
Skully has crashed and burned - prateekj
https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/once-promising-ar-motorcycle-helmet-startup-skully-has-crashed-and-burned/?sr_share=facebook
======
ChuckMcM
For those of you going through this for the first time, this is what the loss
of "loose money" feels like. For some it will feel "sudden" but it started
last year. "Big name" startups were getting re-valued downward by their
investors and founders trying to raise a series A or B kept getting "we would
prefer to follow in this round, rather than lead it."

I feel for the employees. One of my friends in the dot com bust showed up for
work to find the doors locked and a line of other employees outside. A
security guard was there who would escort the employee inside, they were given
a box and supervised while the put their stuff in the box (and it was
inventoried by the guard) and then they were allowed to leave and the next
person was let in. No linkedin or big social media at the time so they didn't
know that the 3 founders were all now at Apple, that Monday had been the
founder's first day in their new jobs. The dissonance was huge, it was if the
startup had never even existed. It took 3 months but his final paycheck
arrived, written out by a legal firm representing an insurance company.

Default dead, or default alive. That is a really important question right now.

~~~
hkmurakami
I also feel for the junior developers being minted in droves from the various
bootcamps across the country, but particularly in the SF Bay Area. Since we
have it the hottest here, the pain will be the most acute as well when the
downturn finally arrives in full force. Those who believed in the narrative
that a 10 week developer bootcamp was the ticket to a good job in the "new
era" will be in for a rude awakening. It'll be akin to the Law School false
promises (though not nearly as severe with respect to time and financial
commitment and loss).

I hope they have made contingency plans, or have pursued robustness in their
skills.

~~~
danielhooper
What about all the tens of thousands of students that graduate with CS or
related degrees every year?

~~~
kstrauser
They seem to fare much better, at least that I've seen. I've been in places
that've hired freshly minted BS/CSes, but I'm only aware of hiring one
bootcamp grad. She was exceptionally brilliant and motivated, and did the
bootcamp to round out her otherwise excellent skillset.

I contrast that with some I've seen turned away for being able to make a Rails
site, for instance, but with little or no knowledge of CS fundamentals. They
too might have been brilliant and motivated, but they didn't come with the
underlying knowledge they'd need to succeed in the roles we had available.

Bootcamps seem to teach tech, not theory. That's fine if you're hiring for
that specific tech! My employers have been more interested in broad theory,
though.

------
dav
I'm a Skully helmet owner. I've had it about six weeks (although only three
weeks of usage as I was on a long vacation). I picked up my helmet directly
from employees at a Skully HQ BBQ release event for the first batch of non
beta testers, so I met a lot of them. They are a good bunch, and obviously put
in a lot of effort, and found success, on a difficult and audacious endeavor.
I feel sad for them.

I'm still quite happy with my helmet. The battery life seems to not be as good
as I hoped (maybe 2-3 hours) but not a big deal as my commute is under 15
minutes.

The software is definitely beta level, but not too surprising, and software is
relatively easy to improve. I had very early on figured out a vector to load
my own firmware onto the helmet (it's basically request with a response that
points to a tarball of an android system that the helmet will download and
install). I hadn't actually tried it yet, but I suppose now that's the only
way to get improvements.

If any other hackers would like to collaborate on improving the software, or
other owners would like to commiserate, I created a face book group Skully
Owners:

[https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/)

------
danso
Its crowdfunding page, on Indiegogo, is a bit bizarre to me:

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-
s-s...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest-
motorcycle-helmet)

1,940 backers for $2.44 million, and only 24 comments? For a project with this
many backers with this much skin in the game, comments usually number in the
hundreds (if not thousands), especially as it becomes apparent that the
campaign will miss its estimated delivery dates. Even though Skully seems to
have its own website and support forum, the campaign landing page is still
where you have "noisy" backers (i.e. people who frequently back products
enough that the site becomes a social network for them).

~~~
Animats

        $2,446,824 USD raised by 1940 backers
        979% of $250,000 flexible goal 
    

Did they ship to all the Kickstarter backers?

~~~
allcheese
No, I was one of the first 25 indiegogo backers, haven't received anything.

~~~
dav
Oh man, sorry to hear that. I was part of that group too, but I got one. I
feel like I lucked out getting something at all, even though the long term
value is in some question now. What a mess.

------
a_small_island
Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews:

[https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-
Reviews-E1046917.ht...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-
Reviews-E1046917.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false)

~~~
sbierwagen
Why does management always plant incredibly glowing fake reviews? At least do
3 stars, that would look more plausible than a 5 star review praising the CEO
in a sea of 1 star reviews talking about how the CEO is burning investor
money.

