
Kickstarter has no clue how drone startup raised $3.4M then imploded - pavornyoh
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/11/kickstarter-learned-of-zano-collapse-through-a-bare-bones-project-update/
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DigitalSea
Kickstarter is the stock market for amateurs to buy into other people's
dreams. You are always going to have a few bad apples who spoil the bunch. I
have funded tonnes of successful Kickstarter campaigns and I have learned to
steer clear from the obviously risky startups, which at times can be
difficult.

Although I have never backed a failed campaign, every campaign I have backed
that requires some kind of manufacturing and hardware has never delivered on
time, except my Remix Mini Android PC. The problem is manufacturing starts out
inherently expensive and the price drops the more you produce. If you're only
doing a production run of 6000, you can guarantee you're not going to get a
good price for something that requires plastics molding and assembly.

I think Kickstarter needs to make it harder to start a hardware based
campaign. There are a lot of empty promises, I think some accountability would
go a long way. A milestone based system would be great where the owner of the
campaign specifies milestones (design, plastic mold, hardware components, etc)
and when they need a milestone released, Kickstarter evaluates on a request-
by-request basis and then updates the campaign automatically.

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pavornyoh
How about KickStarter holding the money in an escrow account after a project
is funded and then releasing it in bits after the creators have reached a
milestone? That way, the creators are not getting all the money upfront? Will
that be hard to implement? Surely, there has to be a way to protect the
backers from losing all their money..

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pavel_lishin
I think the people cost will be what would kill that; they'd have to have
people actually verify milestones, investigate the kickstarter campaigns, etc.

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joeld42
Kickstarter's requirement that projects have a working prototype is a good
start. They should at least verify working prototypes in person for projects
with over some amount (like $500K) of funding. Or even just require a
prototype video shot by an independent third party.

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thescriptkiddie
As to why they failed, just watch their original pitch video. Their claims are
essentially impossible.

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lotu
Would you care to elaborate? I just watched the video and didn't see anything
impossible. They claimed a small drone that would take pictures and fly itself
in some limited ways. Everything described I've either seen in other (larger)
drones or sounds easy to implement and gimmicky.

I will admit the video dosent show very much of the team that would make the
drone and I consider that a bit of armed flag.

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thescriptkiddie
The worst part was the mode where it follows you around. There is only one
device on the market (airdog) that does that, and it requires you wear a
special RF beacon and doesn't work that well. The zano was meant to follow
your phone's GPS (which isn't very accurate) and they didn't specify how it
managed to keep you in frame. I suspect it didn't.

Also, no way in hell are they getting more than five minutes flight time out
of the tiny battery they showed.

