
Anki Shutting Down - gonzalezcgg
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/29/18522966/anki-robot-cozmo-staff-layoffs-robotics-toys-boris-sofman
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CamelCaseName
Wow. This hits home for me.

In 2017, I was reselling Anki Cozmos to help fund a side project I was working
on.

The buyers were consistently some of the most enthusiastic parents I had ever
met. I had never heard a single piece of negativity towards Cozmo.

My favorite memory was taking the train for 2 hours each way to visit
someone's home and help them troubleshoot their Cozmo's problems.

People here are claiming that Cozmo was too expensive, but I'd argue that
Cozmo wasn't expensive enough.

Interested parents will pay a lot for high quality and well designed
educational toys for their children. I know this because I was reselling
Cozmos for 50%+ more than their price tag.

I had no idea of Anki's true ambitions in robotics and AI. I think it's that
lack of focus that killed them.

There is absolutely a market for well designed educational toys, but it's not
a business that needs 9 figures in funding.

I hope someone else will come in and take the lead, because this is a great
niche, but one that doesn't necessarily need VC funding, just organic growth
due to steady, incremental, product improvements.

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umeshunni
> 200 million in funding > 100 million in sales

Well, there's your problem right there. I have a feeling this was a company
that would have done well if it had avoided the lure of VC funding, built its
product and scaled slowly solving the interesting and challenging problems of
building a home/play robot and getting consumers to like and want it,
eventually selling to an Amazon or Google for a $100M+ exit.

Instead, they tried to fund their way to become a robot unicorn and died an
undercorn.

~~~
jlarocco
Yeah, it's a shame tech entrepreneurs are so greedy. In most other fields $100
million in sales would (potentially) be a great business.

Same sentiment with respect to getting acquired. Having 4 or 5 giant companies
control everything is terrible for the long term health of the industry.

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themoonbus
Employees "would be paid a week of severance" \- I haven't gone through
something like this, but that seems low. I know when the money runs out it
runs out, but I hope employees weren't totally blindsided...

~~~
mey
Having worked in early stage angel funded startups, I am impressed they are
doing severance.

~~~
stingrae
This wasn't an early stage angel funded startup. They had 200m+ in funding.

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wvenable
Those of us who own their robots are currently looking for ways to save them.
Yesterday, the Vector Robot SDK was updated with some of the changes they had
planned to release in the future.

The servers are still up; presumably so they can keep selling their existing
stock for the conceivable future. But the full promise of functionality for
Vector will never arrive.

~~~
universenz
That's good to hear. I wonder what happens once the stock is all sold. Do you
think they'll release the source?

~~~
wvenable
I think it's extremely unlikely; when has any of these companies ever released
the source to their products?

Also, from my experience, Anki was really good with the security behind
Vector. He's so locked down that they'd have to officially release a firmware
just to provide the functionality to load alternative firmwares or access
other services. And with SSL you can't MTTM any of his connections.

I just don't see them having the resources to do anything more useful at this
point.

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universenz
The build quality of their "toys" has always been extremely high perhaps to a
fault. Think Apple-like materials, design and packaging. Sure, they weren't
'cheap' to purchase, but if you actually owned one of their toys, you didn't
feel like you were overpaying.

Both the children and adults who have interacted with Cozmo (in my case) have
been genuinely captivated by the "Wall-E" like personality, and how fun their
little desk companion toy can be.

This is actually really sad news. With everyone being laid off, it doesn't
look like there's going to be some sort of angel acquisition by Apple or
something either.

:(

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jimiray
My kids love the race tracks, Overdrive. I'll be looking to scoop up some
stuff on clearance.

~~~
flossball
Honestly the toys they made are good, however they are all app/cloud
connected. I hope the tracks keep working...

~~~
dawnerd
Makes me wonder how much of the logic was in the cars themselves. I'm guessing
not much. Might be a fun weekend project to try to hack though

~~~
lsaferite
The car's on-board processor has enough logic to follow the track lines hidden
under the track surface. The BTLE connection to the car is used to control
speed, change lanes, and trigger lights. It also is used to 'drive' the car in
some cases if needed.

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coleca
Such a shame. I've worked with a couple of Anki's former DevOps engineers
(lucky to have been able to hired one) and they are top notch.

My gut tells me that AI toys weren't the end game, since it's such a low
margin space, but just a way to get there and they ran out of runway before
they could reach that point.

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yitchelle
Previous discussion on the same topic -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782394)

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jackalo
I wonder if they will release the full source code so that the developer
communities around the world can start improving Vector's capabilities.

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chuckdries
Honestly their toys always seemed really cool, but I'm surprised this didn't
come sooner. They were _really_ expensive, which was justified by how advanced
the tech was sure, but to a certain point most people just don't want to spend
that much money on a toy

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xaedes
So sad, just bought a Cozmo a few days ago and today it arrived. It is a great
toy, I like it a lot already! What a shock to now see this in the news :(

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superqd
Dang, I was looking forward to buying their new robot, Vector. We have a
Cozmo, and my kids really enjoyed it.

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c3534l
I was so upset that my favorite free flashcard program was shutting down.

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urda
Didn't they _just_ release a new device? This seems shocking.

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inetsee
I was really concerned when I saw that headline. I thought that the Anki
Spaced Repetition Software (SRS) website was shutting down (it's not). Those
little robots are cute, but I think Anki is much more useful to me.

~~~
StavrosK
Can we change it to say "Anki robotics"? I was similarly worried.

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msaharia
My heart almost skipped a beat thinking it was Anki SRS. Infinitely more
useful than another VC vaporware.

~~~
lazyasciiart
Selling physical toys is about as far as you can get from "vaporware"

~~~
msaharia
$200 million funding and $100 million sales in a non-SAAS world (not profits)
is vaporware in my book.

~~~
Oletros
How selling physical products is vaporware?