~~~
mikestew
Pro tip on Glassfoor reviews: if under "advice to management" it says, "keep
doing what you're doing" it's an HR-planted review. And given how often I see
those exact words, I assume they all went to the same HR conference session.

------
whack
_" Weller ... and his brother were forced out of the company after investors
disagreed with the LeSports deal he brought to the table, opting instead for
an inside round. Another source familiar with the matter confirms his story
that he brought in the LeSports deal but said Skully was rapidly running out
of cash and it was down to the eleventh hour determining if the numbers added
up.

Adding to that, we’ve been told the board thought Weller has been so difficult
to deal with since leaving, they now don’t see the point in salvaging the
company he started.

We’re told by a source inside the company that as of Monday, investors ...
determined it was better to just shut the whole company down instead."_

In what world is shutting down, a superior alternative to selling the company
to LeSports for some cold hard cash?

~~~
bhouston
The VCs are mad at Weller -- it sounds like a pissing match to teach Weller a
lesson to do what the investors wanted or else.

~~~
ivraatiems
A pissing match costing 50+ people their livelihoods is disgusting to me. The
fact that every player in the startup game so readily screws each other over
is a big part of why I'm not in it.

------
wanderr
I actually turned down an offer from Skully a little over a year ago. They
flew me in and had me spend a week with the team. Their offer was on the low
side but I was super excited about the technology, an augmented reality helmet
is something I had been dreaming of since I started riding a motorcycle.

However, after spending a week there it was pretty clear to me that they were
in a bad place managerially, so I ran away as fast as I could. I highly doubt
that the issue is the bubble bursting in this case, it's the investors having
no confidence in the leadership.

It's a shame for the employees, I met some really awesome and talented people,
although I'm sure they'll have no trouble finding something else; one of them
I saw is at Tesla now.

Anyway, my experience was pretty terrible, they dropped the ball in every way
possible in terms of my experience being recruited, and left me with the
strong impression that they did not have their act togethe at all, from
failing to buy my ticket until the absolute last minute to not giving the
manager I would be working under any heads up about my arrival, to Mitch
repeatedly making inappropriate remarks about women, Maxim magazines in the
office bathroom, etc. On top of that the product has some major design flaws
that they were punting on, not even trying to address them and instead
scrambling to get things ready for the CEO to go on a world tour showing off
the helmet and apologizing for it being late.

I understand that consumer electronics is always kind of a shit show and
there's usually lots of last minute scrambling and crises, but their situation
seemed insane even given that. They were already thinking about version 2,
deciding to use a crappier display than was originally planned and then the
better display could be a huge reason for people to upgrade to the next
version. Meanwhile, the non-replacable helmet battery could only last a few
minutes per charge, and didn't even have deep discharge protection in place
yet. The night before the world tour kickoff, all the employees pulled an all
nighter to get things ready and then someone forgot to plug a few of the
helmets in, or plugged them into the wrong charger so the helmets were
worthless after that, cutting the number of helmets they had for the tour in
half...

After that experience with them I was pretty sure they would not be
successful, but then I saw a few months ago that BMW was working on basically
the same thing and I knew they were doomed for sure.

~~~
juicenx
Do you think BMW will ever truly productize their AR helmet though? I always
thought of that as a fun research project, and that's it. I know that I, as a
fellow rider, would never use an AR helmet - too much distraction.

~~~
mshook
While I'm a rider and I agree distractions on a motorcycle are not what you
want, just being able to do the following without having to loose sight of
what's in front of me would be great:

\- get my speed (for a traffic cam for instance)

\- have an almost 180 degrees view of what's behind me: no blind spot

\- get directions (I usually do it from memory, I don't use a GPS on my bike
just because of the distraction reason)

Keep in mind we ride between traffic lanes here so the more I can look ahead,
the better.

------
ginkgotree
Really sad to hear this. I was rooting for them and thought the helmet could
save lives, in addition to making it way easier to navigate turn-by-turn on a
motorcycle. True, not many would pay $1500 for a motorcycle, but like any
other hardware technology, that cost would have come down with scale. I
already invested half that in a normal Shoei helmet. I had planned to purchase
one to support the product and future scale once they started delivering pre-
orders. I hope someone picks up on this idea and starts it again with better
investors and culture.

------
cdibona
So having used the recon line of products (which this is a spiritual cousin
of) I can only say that these kinds of displays are kinda dodgy.

When skiing anything resembling challenging terrain, the stuff is bouncing
around and my ability to focus universally across on the then 2nd gen recon
displays was simply not possible. I'm a decent skier, but not that crazy and I
ended up returning the smith io/x using the recon screen.

