real soundcards are ridiculously expensive. look up prices on real studio mixers.
everyone's solving the same problem: as much data out of some number of signals as possible. the design parameters and tradeoffs are largely limited by physics. the serious picos are larger than the logic board on my little tek, frankly, and that's without any physical interface.
this is an interesting project, but as usual with successful kickstarters, i ruffle at the marketing. a hammond project box, some EMI caging and the dangerousprototypes boards are cheaper for the same functionality, precision, etc. so this is pretty far from a game changer. it's just another design point in the space. it competes with the saleae line, the picos you pointed out, and a whole bunch of other designs i'm not even aware of.
another thing that bothers me, however, is that it is a total abuse of the idea of open-source. if the development is open source, why is there no source? they say they have been developing for a year, but there's no software, no hardware, absolutely nothing is currently open. it looks like they're setting themselves up as a tightly integrated company; their project design lead runs the line at their contract manufacturer (an ODM! imagine that!), marketing is handled by the lab-nation brand, and people who contribute monetarily to this currently closed project below the price of a single unit literally get nothing but a high-five.
personally i'd rather go for the saleae or pico.
