The Flying Lily Camera Drone is Dead, Buyers Will Be Refunded (mashable.com)

The Lily Camera drone, which could begin recording as soon as you threw it into the air and would follow your movements automatically, has failed to materialize. The startup, which took pre-orders worth more than $34 million for its drone camera said Thursday they are shutting down the company and will issue refunds. From a report: The Lily company faced "many ups and downs" last year, the company said, adding that they couldn't secure financing for manufacturing and shipping the first batch of units. The Lily cameras were originally started to begin shipping in February 2016, but the co-founders said "software issues" resulted in a delay in the shipment. Later in October, the team gave people another chance to purchase the device, adding that stores will re-open in 2017. As of last month, the company hadn't shipped a single unit.

Comments

Too long, too late

[Holi]

Probably didn't help that many drones appeared on the market in the past year with the same capabilities. I can walk into a Best Buy and buy a drone that can follow and film me today.

Re:Too long, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

Best Buy is filled with drones that will follow you around automatically.

Oh. You mean the flying ones, not the meat flesh ones.

Nevermind. Carry on.

Re:Too long, too late

[drinkypoo]

I can walk into a Best Buy and buy a drone that can follow and film me today.

Even iNav can follow you today, all they had to implement was aiming the gimbal. As such jobs go, it was trivial.

Re:this gives me an idea

[Holi]

Next time you have an idea to defraud people, you probably shouldn't post it on a public forum. Just pm it to me and I'll let you know how effective it was.

Re:Well better than some other startups.

[David_Hart]

Despite them not succeeding, you have to give them credit for at least refunding folks compared to other epic failures on Kickstarter. In the last year, we've also seen the number of consumer drones skyrocket leading to more "accidents" so maybe the market is starting to saturate.

This is why, in my opinion, Kickstarter, et al., should be investment based (i.e. shares). At least then you could write off losses due to failure on your tax return. What they could do is issue you shares and then provide an option to turn in those shares for the product when it ships or keep them in case the company succeeds. Of course, doing it this way would incur all kinds of legal costs, force them to make the books public, and complicate things. Which is probably why they don't do it.

Oh please

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"The startup, which took pre-orders worth more than $34 million..."

FFS, you had $34 million dollars in your pocket and couldn't ship one fucking product?

They should rename themselves, "Hopeless Lamers Inc" and their company motto should be, "We Can't Do Shit".

Re:Oh please

[DerekLyons]

FFS, you had $34 million dollars in your pocket and couldn't ship one fucking product?

IIRC there are legal limits on when you take that money out of (what is essentially) escrow. That is, the $34 million wasn't actually in their pocket and they (legally) couldn't put it in their pocket until they had a product to ship. That's one of the reasons why Kickstarter brands products to be delivered in the future as 'rewards' rather than 'pre-orders'. (Which doesn't stop people from seeing or using those rewards as pre-orders though.)

Re:Oh please

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They could either arrive late with a crappy product or give people (some?) money back so they could just buy a Mavic like everyone else. Which would you choose?

For starters I'd choose not to plow my money into anything they ever did again.

Bottom line: Give me $34 million dollars and I'll ship a working product. FFS, they could have bought COTS gear and added their own special sauce to make it work.

I don't know the first fucking thing about making a drone that follows you around but give me $34 million dollars and I could fucking well make it happen. This is NOT a $34 million dollar problem; this is maybe a $1 million dollar problem, and that includes the hookers and blow.

Re:Oh please

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Did they actually get the full money from the pre-order?

I don't know, but the headline said "...Buyers Will Be Refunded" and the story stated, "they are shutting down the company and will issue refunds", so I'm thinking they took the money upfront.

It sounds like a colossal clusterfuck of epic proportions. I mean, this thing is a fucking toy, it doesn't have to fly to space, survive reentry, or work under battlefield conditions. It's a fucking plastic drone that follows you around.

It was supposed to cost $799. Tell ya what- you give me just $20 million dollars in start-up funding and I'll ship a working product in under a year for $399.

Re:this gives me an idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're not a sociopath.

Re:lolz

[shaitand]

So what exactly did they do with the $34 million dollars? That seems like a substantial amount of funding just to ship a first round of a basic electronics product.

Re:Well better than some other startups.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Recent regulation was changed to allow for "crowdfunding" startups this way, where you can actually get shares of the business this way. I haven't heard of anyone doing this yet, though I understand the option is legally available now.

Ups and downs

[wonkey_monkey]

The Lily company faced "many ups and downs" last year

Well... you'd hope so, really, when you're developing a drone.