Kickstarter has had a banner year, raising almost $100 million and seeing a 46 percent success rate. But occasionally, even a project with excellent backing and a great idea can go horribly wrong. Matt Haughey, creator of Metafilter, has written a post-mortem on what he calls "the worst project I've funded on Kickstarter," an iPhone case with a development cycle plagued by bad communication, design problems, and an unusable final product.

Haughey, who has invested in 72 Kickstarter projects, says his goal isn't to hurt the project and producers, or to criticize projects that come up against problems or miss a deadline. According to him, it's much more important to listen to feedback without getting defensive and reset expectations when something isn't going as planned. The original project is over, but would-be Kickstarter users should take note of how not to manage their fundraising.