It’s German for “the deeproot the”
(Topic ID: 203700)
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Madison, WI
Quoted from Fulltilt:Damn... I know you got burned too but that's pretty wicked.
What? I really was digging up roots today. Damn thing had to go.
Quoted from benheck:What? I really was digging up roots today. Damn thing had to go.
Deep roots can cause damage to foundations and utility pipes. So they do need to be removed in some situations 
Flensburg
If RAZA release this year the VIPs wouldnt have called off the reaveal. They called it off not only bc it was unfinished then but bc they saw problem(s) they did not see any solution to yet=> 2nd quarter 2021 reveal at best. Production running 4th quarter 2021 at best.
Quoted from benheck:Die Deep Roots! DIE!
[quoted image]
You better um, "knot" mention that again. 
Quoted from Makakka:If RAZA release this year the VIPs wouldnt have called off the reaveal. They called it off not only bc it was unfinished then but bc they saw problem(s) they did not see any solution to yet=> 2nd quarter 2021 reveal at best. Production running 4th quarter 2021 at best.
I wonder what the chances are they completely scrap the touch screen? I would imagine they will at least design it to be a little less imposing. They should also probably not inset it like it is. The way it is now with the lip all the way around it makes a perfect drink holder and will also catch spills and pool them on top of touch screen.
Quoted from John_I:The way it is now with the lip all the way around it makes a perfect drink holder and will also catch spills and pool them on top of touch screen.
Exactly. How can it be that no-one at dR spotted this, and then came forward to design teams/management? Come on!
Quoted from pookycade:Correct. This is what is just so bizarre with this group. From a manufacturing perspective total disaster because they have nobody competent heading the entire venture. If they did it wouldn’t be 5 years later and no pin. But even from a venture play it’s a total disaster. What competent startup publishes the big reveal only then to have 5 people very publicly come in and tell them it’s all unpolished crap ? You bring those people in BEFORE you announce the big reveal. I mean forget what all of us think about what they are doing, doesn’t matter. But their investors are probably making lots of angry phone calls right now. Robert works for them and if he doesn’t deliver I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets tossed out and JPOP gets put out to pasture too. The problem with this group as a large funded venture effort is they had to knock it out of the park and introduce whole new Pinball concepts while everyone else played catch-up. Appears they failed on all counts. With most venture funded efforts you know it’s pie in the sky claims and you hope the company you invest in finds a workable business model. With these guys you can’t have a business model if you don’t even have a product to sell. It must be a very grim and stressful time inside there. I do wish them the best. You hate to see money flushed, careers wasted, and the emergence of a new company fail. But short of some Hail Mary pass I don’t see how they pull this one off before investors cash out and ask them to refund the remaining balance.
The point is, this venture was never meant to be successful. It was and is an obvious Ponzi scheme or rather Zidware 2.0 from the beginning. That’s why nothing really works on RAZA and still looks like an early prototype after 8 years of so called work. DR is a clever scam and not really cleaver with anyone looking at it from a real business perspective, that even a child can see. DR was created to accumulate investors money, just like Zidware was created to scam early adopters money. Sure original intent may have been “somewhat” otherwise, but once people involved realized pinball is just too hard, they resorted to full on scamming by manipulating the narrative. RAZA is a machine designed to let people think they are doing something. DR/RM doesn’t care if it really works or not. It’s all smoke and mirrors and plain to see.
Quoted from Thunderbird:The point is, this venture was never meant to be successful. It was and is an obvious Ponzi scheme or rather Zidware 2.0 from the beginning. That’s why nothing really works on RAZA and still looks like an early prototype after 8 years of so called work. DR is a clever scam and not really cleaver with anyone looking at it from a real business perspective, that even a child can see. DR was created to accumulate investors money, just like Zidware was created to scam early adopters money. Sure original intent may have been “somewhat” otherwise, but once people involved realized pinball is just too hard, they resorted to full on scamming by manipulating the narrative. RAZA is a machine designed to let people think they are doing something. DR/RM doesn’t care if it really works or not. It’s all smoke and mirrors and plain to see.
Except it can't be a ponzi scheme really due to not taking money from customers and they are obviously spending the capital they raised on creating pinball. A failed company possible but ponzi scheme unlikely. Kaneda had a podcast talking about DR and I think what he said is far more likely.
Quoted from LOTR_breath:You better um, "knot" mention that again.
