The Inside Story of the Lily Drone's Collapse (wired.com) 141
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Lily Robotics had everything: Two charismatic young founders; millions in funding; and a product that promised to change the world -- or, at the very least, transform photography. But over 60,000 customers are still waiting for their Lily Drones, and the company is now being sued by the San Francisco District Attorney's office for false advertising. As it turns out, Lily Robotics never actually had the right tools to create the product it was selling -- and it all came crashing down. At Backchannel, Jessica Pishko has the untold story of how such a promising company went so wrong.
From the report: "The magic of the Lily Drone was in its concept: It was a product you could unpack and throw -- so easy, Antoine Balaresque, the cofounder and CEO of Lily Robotics, wrote in emails, that even an old person could do it. But translating that idea into a tangible product proved difficult, and the storytelling that made the Lily Drone so tantalizing to consumers ultimately factored into its downfall. In one of his presentations, Balaresque presented a PowerPoint slide with the sentence, 'Humans have a fundamental need to put themselves in the center of stories.' It appeared to be a quote he made up, but the idea that human nature needs stories is fundamental. Stories are how we make sense of our lives. But while a good story can get you funding and acclaim, ultimately it isn't enough."
From the report: "The magic of the Lily Drone was in its concept: It was a product you could unpack and throw -- so easy, Antoine Balaresque, the cofounder and CEO of Lily Robotics, wrote in emails, that even an old person could do it. But translating that idea into a tangible product proved difficult, and the storytelling that made the Lily Drone so tantalizing to consumers ultimately factored into its downfall. In one of his presentations, Balaresque presented a PowerPoint slide with the sentence, 'Humans have a fundamental need to put themselves in the center of stories.' It appeared to be a quote he made up, but the idea that human nature needs stories is fundamental. Stories are how we make sense of our lives. But while a good story can get you funding and acclaim, ultimately it isn't enough."
Enron for drones? (Score:2)
Had everything? (Score:5, Insightful)
These idiots need to get over their cult of personality world view.
This company did not have everything, it had a few good ideas and the willingness to lie through their teeth about their ability to deliver on that.
Having two 'charismatic young founders' doesn't give you much. A few flashy ideas and the ability to spin a good story even if you have to lie through your teeth is not the basis of a good business.
The primary failure here is the failure of these young charismatic founders to have been responsible for their actions.
But apparently we are supposed to feel bad for them and pay them on the head and tell them to keep up the good work, maybe next time it will go better.
Who cares about the people who lost millions.. After all.. The American dream!
Re:Had everything? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
I just thought of something; a drone that can fly in the air and dive below water. Or how about one that has automatically composes and edits in dramatic music based on the camera view. Or a drone that can link up with another drone to create 3D video from weird perspectives. Or a drone with a built-in baloon so it can stay in the air much longer. Or... you get the drift.
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Kickstarter (Score:4, Insightful)
All you need now is a snazzy video with a prototype that at least *appears* to work and boom, millions in funding to burn through until you finally have to admit you can't deliver, and the balloon pops.
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All you need now is a snazzy video with a prototype that at least *appears* to work and boom, millions in funding to burn through until you finally have to admit you can't deliver, and the balloon pops.
Funny thing is though that in the thread yesterday about how VC's fund women less, the usual suspects were falling over themselves to tell us how rational VS's are.
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Yes, but after getting out of jail you will still be a hot prospect to venture capitalists, because you have real world experience! Nothing attracts VC money like a freshly scrubbed face full of naivete.
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I just thought of something; a drone that can fly in the air and dive below water. Or how about one that has automatically composes and edits in dramatic music based on the camera view. Or a drone that can link up with another drone to create 3D video from weird perspectives. Or a drone with a built-in baloon so it can stay in the air much longer. Or... you get the drift.
Oh well. That's four multi-million-dollar scams by charismatic young founders reading slashdot that we can look forward to...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
and this guy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That's a mighty tall order for a couple of graduate students. Did these guys have everything? What they could have
Re:Had everything? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure they were lying. I'm more than willing to bet that they honestly thought that with the right amount of money, they hire all of the right people and deliver a working product.
