I wish I knew why Kickstarter doesn’t like HiLO Lens. After the initial rejection I asked for some clarification. Here is what I received :

Thanks for writing in, and I’m happy to clarify. Kickstarter is a platform designed for the funding of focused and finite creative projects. We try to focus primarily on the arts. As such, we don’t allow any cause based, awareness, educational or general business projects on the site. It’s not that we don’t think these projects are important — we do — we just don’t think they’re the best fit for Kickstarter.

My reading of this reply is that the person deciding on the suitability of HiLO Lens thinks that it is cause based, awareness, educational or a general business project. I think HiLO Lens fits into the same product design category as other project on Kickstarter, for example the successful Glif project which created a tripod mount product for the iPhone.

I’ve asked for further clarification about which criteria is being used to reject HiLO Lens. Maybe Kickstarter don’t want to fund product related projects anymore. It is a private company and can choose based on any criteria. But it would be nice to let people in the Kickstarter community understand the process better.

There seems to be a misunderstanding but I am fearing the worst.