This whole thing is very sad, I hope the community realizes soon that it is not wise to hand these young, ambitious, often students, thousands of dollars to do with as they please.
Don't play the can't pay rent sob story bull ****. Man don't run a GB if you cant support yourself.
Running a business well does take a lot of maturity, but there are also a lot of things that can put someone under that are out of anyone's control.
Honestly, my initial reaction would be to hate on 27, saying to myself, "Don't be like that guy;" but thinking more on it, I could 100% end up just like him if I jumped into a creative project and got hit with things I couldn't know about until they happened.
I have a keyboard project I'm working on and hope to bring to the community, but seeing what's happened with GBs like this and the Espectro, I realized I need to make sure I source things as close to home as possible. That's time consuming and more costly (in the US), but ultimately, I think it will allow me to have a quicker turnaround, do the QC myself, and make adjustments on the fly way better.
BUT I would not have taken that pause and reassessed if I didn't witness the pain that 27 has gone through. I wasn't involved with the GB, so obviously I can't tell anyone to give him slack, but I have seen that he's been apologetic, is seemingly repentant, and people who know him in real life stick up for him; so that says a lot to me.
Other GB runners have disappeared for nearly a year, then come back in a quiet way and been given what seems like complete forgiveness. I believe 27 when he says he's struggling financially, and I applaud that he's still showing his face and trying to find avenues to raise money to fix this.
I hope everyone gets what they paid for. And I hope 27 gets his feet under him. If it were me, I'd try some BBQ fundraisers, as I've found that to be the quickest moneymaker when I was in the Air Force. Our boxing club made $5,000+ in a couple hours with hot dogs, burgers, and Gatorade (~$200 for the groceries). We offered free boxing lessons at the BBQ, but no one took us up on it. BBQ was all they wanted.
