The company pinned the funding shortage on both a "slow start" for VR and a "number of high profile hardware startup failures" that prevented it from getting additional seed funding. There was no shortage of cash early on, though. TechCrunch noted that Ossic raised a total of $3.2 million between Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and received a "substantial" investment that nearly equaled the crowdfunding amount. It clearly burned through that money quickly -- a letter on the company's website stated hat it would require "more than 2 million additional dollars" to ship headphones to all its backers. Staff reportedly worked without pay and dipped into their savings to keep Ossic going.

Crowdfunding project failures like this aren't unheard of, but it's frequently due to a lack of significant outside funding. That wasn't the case here. Rather, the shutdown reflects another common problem with crowdfunded startups: many of them don't anticipate all the costs of bringing their product to market, especially when it's in a relatively young category like 3D, VR-oriented headphones. And unfortunately, companies don't (or in some cases can't) mention this before you spend your hard-earned cash.