On a motorbike it'd be pretty intolerable, way more bumps and stuff, I'd
think. Then you layer on the safety concerns... the very real question of what
happens when someone crashes wearing one of these helmets (Will the display
impact your eye? Will it stay far enough away to not do so? Will the battery
cause any problems when wet or exposed to impact/air etc..) probably made
insuring the company difficult, too.

I bet the other helmet makers are cutting/have cut deals with recon to
repackage their stuff anyhow, so those that want this kind of crap in their
FOV can get it.

~~~
pixelbash
Crash safety is a concern I have as well, I attend track days (for bikes) and
some of the organisers near here banned Go Pro's on helmets after one punched
through the shell in a collision.

That said there are flip down visors in plenty of helmets that do just fine,
and built in bluetooth headphones in others. So I guess it's a question of how
miniaturised and well designed it is.

------
erobbins
I saw this helmet for the first time about 3 years ago at a hardware meetup in
SF. I thought it was a sure thing at the time, pretty surprised that it's gone
belly up. It's unfortunate.

------
ansible
I recently installed a Sena BT system for my helmet. And I'm fairly pleased
with it.

It would be nice to have a HUD for driving directions, but relying on just the
voice prompts is usually sufficient.

The Skully design is neat, but I don't see a big enough market for it.

~~~
mikestew
_The Skully design is neat, but I don 't see a big enough market for it._

How much of a market could there possibly be for a $1500 helmet? I shudder at
the thought of a $700 Shuberth hitting the ground. I consider a helmet to be
disposable as well. How disposable is a $1500 helmet? And are you a Shoei head
or an Arai? IOW, will this helmet even fit my style of head, or is it going to
leave hotspots after a few hours?

Cool tech, no argument. But it needs to come down to something like a $200
add-on like the Bluetooth unit for my Nolan.

As to the ultimate reason for their demise, I have no idea. From what little
I've paid attention, I'm guessing a combination of way overpriced and, yeah,
hardware is hard.

~~~
cdibona
The article says that there were 3000 units pre-ordered. That's a fair amount
of cash, but spinning up a hardware line where there are real safety and fit
questions at hand is not trivial. Maybe they would have been better off making
something that would replace the visor on a popular model of helmet like a
shoei.

~~~
mikestew
So, 3.5 million to develop safety equipment with electronics that have to
endure wind, rain (at 90mph), shock, and general misuse (I don't treat my
helmets with nearly the care I do my iPhone)...and still make a profit. My
napkin scribbles say that would be a tall order.

EDIT: oh, yeah, and DOT/Snell testing. Don't know how much that is.

~~~
ansible
_I don 't treat my helmets with nearly the care I do my iPhone_

Just as a note to everyone: If you drop your helmet, you should throw it away.
You can't tell if the foam has been cracked, which reduces its protection.

~~~
zbun
This is a pretty common misconception. Info from Snell Foundation:
[http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq#aDroppedHelmet](http://www.smf.org/helmetfaq#aDroppedHelmet)
Most manufacturers also offer a free inspection service where you can ship
them your helmet and they'll check on the internals/foam.

~~~
ansible
That's good to know.

------
gkya
Why was actually wrong with the company? I did not understand what caused them
to stop operations. Also, the HUD seems to be a very useful thing for GPS
navigation (IDK if the rear view is all that useful, but GPS certainly is).

~~~
dmix
Hardware startups are incredibly challenging and capital intensive. It seems
they ran into the classic cash flow problem and didn't have a coherent enough
leadership situation to follow through with the next round/acquisition.

------
AcerbicZero
The idea of buying a helmet with the tech built in, from a no-name startup is
ridiculous when there are so many other factors in play.

I think the folks over at NUVIZ came up with a better stand alone solution, as
its just an external attachment that projects the HUD for any normal full face
helmet. That said, its been awhile since I've heard any updates so I'm not
exactly hopeful.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Yeah I think that's the thing that doesn't make sense to many motorcyclists
including myself. A helmet is a personal item and you want the fit, noise
level, airflow, and features that suit you exactly, especially if you ride
daily. Skully could have had interesting standalone technology (could have
had, but actually didn't) but it's nuts to marry that to a helmet since that
dramatically narrows the market only to people who want that exact kind of
helmet. An add-on makes so much more sense.

People who are willing to spend a lot of money on helmets would never have
gone for Skully's "meh" helmet with expensive tech inside.

That and it's a stupid idea. Honestly who wants to sysadmin their helmet?

~~~
dav
> Honestly who wants to sysadmin their helmet?

You sound like someone at the advent of the smart phone who says "who would
want to sysadmin their phone?"

