
A Drone Company That Fell to Earth - noncoml
https://www.wired.com/story/the-drone-company-that-fell-to-earth/
======
mannykannot
"There were production hiccups. 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."

There seems to be something about software that makes this a particularly
appealing tarpit.

~~~
tnecniv
There's a name for this phenomenon:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here)

~~~
ghaff
While true, NIH can apply to a lot of things including hardware. But why
_especially_ software? A lot probably has to do with the fact that many/most
people will recognize that rebooting a hardware design is going to be a lot of
work and take a long time. Whereas with software, there's more of a temptation
to think it's "just a matter of programming" and "how hard can it be?" even by
people who should know better.

~~~
jerryr
My theory: Hardware and hardware tooling has tangible capital costs. Most
people are acutely aware of what they've spent on hardware, so discarding it
can be quite painful. Estimating is hard and many devs are terrible at
accounting for their time. A rewrite is often underestimated (people always
seem to forget about testing--they especially seem to forget how much time
they spent manually testing to get to a working state) so the costs of writing
software aren't as visible. In my experience, good, seasoned devs feel just as
bad about discarding software as they do hardware.

Edit because I posted while running out the door and probably could have
explained better: Elsewhere in this thread, dmckeon linked to Spolsky's
article on why rewrites are bad. This does a better job than I did of
explaining the hidden costs of a software rewrite. In my experience, these
costs are rarely tallied up and written down such that they're as visible as,
for example, the $50K one spent on creating an injection molding tool, or the
millions spent in NRE and component purchases to get an assembly line running.
Or even the few thousands spent on a prototype PCBA. In hardware, these
capital cost numbers are always in your face. So, even though hardware devs
are as bad as software devs in estimating time and accounting for testing, the
capital costs provide a built-in, visible incentive to avoid unnecessarily
discarding work.

------
grecy
It's a strange article in that it focuses so much on how the Lily promotional
video was not actually an accurate representation of how the prototype Lily
worked at that time, but more of a "wish list" or demo of what it will work
like when it's finished.

We all know when Steve introduced the iPhone it was a complete fake - the
signal bars were faked, the engineers were sweating that it would crash, Steve
had to do things in precisely the correct order, etc.[1]

Of course, it's a prototype, not the final product!

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-
sa...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said-let-
there-be-an-iphone.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&)

~~~
elmar
I found this opnion very interesting

 _someone close to the company said. Balaresque and Bradlow were not polished
enough to be able to secure further funding. “I felt sorry for them,”_

In the end the failure was not been polished enough for later stage VC, just
reminds me of the _fake it till you make it_ mantra.

~~~
imjk
I think it actually runs counter to that mantra. Here, it seems they weren't
good enough at faking it with later-stage VCs.

~~~
elmar
exact they failed to fake it so they didn't make it.

------
dm319
It doesn't sound like they set out to deceive - rather they had a vision which
a lot of people, including themselves, bought into, promising far more than
they could deliver. Even if they got to the stage of having a fully-working
prototype that could do everything the video claimed, they then had the task
of translating the prototype into mass-production.

I remember when the raspberry-pi started to take pre-orders (6 years after the
inception). They had massive public interest, and 100 of thousands of pre-
orders taken within days. Despite being far simpler than an autonomous drone,
they still ran into several show-stopping problems with manufacturing at
launch[1].

Personally, I think it is the investor's responsibility (and that should be
the term for someone who pre-orders the product) to be convinced that the
project is feasible within the time-frame they were stating. Crowd-funding is
disappointing because no questions are asked beyond watching a slick video and
an FAQ. An investor would be trying out the prototype on a ski slope, and
asking how they were going to translate their 3D-printed prototype into mass-
production at a price-point of 500 euros within a year. And then not
investing.

[1][https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/manufacturing-
hiccup/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/manufacturing-hiccup/)

~~~
jermaustin1
> and that should be the term for someone who pre-orders the product

I'm sorry I can't agree with this at all. A person who pre-orders something
isn't investing in the company, they are buying a product being promised. Now,
long delays and things of that nature are perfectly acceptable, but you aren't
investing.

An investor gets a stake of the company. An investor (of certain worth) has a
say in what is going on.

A customer doesn't, they speak only with their desire to buy whatever product
is being pitching. And after they hand over their money, their opinion doesn't
matter anymore. Sure they can dispute the charge and get kicked off whatever
crowdfunding site they are on, but they still have no voice in the company.