Quite often I run into "ideas people" who think all problems are easily solvable and are shocked and upset when I inform them that whatever idea they have in their head will be a harder problem to solve than they think it is. My two favorite examples: stock market predictor (but you can see the graph goes up here and down there) and automatic meeting summarizer (I was working for a company that had a whole team of people smarter than me doing natural language processing at the time and he thought we could do it in a few months with 3 people)
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Yes - I hate "ideas people". Have to dismiss these idiots all the time in open-source development: "Well, interesting idea, come back when you have a patch implementing it." Then they get offended because they can't code, they just had this idea they think is great and want the devs to code it up for them!
But ideas are cheap indeed. Most ideas from "ideas people" are impossible/unfeasible, and it is too much refuting them all with a nice explanation of why it can't work. Hence ruder dismissals designed to
Re: Had everything? (Score:2)
My hatred of "idea people" comes from the dot com era. I met plenty of, "I got this idea for a website. You figure out all the difficulties, do all the work, and I take all the credit. I might give you a small cut of the profits." Even as a fresh-out-of-school kid, I knew these guys were charlatans.
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My hatred of "idea people" comes from the dot com era. I met plenty of, "I got this idea for a website. You figure out all the difficulties, do all the work, and I take all the credit. I might give you a small cut of the profits." Even as a fresh-out-of-school kid, I knew these guys were charlatans.
At least those idea-people understood that implementation was beyond them.
One big problem I see now are those that think they are good enough and don't know their own limitations, who get in far over their heads. One expensive example if the film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, which was one of the early greenscreen/CGI movies with live actors. The people behind the movie go in way over their heads and basically had to farm-out something like 90% of the post-production because they had no chance of
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Not exactly. Even then, idea guys thought that implementation was "beneath" them. Lets get some kind fresh out of college to do the actual work for me and pay him in peanuts and promises. I could bang this out if I wanted to, but I have big idea things to worry about instead.
Of course they were delusional, but they had to be delusional to believe that their idea was worth anything in the first place.
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Re:Had everything? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ideas are cheap, good ideas less so. What you really need is not to drive people away, but rather to route them to an appropriate forum for suggestions and encourage (require?) them to search for existing threads that might already include that suggestion before posting. That way, you collect the ideas and can have people comment on them, vote on them, etc.
Then why don't they? The thing is, I've seen lots of software that was written by developers without adult supervision, and when developers all focus on their pet features without taking into account user needs, the result is almost invariably worse for it. Those pesky ideas people are your average users. They're the people you're trying to reach with your software (typically). And the tendency to push them away rather than to organize their ideas and prioritize them is the reason that so much open source software is, frankly, crap.
And I say that with all due respect, as I've contributed to open source software frequently in the past, and have even open sourced various things that I have written. When I read things like what you posted, my first reaction is to assume that the project is never going to go anywhere, and in a few years, will be replaced by some other project that is designed from the ground up around the features that users have been complaining about not having in the existing tools for years.
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You need to turn "ideas people" into "people that do things". I think most of them don't really know anything about what happens in a company. Maybe they see a CEO who seemingly does no work at all but who takes all the credit and they want to emulate that model. What they fail to see is that the CEO worked to get there, spends most of the day managing the company (maybe a bit naively), dealing with financial sisues, and is constantly on the road selling the company and its products.
The "ideas people" at
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"Ideas people" are not special at all. All the useable ideas they come up with is stuff that devs are perfectly capable of coming up with themselves.
This holds the same amount of truth as its sister-paragraph below:
"developers" are not special at all. All the useable code they come up with is stuff that ideas people are perfectly capable of coming up with themselves.
And that amount of truth is "partially correct".
Ideas people can learn to code, just like developers can become ideas people. Ideas are easy to conceive, just like lines of code.
The issue becomes much more complex when you start binning the statements above.
There are people with great, elaborate ideas, which developers can't even start dreaming about matching. Just as well, there are developers which can code like gods but their ideas stink w
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I usually don't answer to ACs but you have put enough effort to warrant a reply.
So here it goes...
