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Kickstarter has no clue how drone startup raised $3.4M then imploded

9 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

DigitalSea 11y ago
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.
pavornyoh 11y ago
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..
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  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.
thescriptkiddie 11y ago
As to why they failed, just watch their original pitch video. Their claims are essentially impossible.
- lotu 11y ago
  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.
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    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.
joeld42 11y ago
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.

9 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

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.

pavornyoh 11y ago

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..

pavel_lishin 11y ago
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.

thescriptkiddie 11y ago

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

lotu 11y ago
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.
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  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.

joeld42 11y ago

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.