~~~
Retric
You might get a mug from donating to a charity, but your not really buying a
mug. Preorders are much the same in that you have high risk of not getting
anything and there is no compensation for that risk other than helping them
make the product.

~~~
EvanAnderson
Such a transaction shouldn't be called a "pre-order", then. If it amounts to a
donation it should be called that.

~~~
Retric
EX: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000580152/neil-
degrass...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2000580152/neil-degrasse-
tyson-presents-space-odyssey-the-vid?ref=home_nearly_funded)

I don't see any "pre-order" text there is even a big: "Make a pledge without a
reward" the others also start with Pledge X and simply list rewards.

------
sonyalo
A cautionary tale for anyone who wants to start a startup.

The individual story points such their $499 price point or their "fake" video
are, in my opinion, not the cause of their failure. For one, many companies,
especially early stage ones, operate and even sell at a loss to get their
product and brand out into the world and in the hands of customers.

Second, as has been pointed out here, products have been promoted before where
the advertised features were not fully functional at the time of their
promotion.

I also think that the features advertised are possible to build, even if not
as perfectly advertised (i.e. I never expected the drone to fly if I were to,
say, chuck it off of the empire state building).

I believe the root cause of the Lily's failure was in its founders execution.
Releasing the drone with at least a couple of basic features may have pissed
people off in that it didn't come as fully advertised but it would've have
probably saved them a government investigation; and a well executed (as well
as transparent and sincere) PR campaign would have quelled the masses.

The lean startup process would have been perfect in this scenario. The two
features I would've picked would have been the follow feature (even if the
range was limited) and the throw and go feature (even if it could only
function as a "light" throw).

Comments like "It was a combination of hubris plus optimism" and "An engineer
who led the software development team insisted on revamping the drone software
to be his own original invention" are red flags that the founder's attitude
and management was flawed and their ultimate downfall.

The moral of the story for any aspiring entrepreneur as I see it is to stay
humble, spend your money carefully, and above all, learn from those around
you. Take heed of advice and warnings from others. Perhaps if they had done
that, we'd all be watching them fly towards success.

------
mcculley
I never understood how the "follow" function would work if it became popular
enough for something like a running race. Would the drones implement some kind
of flocking collision avoidance behavior? It seems that eventually autonomous
drones will need something like that.

------
danso
How much of this technology, particularly the impromptu self-flying aspect, is
even doable at the sub-$1000 price range? There was the Hexo+, which raised
$1.3M in 2014 [0] and delivered what sounds like a major disappointment [1].

[0] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-
autonomo...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sqdr/hexo-your-autonomous-
aerial-camera/description)

[1]
[https://www.pcmag.com/g00/review/343846/hexo?i10c.referrer=h...](https://www.pcmag.com/g00/review/343846/hexo?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)

~~~
PeterisP
I don't think there's anything in self-flying aspect that significantly
affects the per-unit marginal cost.

It's obviously a hard tech to get right, as shown by many companies failing,
but a drone with shitty self-flying or no self-flying has pretty much the same
hardware and manufacturing costs as a drone which can do that well; the main
difference is in software and R&D capex which doesn't really affect the market
price as much the per-unit economics.

~~~
mdonahoe
One counter-example: 360 collision avoidance is a big improvement to self-
flying drones, and it requires additional cameras and a bigger computer to
process them. You don't need to pay for that if your drone will only be flown
manually.

------
elmar
for me the main problem was the price point of $499 was impossible not to lose
money on each drone, even today DJI doesn't manage to get a drone with similar
Lily features at that price point. And after you made the pre-sale at that
price point you can't go back and say now is $999, and that should have been a
more reasonable price for the kickstarter campaign, but then probably they
would have sold much less units.

~~~
mhb
Doesn't this $475 DJI drone come close to the Lily features?
[https://www.amazon.com/DJI-Phantom-Standard-Quadcopter-
Camer...](https://www.amazon.com/DJI-Phantom-Standard-Quadcopter-
Camera/dp/B013U0F6EQ)

~~~
arethuza
I note that it says "You can achieve advanced camera perspectives with the
Point of Interest, Follow Me and Waypoints modes (pending app feature
availability)"

What does "pending app feature availability" mean?

~~~
zootam
I think that's an old description from before those features were in the app