I tried to be objective. GP wasn't objective. Furthermore, having an idea doesn't mandate being able to implement it. It only requires being able to further develop it (the idea) into something clear enough and granular enough to be fully implemented. Your examples support both your point of view as well as mine:
- Some comedians don't write their own texts, or only do so partially. Actors usually don't write th
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Apparently, having two charismatic young founders is enough to get you all kinds of funding. Too bad they didn't know (or care) to translate that funding into a tangible product by giving enough of it to people with the necessary skills.
On the flip-side, you can have ALL the necessary skills, and ideas, vision and even stories required for a product like this, but without your own pile of funding, or some charismatic front-men to tell the story to people who will hand over money, the project is just as dea
Re:Had everything? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me a little of Theranos [wikipedia.org]. The quick version of the story is this:
A college student comes up with an idea. Her professors tell her it won't work. She ignores the professors, and drops out of college and starts a company to develop the idea. People love the story of a 19 year old genius girl founding a revolutionary medical testing company, and invest heavily.
The company continued to operate for years, and was considered to be worth billions of dollars, in spite of the fact that the technology never worked. Apparently, it wasn't even that she did a good job hiding things, it was that nobody looked too closely. They were too infatuated with the narrative. No one ever insisted on any kind of independent testing to see if the technology was real.
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Reminds me a little of Theranos.
Similar to this story, Wired has also written [wired.com] quite a bit about Thearnos [wired.com] as well.
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Yeah, I scoffed at that opening line, too. Everything? My take ...
Lily Robotics had everything: Two charismatic young founders; millions in funding; and a product that promised to change the world
But did they have love?
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The idiots are the VCs who keep funding these incompetent, dudebro startups with 10s of millions of dollars.
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Where are all these people feeling bad for the crooks?
I see a lot of people feeling bad the tech wasn't there. A lot of people feeling bad that people were scammed out of their money. But not a lot of people weeping for the idiots that thought that if they faked it long enough, they would finally be able to deliver.
You might have missed the part where the San Francisco DA's office is suing the company for fruad, because that right there answers your question of "Who cares about the people who lost millions.
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I see a lot of people feeling bad the tech wasn't there. A lot of people feeling bad that people were scammed out of their money. But not a lot of people weeping for the idiots that thought that if they faked it long enough, they would finally be able to deliver.
I got to go to San Jose to see a private Cisco presentation on some upcoming tech they wanted us to buy, and among what we saw was Cisco video-conference tech, including camera systems that were able track who was speaking to point to them, and in multi-camera systems, to use some kind of logic to determine not only who was speaking, but who should have a camera remain trained on them as they were likely to speak next. This was running on the embedded software in the video-conference device, which probably
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People need some perspective too. No one should feel bad that this technology isn't here yet, it's just fluff. It fits into the same category as Juicero. Nothing of value in the world is gained by the product and nothing is lost when it fails to live up to the hype.
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Blame the angel investors. They hear the words "young founders" and they think "great, young people are so much more capable than old people who smell funny." To be fair, their initial investment was for college kids, not intended to be enough to start up a sustainable business, but the old dotcom era wishful thinking is still in full display here.
- get young people, who have zero real world experience.
- assume the product will be easy to design, manufacture, and deliver. After all, if old people can do it
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Who cares about the people who lost millions..
Pat them on the head too. Ideas end in failure just as much as investments do. I certainly don't shed a tear about people who lose a lot of money in investments, even when I counted myself among them.
Investing is like starting a business. Sometimes it doesn't work. Cut-losses, and move on, but don't sit and mope about it.
nothing to do with enron. (Score:2)
this isn't an accounting scam.
this is just lying about tech that you lie that you have and then asking money from people. this is a pretty old scam.
they are most often nowadays sold with personality cult and shit like that. for example the ceo might(usually does) say stuff like that "because i'm not an engineer i'm not limited by what they think as possible".
the amazing thing is that people give money to these things, solar roadways, ultrasonic charging etc.
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More like Theranos. An idea ahead of its time, charismatic founder, and a bunch of investors with more money than sense.
Re: Typical tech shit (Score:2)
Computers are not real products? Ok, Ezekiel better head back to the farm.
