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The Inside Story of the Lily Drone's Collapse (wired.com)
New submitter mirandakatz writes: Lily Robotics had everything: Two charismatic young founders; millions in funding; and a product that promised to change the world -- or, at the very least, transform photography. But over 60,000 customers are still waiting for their Lily Drones, and the company is now being sued by the San Francisco District Attorney's office for false advertising. As it turns out, Lily Robotics never actually had the right tools to create the product it was selling -- and it all came crashing down. At Backchannel, Jessica Pishko has the untold story of how such a promising company went so wrong.
From the report: "The magic of the Lily Drone was in its concept: It was a product you could unpack and throw -- so easy, Antoine Balaresque, the cofounder and CEO of Lily Robotics, wrote in emails, that even an old person could do it. But translating that idea into a tangible product proved difficult, and the storytelling that made the Lily Drone so tantalizing to consumers ultimately factored into its downfall. In one of his presentations, Balaresque presented a PowerPoint slide with the sentence, 'Humans have a fundamental need to put themselves in the center of stories.' It appeared to be a quote he made up, but the idea that human nature needs stories is fundamental. Stories are how we make sense of our lives. But while a good story can get you funding and acclaim, ultimately it isn't enough."
From the report: "The magic of the Lily Drone was in its concept: It was a product you could unpack and throw -- so easy, Antoine Balaresque, the cofounder and CEO of Lily Robotics, wrote in emails, that even an old person could do it. But translating that idea into a tangible product proved difficult, and the storytelling that made the Lily Drone so tantalizing to consumers ultimately factored into its downfall. In one of his presentations, Balaresque presented a PowerPoint slide with the sentence, 'Humans have a fundamental need to put themselves in the center of stories.' It appeared to be a quote he made up, but the idea that human nature needs stories is fundamental. Stories are how we make sense of our lives. But while a good story can get you funding and acclaim, ultimately it isn't enough."
In traditional development, sure. In crowdfunding, which this was, the process is generally *meant* to work like this:
1. Idea for product.
2. Basic design and proof of concept for product.
3. Sell idea of product to raise funds for the next three steps.
4. Develop and build product.
5. Test product.
6. Ship product to backers.
7. Sell product to non-backers.
8. Profit.
Repeat steps 4, 5 and occassionally (or not so occassionally *cough* Star Citizen *cough*) step 3 as required.
Unfortunately there are two common and related failings in this approach. Developers often skimp on stage 2 and just produce the equivalent of a glossy brochure and vague promises, which is what happened with the Lily Drone, while potential backers often fail at their due diligence (AKA they have defective bullshit detectors) at step 3 and/or commit more funds than they really should - often excessively so. That latter part is the real failing; without funds, there are no stages 4-8 and no one needs to lose any money with many crowdfunding systems. There's nothing wrong with throwing a few bucks at a long-shot project like Lily, but you need to be aware of the chances of sucess and treat it like the gamble that it is and accept that you're quite probably going to lose your money. If you're throwing a few hundred bucks at something, without any proof that the project founders can actually deliver, and especially if you can't really afford to just lose the money, then you probably need the lesson you're going to get.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So this company was funded purely on a 'story' no 'working prototype' at all...
They had a partially working prototype, but an inability to push it into a final product. There was also a bunch of managerial incompetence. It's interesting that the prototype that worked best was loaded with Open Source software to do the major work. It was only when the lead software "engineer" scapped it all to rewrite it himself that the product really started falling apart.
...only after they get a piss pot of money do they even try to figure out how to build it simply to discover the 'tools' (e.g. 'technology' didn't exist)
This is where you give away that you didn't bother reading the article. The technology exists, but the company didn't have the ability to integrate them into the Lily.
...anyone investing in this shouldn't get their money back as far as I'm concerned.
That's pretty jerkish to all the victims who lost money to those thieves.
Yes - I hate "ideas people". Have to dismiss these idiots all the time in open-source development: "Well, interesting idea, come back when you have a patch implementing it." Then they get offended because they can't code, they just had this idea they think is great and want the devs to code it up for them!
But ideas are cheap indeed. Most ideas from "ideas people" are impossible/unfeasible, and it is too much refuting them all with a nice explanation of why it can't work. Hence ruder dismissals designed to keep "ideas people" away and give the impression of a hostile forum. A few of their ideas are feasible, but the reason nobody works on them is because everybody is working on some feasible idea of their own which is more interesting.
"Ideas people" are not special at all. All the useable ideas they come up with is stuff that devs are perfectly capable of coming up with themselves. Ideas are easy to come up with - be it in coding, electronics or mechanics. Actually going through with them is more work, even when feasible.