~~~
honkhonkpants
I was inventing the smartphone when most of the people on this site were still
in second grade, so that's definitely not me. However, good taste is a key to
success. It has always been true and remains true that people do not want
everyday objects turning into software hassles. Nobody ever wanted to upgrade
Flash Player on their "smart" TV. Ever. Nobody wants to have to charge their
car keys. Nobody wants to charge their motorcycle helmet every 2 hours of
riding.

Here I am using a definition of "nobody" which means "a number of people so
close to zero that it will be virtually impossible to create a successful
company serving this tiny or non-existent market."

------
youngButEager
I know the founder, Marcus Weller. I've had business dealings with him at the
time Skully was just an idea, in the very formative stages.

I wanted to tell him "look dude, anything hardware-related will be copied in
China like tomorrow, and your price point per helmet is what?"

Being an entrepreneur myself, I thought "most founders have to fail a bunch,
so let him fail" and I said nothing. He also reneged on a commitment he made
and in my opinion thinks too highly of himself. Good luck Marcus, try again,
but stay away from high-end hardware.

~~~
yeahwhatever99
It's one thing to fail, it's another to screw your vendors.

------
sundvor
Well that's a lot of sad. I was following the helmet project and thought it
was a great idea ... should I ever (be foolish enough to) buy another
motorbike.

Some rear view mirrors are just ludicrously small. Having the rear view
projected inside the helmet's AR display would be a massive boost to safety
and confidence, as any rider who has ever waited at lights should be able to
tell you.

I feel sorry for the engineers working on this, who will not be able to bring
it to the light of day, and for all those who already paid for theirs should
chargeback not be available.

~~~
aianus
> as any rider who has ever waited at lights should be able to tell you.

You should always filter straight to the front of the line at a stop light to
avoid being hit from behind.

~~~
nhangen
That's a recipe for getting your ass kicked, or at least targeted for an
attempt.

~~~
aianus
Where do you live so I can avoid going there?

~~~
nhangen
It's like that everywhere in the US. Not always legal, and also incredibly
rude (frowned upon).

~~~
throwaway049
Contrast with the UK where 'filtering' is legal [0] and I have never heard
anything negative about it. Riders filtering won't cause me as a driver any
delay.

[0] Rule 88: [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-
motor...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-
motorcyclists-83-to-88)

~~~
manarth
Not just legal, but recommended.

You can fail your motorcycle test for not filtering when appropriate.

------
simplehuman
Very sad. I pre-ordered this a while back. I don't mind startups dying but the
way they handled the whole thing is disappointing. Absolute no communication
whatsoever about the impending disaster. In fact, I am yet to receive any
notification thus far that my order won't be fulfilled.

------
richardwhiuk
How did payments work for this? In the UK - I don't know about the US where
this was presumably 'on sale' \- you can issue a chargeback against the credit
card company if a sale falls through in this manner.

~~~
muzz
Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped. In any
case you can do a chargeback and are protected by the Fair Credit Billing
Act:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act)

~~~
jrochkind1
> Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped.

Not true.

------
Animats
Their shopping cart [1] is still taking orders as of 4:21 PM PDT.

[1] [https://www.skully.com/store](https://www.skully.com/store)

~~~
cag_ii
If you click checkout you will get a message that the product is not currently
available.

------
encore2097
Anyone who actually and seriously (more than 30min per day in diffetrnt
conditions) knows this is a gimmick. Visual focus on your enviornment is
priority one, the HUD is distracting unless done very carefully. I was thnking
of getting one to test but after meeting some of their exec team and senior
management decided against it. Honestlly not surprised but sad to hear it for
the rank and file enginner who genuinely believed in creating this product.

~~~
dav
The helmet is actually very nice. The HUD (actually technically a HMD not a
HUD) is not distracting at all. it's the size and position of a typical right
hand rear view mirror, and hardly anything visual happens on it except the
rear camera display, which is has been a fantastic enhancement to my riding
safety, although it does take some getting used to.

------
jasonlaramburu
Really unfortunate for everyone involved. In these cases, does the company
legally owe anything to the crowdfunding backers? The campaign was on
indiegogo, which I believe has much looser requirements than kickstarter for
ensuring project creators fulfill their rewards.

------
viseztrance
While people do buy helmets over the internet, they almost always test one
beforehand to see if it fits them properly. More so on a 1500 USD purchase.
Did Skully even had a single international order?

------
nullcipher
I remember reading [https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-
promise/](https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/) just last week !

------
porsupah
Perhaps not so bad my employment application with them in May didn't work
out.. nonetheless, my sympathies are with those now abruptly finding
themselves needing to secure new gigs.

------
adomanico
As a rider myself I'm not surprised.

The product seemed very gimmicky to me. I also would be very concerned how
safe the helmet is compared to a snell approved Arai Signet-Q