Leaf me alone!
Quoted from nate1981s:Except it can't be a ponzi scheme really due to not taking money from customers and they are obviously spending the capital they raised on creating pinball. A failed company possible but ponzi scheme unlikely. Kaneda had a podcast talking about DR and I think what he said is far more likely.
A Ponzi scheme by definition does not just mean taking money from retail customers, in fact that is not the meaning of a Ponzi scheme at all. Customers are not promised profits from a retail sale. They are only promised a product. In a Ponzi scheme they put money in and get a return from new people putting money in, till it all collapses. It qualifies as a Ponzi scheme taking money from investors thinking they’ll get a return.
By definition DR fits this quite well:
Ponzi scheme
/ˈpɒnzi/
noun
a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
"a classic Ponzi scheme built on treachery and lies"
Their black home page is still there after all this time. They haven't even reverted it to the general info website.
Quoted from Thunderbird:It qualifies as a Ponzi scheme taking money from investors thinking they’ll get a return.
By definition DR fits this quite well:
Ponzi scheme
/ˈpɒnzi/
noun
a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a non-existent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.
Are they promising quick returns to their investors? Are they using money from new investors to pay existing investors? It doesn't seem like it, which would mean it is not a Ponzi scheme. A failing business, sure; but not a Ponzi scheme. Just taking money from investors and building a business trying to give them a return is not a Ponzi scheme. By your explanation, every single failed business (which is a majority of businesses) was a Ponzi scheme (someone had to put up capital to start the business).
Thunder and Wamoc are right. "Ponzi scheme" is a specific type of scam, you can't just apply that label to everything.
I'd go with "Pig in a Poke". It dates back to medieval times, the scammer would say "inside this bag (poke) is a delicious young pig!" The victim buys it to discover it's a worthless stray cat ("cat is out of the bag" = scam exposed)
"This game is REAL!" says John to AP, as he pulls the curtain off his Houdini diorama. They ooo and ahhh, it's so pretty it must be real!
Joe Balcer rolls up "Ehhh, guys, I hate to tell you this, but, yeah that game's just a stray cat!"
(wash rinse repeat with RAZA and DR)
I prefer to look at it through the lens of Mel Brook's movie.
deeproot looks like an investment scam like The Producers. Shares of the company are sold at an inflated price and held until the scammers cash out and/or the company goes belly up, and the now worthless shares are actually delivered (ie a classic short).
I'd love to be wrong though. I just want to see more pinball games. But it doesn't take a genius to see that this company is burning money without bringing any in, while trying to break into an industry that is already low margin. Something is not right...
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Ultimately, They’ve been bad for the Hobby and the industry and we will be better off as a whole once this sideshow leaves town.
I've been no deeproot cheerleader, doubted them from the beginning (and still have a lot of doubts), but I don't really understand this statement. How have they been bad for the hobby and the industry? They haven't taken anyone's money (in fact they have given some people money back - and I still say those who didn't take the cash settlement were suckers). Sure, RM has been pompous and egocentric, but that's just forum drama. I guess you could argue that supporting Jpoop and keeping him in the industry is bad, but again, not really hurting anything. It's certainly been entertaining watching the train wreck that is deeproot, so from that standpoint it's provided something to the hobby.
Quoted from benheck:Thunder and Wamoc are right. "Ponzi scheme" is a specific type of scam, you can't just apply that label to everything.
I'd go with "Pig in a Poke". It dates back to medieval times, the scammer would say "inside this bag (poke) is a delicious young pig!" The victim buys it to discover it's a worthless stray cat ("cat is out of the bag" = scam exposed)
"This game is REAL!" says John to AP, as he pulls the curtain off his Houdini diorama. They ooo and ahhh, it's so pretty it must be real!
Joe Balcer rolls up "Ehhh, guys, I hate to tell you this, but, yeah that game's just a stray cat!"
(wash rinse repeat with RAZA and DR)
joe (resized).pngQuoted from brucipher:I've been no deeproot cheerleader, doubted them from the beginning (and still have a lot of doubts), but I don't really understand this statement. How have they been bad for the hobby and the industry? They haven't taken anyone's money (in fact they have given some people money back - and I still say those who didn't take the cash settlement were suckers). Sure, RM has been pompous and egocentric, but that's just forum drama. I guess you could argue that supporting Jpoop and keeping him in the industry is bad, but again, not really hurting anything. It's certainly been entertaining watching the train wreck that is deeproot, so from that standpoint it's provided something to the hobby.