LoL..dumb people shouldn't get their money back (Score:5, Interesting)
So this company was funded purely on a 'story' no 'working prototype' at all...only after they get a piss pot of money do they even try to figure out how to build it simply to discover the 'tools' (e.g. 'technology' didn't exist)...wow, anyone investing in this shouldn't get their money back as far as I'm concerned.
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actually the founders should be debted.
because this is just another case of saying that you have magic tech and then not having it. ..besides the tech wouldn't even have been so magical. delivering a photography drone would have been shit easy. ...not a good one, but hey, even a crappy product would have made it not a fraud.
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They lied that it would be even remotely legal. Where can a skier throw a drone and have it auto fly into follow-me mode and avoid all objects as he tries to ski down a mountain with no care/need/view of what his non object avoiding drone was doing behind him. Breaks every rule of safety from the start.
Not only is this fully illegal it is also obviously dangerous enough to refute the original extreme use case camera it presented itself as.
Follow me doesn't look out for that tree or gondola, or skier etc.
The
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Fontus sel-filling water bottle. (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for mine!
Re: Fontus sel-filling water bottle. (Score:2)
That was a classic one because it is so damn obvious that their product was impossible.
The hoverboard was at least plausible to idiots. "Hey what about that 80s movie? It's gotta be possible!"
Re:LoL..dumb people shouldn't get their money back (Score:5, Informative)
So this company was funded purely on a 'story' no 'working prototype' at all...
They had a partially working prototype, but an inability to push it into a final product. There was also a bunch of managerial incompetence. It's interesting that the prototype that worked best was loaded with Open Source software to do the major work. It was only when the lead software "engineer" scapped it all to rewrite it himself that the product really started falling apart.
...only after they get a piss pot of money do they even try to figure out how to build it simply to discover the 'tools' (e.g. 'technology' didn't exist)
This is where you give away that you didn't bother reading the article. The technology exists, but the company didn't have the ability to integrate them into the Lily.
...anyone investing in this shouldn't get their money back as far as I'm concerned.
That's pretty jerkish to all the victims who lost money to those thieves.
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They had a partially working prototype, but an inability to push it into a final product. There was also a bunch of managerial incompetence. It's interesting that the prototype that worked best was loaded with Open Source software to do the major work. It was only when the lead software "engineer" scapped it all to rewrite it himself that the product really started falling apart.
That's a very generous reading of the facts. The early prototypes crashed and veered off course and the most positive thing said was "Finally, it hovered anxiously and, according to the review, took a handful of photographs." and also "He emphasized that the initial Lily drone models were built with ready-made parts that weren't customized for the special features the team had envisioned." As for the quality "Mostly, the source said, the color was off and some shots were blurry." and "In terms of the final
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I think if they kept it simple they could have done it. They had troubles with the camera though, they wanted a certain quality that they just weren't going to get for the prices they needed. Their problem wasn't that they were intentionally trying to scam people, but that they were so monumentally naive. Copying what other people can do is moderately easy, if you have the skills. If you don't have the skills then attempting to copy and also improve and innovate on top of that isn't going to work, unless
Re: LoL..dumb people shouldn't get their money bac (Score:2)
I think it was mostly a risky idea and poor skills at managing a business.
Their idea was too risky for a real VC to take on so they got funding from people who just threw money at things without checking the details. A VC would have enforced a reporting and monitoring structure to see product feasibility. Probably also hired some experts for guidance and navigation.
The idea was nice and the tech not impossible. The cash flow management appears to be shortsighted and irresponsible. There also seems to be l
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Punishing the people who keep backing this junk is the best way to prevent them from perpetually falling for these dudebro tech scams.
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That's pretty jerkish to all the victims who lost money to those thieves.
I was with you right up to this point. Part of investing in anything is figuring out if what you are investing in is a good idea. Part of investing is the risk that you won't know everything, or the risk that despite knowing everything it will fail anyway. Never shed a tear for an investor. They should cut their losses and move on. If they make a habit of it, maybe they should stop trying to invest in ideas.
