The road to crowdfunding is the way to accumulate wealth? The coffee machine of the two brothers in Hong Kong ripped off people's "entrepreneurial history"

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It's good for young people to have dreams, but what if they have ambition but no money?

That's the point of crowdfunding.

However, if you maliciously trample on the trust of strangers and raise self-interest, are you still willing to participate in crowdfunding?

The way to accumulate money of Intelligent Coffee Machine

Hong Kong brothers Zhao Gongyun and Zhao Gongliang invented the intelligent coffee machine Arist, which can be controlled by mobile phone app.

According to unwire, Arist is different from a traditional coffee machine that is difficult to operate. As long as you download the "Arist" app, the coffee maker can connect to the cloud server and brew all kinds of coffee according to the set formula. In addition to the built-in recipes, users can also make their own recipes on app according to their hobbies and tastes, and can share them with other coffee lovers.

(picture from: Kickstarter)

Such outstanding young people with dreams, as the light of Hong Kong, have naturally attracted the attention of all media in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong-born Benson moved to Canada with his parents at the age of 10 and majored in computer science at university. after graduating with excellent qualifications, he was hired as a software engineer by Microsoft. He earns as much as 1.5 million a year. Although he has worked in different positions at Microsoft for six years, he still feels that he is not interested in it. He spends his spare time writing mobile programs and making coffee.

Nelson Gongliang, whose brother Zhao Gongyun, who runs the family printing business locally in Canada, saw the product as a business opportunity and encouraged Zhao Gongliang to conceptualize it into a business, prompting Zhao Gongliang to resign and return to Hong Kong to develop and start a business.

The two founded nbition Development in Hong Kong in 2013, but the two brothers who found business opportunities in the coffee machine started with the development of mobile games, and then started the coffee machine project.

On October 24, 2014, a public fund-raising project was launched on the US crowdfunding website Kickstarter. At present, you can still see Arist's crowdfunding project on Kickstarter, with 2519 sponsors, raising a total of $845139 (about 5.66 million yuan).

Applied for grants and loans from organizations such as the Hong Kong Science Park and the Hong Kong Productivity Council.

Named and praised by the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, John Tsang

In 2015, the "Arist Coffee making Cloud platform" project won the highest honor of the Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology Awards (Hong Kong ICT Awards), the "year Award", presented by the Secretary for Development, Mr Paul Chan.

In 2016, it received a capital injection of $10 million from IDG Capital (IDG Capital Partners).

(photo from: IT Fest, the winners in the middle are brothers Zhao Gongyun and Zhao Gongliang)

The initial Arist R & D team is about 20 people, including scientific research engineers, professional baristas, administrative management and marketing staff. In the early stage of research and development, Zhao Gongliang also set up a coffee pull class, earning income as research and development funds, while collecting the opinions of coffee lovers to improve the production of coffee machines.

Seeing here, it seems to be very reliable, nothing more than two motivational young crowdfunding to complete the entrepreneurial dream.

At the beginning of the project launch in 2014, it said that shipments would be made in June 2015.

However, on April 25, 2015, Arist claimed that the data had been stolen by hackers, and some people began to suspect that they had been tricked into asking for a refund. Zhao Gongyun also admitted that he had received about 30 refund requests at that time.

At this moment, he said, we are not deceiving people, so we will not get a refund for the time being. He also stressed that the second generation of Arist has completed 70% and is expected to ship smoothly in October. At the same time, he also showed reporters the second generation of Arist, but said that reporters were not allowed to take pictures because of patent problems.

Even though the coffee machine was delayed until October 2015, the coffee machine still did not ship.

The Zhao brothers held a press conference at the Hong Kong Science Park on March 8, 2016, but instead of the original Arist Home, a different, larger Arist Professional sold for $1499 (about 10035 yuan), while the home version sold for $899 (about 6019 yuan).

Zhao Gongyun said the professional version was more powerful and asked models to demonstrate the use of brewing coffee on stage.

However, investors say that the professional version has fewer functions than the home version of the crowdfunding project at that time. The professional version is not the second generation of Arist.

(photo from: Apple Daily)

After the demonstration, the company quickly put away the coffee machine and did not allow people present to try the coffee. If you want to see the contact up close, you should try it in the office at another scheduled time.

This time, it said it would be delivered to crowdfunding supporters as soon as July, and threatened that the first store of South Korean coffee chain Tom N Toms Coffee in Hong Kong would use their two professional coffee machines to become the first intelligent coffee shop in Hong Kong.

Until the coffee shop opened in April, there was no sign of Arist. And the clerk said he had never seen the machine, let alone touched it. Face-saving is enough for others, saying that there may be a second branch.

(picture from: Google)

At the press conference, the Zhao brothers said that they had applied for 12 patents in different countries, and one of them had been successfully applied in the mainland. But a search on the State intellectual property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office found nothing.

Lawyers in Hong Kong believe that an application for a patent cannot be used as a reason for extension because a patent cannot be approved by an application. And generally crowdfunding sites will set a delivery deadline, two months beyond the deadline can be considered for recovery.

Investors in Arist reported the case to the Hong Kong police station, but Hong Kong could not file a case because the crowdfunding website was based in the United States. You say go to the United States, and some people go to the United States to report the case. The US police also say that the fund-raising company is located in Hong Kong, which is also inadmissible.

Now on Kickstarter, comments on the project are still being updated, with the latest comment published on July 17, with investors questioning the project and demanding a refund. From the content, we can see that Arist has not delivered the goods so far, nor has it responded to investors' request for a refund.

Someone even created an anti-Arist website Arist Scam, calling the smart coffee machine a big scam.

This time it's not a coffee machine, it's a charging line.

He was still in a hurry to ship goods from 2014 to 2016, but was busy using another project to cheat money on the same crowdfunding site in Canada in July 2015.

This is the main magnetic combination of mobile phone charger Znaps magnetic charger, the project currently has 70122 sponsors, and raised about 3 million Canadian dollars (about 15.5 million yuan).

The trick is the same trick, originally scheduled for November delivery, and then put the plane because of quality problems.

According to Znaps company registration documents, the only director and shareholder of Znaps Limited is Zhao Gongyun's wife, Liu Zhihua (Gloria Lau), who registered a Hong Kong company and applied for the award in December 2015. In April this year, Znaps Magnetic Energy Charger also won the ICT start-up Bronze Award from the Hong Kong government.

From the light of Hong Kong to the shame of Hong Kong, both products have been praised by the Hong Kong government to raise funds from the public. The two incidents, which involved more than 70,000 investors from different countries around the world, were not accepted even if they were reported to the police in Hong Kong and the United States.

The two brothers became more energetic unaffected. They expanded their business, expanded their consulting business, set up a Kickstart HK promotion company to teach others how to raise money from crowdfunding, and used Znaps's project as an example to attract customers.

In addition, the two brothers were found by netizens taking the whole company of nbition Development on a group trip and moving to a larger office. Zhao Gongyun and his wife also bought a luxury mansion with a view of the sea in Hong Kong, raising questions about the whereabouts of crowdfunding for his project.

I have to say that crowdfunding that squanders other people's trust and money like this has an extremely bad nature.

And when crowdfunding has become one of the channels for self-interest, who dares to help people who really want to start a business realize their dreams?