This has been very bad for the industry at the next level up, away from taking customers money it is much worse. The scam has been many millions higher and anyone now trying to raise capital for starting a new pinball company, will receive a very cold reception by investors. So yes, this has been bad for pinball, even worse than taking much smaller amounts from customers. Don’t know why some people keep excusing them for this failed manufacturing operation, by saying they’ve not taken customers money. They’ve taken many times more than that and now will be nearly impossible for any legitimate contender to raise capital for a similar venture, just as it is for anyone to acquire preorder monies from customers, because of Zidware 1.0 and Heighway and Dutch pinball. DR escalated the scam to new heights.
Pig in a Poke
Deeproots played their big Joke
Investors they lure
Wishing profits to occur
In the end the company goes Broke
Quoted from wamoc:Are they promising quick returns to their investors? Are they using money from new investors to pay existing investors? It doesn't seem like it, which would mean it is not a Ponzi scheme. A failing business, sure; but not a Ponzi scheme. Just taking money from investors and building a business trying to give them a return is not a Ponzi scheme. By your explanation, every single failed business (which is a majority of businesses) was a Ponzi scheme (someone had to put up capital to start the business).
Take a look at DR promotional material offering and see what they say about getting monthly quick returns and it’ll change your mind. Yes, these kinds of things do use investors monies to pay other investors. It happens all the time and NO every failed business is NOT a Ponzi scheme.
Although DR have made many mistakes and miscalculations and seem to have almost a wreckless disregard for caring to shape their company image, I really don’t think they are purposefully setting out to fail or mislead. Granted to reach this level, one would almost have to set out to do so, but in their case it’s just excessive ego, market ignorance and incompetence that led them down this path.
Why mislead if all you had to do is laser-focus all company resources into producing a single, slightly better Stern box with everything standard but with some JPOP magic added and great mechs?
Not try to show off and reinvent the entire industry and every single piece of hardware in one go. Release a game and then iterate to innovate. Simple but they decided to go down the “we’ll show everyone how awesomer we are” path.
Clearly DR are really trying hard, I mean really, really, really trying hard to knock it out of the park. I mean, octo-level show-the-world-our-slide-decks-for-the-next-ten-years-look-we-have-even-reinvented-the-box levels of trying hard. No scammer would try so hard so it’s not a fair label for what they are doing.
They are misguided by ego to megalomaniacal levels and I’m not sure that they will be able to scale the Everest they have uneccesarily created for themselves, but crooks they are not. My opinion.
Quoted from Thunderbird:Take a look at DR IPO offering and see what they say about getting monthly quick returns and it’ll change your mind. Yes, these kinds of scams do use investors monies to pay other investors. It happens all the time and NO every failed business is NOT a Ponzi scheme.
Where are you seeing this information on their IPO offering? DR is still a private company, and any filings they have with the SEC don't mention anything about returns (legally, they can't).
Haven’t been here in a bit.
Talking about roots causing foundation damage & leaf blowers. Things are normal.
Be back in 2 months to make sure things haven’t changed
Quoted from wamoc:Where are you seeing this information on their IPO offering? DR is still a private company, and any filings they have with the SEC don't mention anything about returns (legally, they can't).
It's a bit of a misuse of terms here. Deeproot isn't going public (IPO)... this is stuff taken from the prospectus and filings from the deeproot investment fund stuff.
None of it matters much anymore... years later we all know what they really are
Quoted from flynnibus:None of it matters much anymore... years later we all know what they really are
And what is that? Enlighten me.
Quoted from wrb1977:And what is that? Enlighten me.
if 12k posts in this thread can’t enlighten you...what’s one more?
Quoted from spinal:Although DR have made many mistakes and miscalculations and seem to have almost a wreckless disregard for caring to shape their company image, I really don’t think they are purposefully setting out to fail or mislead. Granted to reach this level, one would almost have to set out to do so, but in their case it’s just excessive ego, market ignorance and incompetence that led them down this path.
Why mislead if all you had to do is laser-focus all company resources into producing a single, slightly better Stern box with everything standard but with some JPOP magic added and great mechs?
Not try to show off and reinvent the entire industry and every single piece of hardware in one go. Release a game and then iterate to innovate. Simple but they decided to go down the “we’ll show everyone how awesomer we are” path.