Now as for those people who believe Kickstarting is like buying a product, don't shed a tear for them
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So this company was funded purely on a 'story'
So like every company in history then.
Process (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely the correct way to go about this is:
1. Idea for product.
2. Design product.
3. Build product.
4. Test product.
5. Sell product.
6. Profit.
with repeats on 3 & 4 as required.
Any operation that puts 5 before 3 & 4 must be considered suspect.
Re:Process (Score:4, Informative)
1. Idea for product.
2. Basic design and proof of concept for product.
3. Sell idea of product to raise funds for the next three steps.
4. Develop and build product.
5. Test product.
6. Ship product to backers.
7. Sell product to non-backers.
8. Profit.
Repeat steps 4, 5 and occassionally (or not so occassionally *cough* Star Citizen *cough*) step 3 as required.
Unfortunately there are two common and related failings in this approach. Developers often skimp on stage 2 and just produce the equivalent of a glossy brochure and vague promises, which is what happened with the Lily Drone, while potential backers often fail at their due diligence (AKA they have defective bullshit detectors) at step 3 and/or commit more funds than they really should - often excessively so. That latter part is the real failing; without funds, there are no stages 4-8 and no one needs to lose any money with many crowdfunding systems. There's nothing wrong with throwing a few bucks at a long-shot project like Lily, but you need to be aware of the chances of sucess and treat it like the gamble that it is and accept that you're quite probably going to lose your money. If you're throwing a few hundred bucks at something, without any proof that the project founders can actually deliver, and especially if you can't really afford to just lose the money, then you probably need the lesson you're going to get.
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1.) Idea!
2.) Glossy, gushing description
3.) Shiny "proof of concept" i.e. a non-working mock-up of what it might look like, eventually
4.) Completely fabricated sales projection, BoM, development costs
5.) Get on the VC circuit until some sucker bites.
6.) Try to work out what the minimum acceptable design would actually be
7.) Cut every corner possible. Scrimp pennies. Use untested software. Manufacture with the cheapest materials
8.) Spend the majority of the funding
Re: Process (Score:2)
You forgot about the spiffy video with pro quality production value and complete fakery of the prototype working.
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1: Try to get VC money, and failing that, try to get it through kickstarter
2: ???
3: Profit!!!
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How do you propose paying for steps 2, 3 and 4? Or should only incredibly rich people be allowed to start a company?
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Any operation that puts 5 before 3 & 4 must be considered suspect.
You only think that because you missed step 1.1: Sell idea for product to investors. If businesses followed your steps as you wrote them then none of them would ever get off the ground due to lack of money.
Sounds like OTC/Pennys stocks (Score:2)
there's 1000's ready to dump $1000's or even their life's savings on a pump and dumps.
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It's bitztream: the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating Slashdot troll!
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If I hadn't already been snarking on this post, I'd have modded this up
You points would be totally wasted on this troll - just look at all its past abusive posts.
Score:-15, Pwned (Score:1)
Witness BitZtream getting pwned! [slashdot.org]... twice [slashdot.org].....three times! [slashdot.org]
So, (Score:2)
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Looks to me as if you invested based on emotional appeal rather than anything substantive, such as a proof of fucking concept, which these bozos couldn't fucking produce.
If you really got a refund, then you should really, REALLY be counting your lucky stars.
Everything you need for a scam (Score:5, Insightful)
Lily Robotics had everything: Two charismatic young founders; millions in funding; and a product that promised to change the world
Sounds like everything you need to run a good scam.
In the real world what matters is people who get shit done. The rest are just sales.
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A lot of scammers are actually fooling themselves too. They may honestly think they're doing the right thing, and the little lie is just there until things get going better. Ie, ends justifying the means, lie now so the company doesn't collapse before Big Thing is ready.
Idea Man Bubble (Score:2)
Ideas are a dime a dozen, as we say in game development. It is quite easy to have an idea, and for a few cool millions, you can find or hire a graphics designer who will turn it into a great presentation, video, etc.
Too few people these days look for execution of ideas. How is it that you can get any funding at all without even a prototype?
L+i = Ly (Score:1)
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That post probably drove a huge number of those original sales .
