre-production models supplied by our new supplier that will actually connect to your phone. This is the transition from us taking the lead on production development to us our new manufacturer doing so (as I mentioned earlier in the year). The first one is for us to confirm more assumptions. The second ones are something that I would describe as 'useful' and give the wearer some magical powers. As we don't to push to far into production and major problem come up (like we did a couple years ago), we are taking this approach. Every mistake we make represents funds loss, so that's is why we've become very conservative over the past year. We are in no hurry to join those who 'ship and dip' out of existence, but we also recognize this has taken a while (so we've taken lot of time vetting a lot of different suppliers)

Can you deputize someone else to answer questions and/or post updates so that it doesn't all rest on your busy shoulders?

@Dan Guy That is coming. Having to balance development, reserves that manufactures require, while in the midst of a fundraise is a balancing act.

@Corey | Founder | Hence the need to shift the community communication role to someone else.