Clearly DR are really trying hard, I mean really, really, really trying hard to knock it out of the park. I mean, octo-level show-the-world-our-slide-decks-for-the-next-ten-years-look-we-have-even-reinvented-the-box levels of trying hard. No scammer would try so hard so it’s not a fair label for what they are doing.
They are misguided by ego to megalomaniacal levels and I’m not sure that they will be able to scale the Everest they have uneccesarily created for themselves, but crooks they are not. My opinion.
When selecting between the possibilities of conspiracy versus incompetence as ones explanation for facts on the ground, always choose incompetence. It’s so much easier to achieve
I don't think its a scam at all just extremely miss managed when you have access to that much money and some great designers its easy to think we can do what we want and it will be easy. But without all the other great behind the scenes engineers Williams had (Stern have) its actually a very difficult job no matter how much cash you have.
Hopefully they get to the finish line before the cash runs out or some one pulls the plug on the project.
As others have said you basically need George Gomez to work for you for a year and sort this shit out
Bermuda Triangle
Quoted from jorro:Maybe the team of experts made them realize the only way to redeem theirselves is to start over and they skip forward by building.....
GOONIES!
Yeah, uhm...
I think even the most positive people around would not get their hopes up higher then „plz build anything at all“ by now.
Quoted from thechakapakuni:Haven’t been here in a bit.
Talking about roots causing foundation damage & leaf blowers. Things are normal.
Be back in 2 months to make sure things haven’t changed
The first deep roots to say "FUCK this stupid clay pipe!" were pretty innovative for evolution (and lucrative for plumbers while disastrous for homeowners).
First guy to reverse a vacuum on his lawn was pretty innovative too I'd say.
Yep, just the normal innovation thread.
Quoted from DS_Nadine:Yeah, uhm...
I think even the most positive people around would not get their hopes up higher then „plz build anything at all“ by now.
NOtSkd3.gif
GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!!!
Quoted from wrb1977:And what is that? Enlighten me.
A company years in the red?
A company with a failed product launch?
A company years behind schedule?
A company with a leader detached from reality?
A company with a leader who has failed 3 or 4 times to get to market?
A company still without ANY shipping product?
Or simply...
636080863092287060-ThinkstockPhotos-517934076 (resized).jpg
Quoted from jorro:GOONIES NEVER SAY DIE!!!
Deeproot would really have to be out of touch if that's their ace in the hole.
throwing-money-down-the-drain (resized).jpgQuoted from flynnibus:A company years in the red?
A company with a failed product launch?
A company years behind schedule?
A company with a leader detached from reality?
A company with a leader who has failed 3 or 4 times to get to market?
A company still without ANY shipping product?
Or simply...
[quoted image]
The dramatic image of money going down the drain was a nice touch and drove the message home for me.
Have they communicated anything regarding the most recently missed deadline to deliver games to the Zidware customers who opted against the refund route?
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:Have they communicated anything regarding the most recently missed deadline to deliver games to the Zidware customers who opted against the refund route?
Good news on that is they say those people will have their games by the end of the year. The bad news is that they never said what year.
Bill spent 100k, AP spent millions, DR spent tens of millions... Where does JPOP fail up to next?
"You gotta see these games man" said Mike Quigley, Congressman for the 5th district of Illinois "They're like, so beautiful and stuff. That why I'm introducing the $1 billion dollar Let's Invest Money Pinball Does Interesting Commerce Credit bill. John Popaduik is the Obama of pinball and he promises a 20 trillion dollar return on investment."
Quoted from benheck:Bill spent 100k, AP spent millions, DR spent tens of millions... Where does JPOP fail up to next?
"You gotta see these games man" said Mike Quigley, Congressman for the 5th district of Illinois "They're like, so beautiful and stuff. That why I'm introducing the $1 billion dollar Let's Invest Money Pinball Does Interesting Commerce Credit bill. John Popaduik is the Obama of pinball and he promises a 20 trillion dollar return on investment."
I see what you did there 
I was thinking that Bill was one of the lynchpins for the Super Cutting-edge, Reimagining, Engineering and Wonderment Enterprise Decree of 2019
Quoted from blueberryjohnson:Have they communicated anything regarding the most recently missed deadline to deliver games to the Zidware customers who opted against the refund route?
Yes.
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