Maybe in an alternate universe where Slashdot was still relevant. Funny joke nonetheless.
The problem with things like kickstarter (Score:3)
is that it's all about giving money to people whose only proven talent is making slick videos and maybe a semifunctional prototype. Very few have the business chops turn their idea/prototype into a commercial product.
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Kickstarter doesn't maker any sense (for those buying in) *at all* !!! The only people that benefit from Kickstarter are the Kickstarter owners, who get their cool cut* regardless of outcome.
*varies by country, up to 8% [kickstarter.com] it seems. Note that the website claims the fees aren't paid if the campaign isn't funded, but that just means the money didn't pass the target set by the fundraisers - it does not mean any product is produced.
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Very few have the business chops turn their idea/prototype into a commercial product.
You're describing the vast majority of the world. Ideas are dime a dozen and businesses fail at a rate for over 90% in the first year. Kickstarter is just very public so it's easy to attack.
"Two charismatic young founders" (Score:2)
Two charismatic young founders
There are a few unicorns, but usually this is a risk factor. Most successful businesses are founded by people in their 40's and 50's.
Reading the summary, I see "risk, risk, risk, risk, risk", and the results are what most investors would expect.
Even an old person (Score:2)
How casually condescending. Twenty years ago it might have been "Even a woman"...
So how is DJI able to do this? (Score:2)
What I want to know is how DJI is able to crank out products left and right and companies like Lily and 3DR get borked? I find this very concerning that to all intents and purposes DJI owns this market now and that gives them carte blanche to do whatever they want regardless of what the customers want e.g. borking your expensive machine because they think you shouldn't be flying where you want or more importantly need to fly.
I'm less interested in these MacGyver UAV platforms with all kinds of loosely inte
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DJI isn't turning out anything like the LILY (at least what the Lily claimed to do). They (dji) have the bareST minimum of object avoidance, no throw to launch ability, OR hands free flying and photography. Their flight controllers are closed source and incredibly underpowered for any use more COMPLEX than an aerial camera. What DJI does well is make an affordable drone, with a good enough camera and gimbal that is easy enough to use for just that.DJI started with gimbals and was that gave them a big adva
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Okay, but nobody wants to spend more than about $2k for a UAV no matter what the application and there really isn't much justification for five-figure prices. Some of the fancy photogrammetry stuff reminds me of the early 90s when everybody wanted to be able to do rigid-body dynamics in computer animation and the early developers were able to charge a fortune for it. Gradually, the algorithms leaked out to the masses and open-source community and now everybody can do that kind of thing. The DIY/open-sour
Suckers (Score:2)
...and some typical engineer hubris (Score:2)
From TFA: "An engineer who led the software development team insisted on revamping the drone software to be his own original invention, several engineers told me. (The prototype had been made with open-source software.) The engineering team rebooted and the drone prototypes stopped flying. Production was set back about six months."
How many times have we heard this story? Company has something kind-of working. Engineer thinks he can reinvent wheel. Massive effort to rewrite code. Underwhelming, underpe
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Probably it was an investor demanding that they couldn't make money off of open source and mandating a change to closed source. 3DR did similar to placate investors and autodesk, and it mostly shot themselves in the foot.
what caused it to fail? (Score:2)
There are drones galore everywhere produced en masse. With and without cameras. Not a new tech. I build a few myself with $100. The follower feature may be more technically challenging (2 GPSes and good comms between the subject and a drone) but nothing that could not be overcome.
TLDR;
What was so special about Lily?
What really made Lily fail?
"and a product" (Score:2)
NO they fucking DIDNT, they had faked video of a concept of an idea of something that maybe was possible to built.
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maybe possible to build, but not in their price range, or the size of the package it came with with a level of flight time that was even remotely useful.
What's it called? (Score:2)
What's it called?
Monorail!
Re: How sad (Score:2)
Meh, I'm sure there will be a much cheaper Chinese one made soon. Small camera drones are getting pretty cheap, and the algorithms to control it are all open source. You could probably build yourself one for less than half the price they were charging. Perhaps less than a quarter if you used a cell phone to do the command and control.