9 ms·

Skully has crashed and burned

142 points by prateekj 10y ago

richardwhiuk 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped. Not true.
  - muzz 10y ago
    My original post may have been incorrect if Skully was crowdfunded-- in that case FCBA does not apply
ChuckMcM 10y ago
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.
- mathattack 10y ago
  "we would prefer to follow in this round, rather than lead it." There are some legal reasons for this if it's a down round. If the initial investment is in one fund, and there's a down round in another, they need someone else to drive pricing so that it doesn't look like they're favoring one fund at the expense of the other. (I'm not sure why this isn't an issue during an up round)
  - ganeumann 10y ago
    It's often an issue in up-rounds as well. Sometimes firms can't follow-on from a different fund even if they're following, up-round or down-round. That's why funds usually reserve money for follow-on investments. Firms often have to go back to their LPs if they want to invest in the same company across funds.
    - mathattack 10y ago
      This highlights why it's important to see how VCs operate over time on issues like these. Some VCs make transition rounds easier than others.
- lifeisstillgood 10y ago
  My question is that with 10 trillion dollars in bonds that the lender now has to pay in order to lend to the Swiss / US / Japanese governments, just how good does the likely return on startups have to be to get some of that money re-investing? Or is it simply that with wars, elections, terrorism and Brexit, everyone is scared?
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    Wars, elections, terrorism have always existed, and if by "elections" you mean Trump, business in general would not care (of course, some businesses may benefit more from this or that candidate). Business has been and is being done regardless of politics for ages. The guy who organized the already heavily ailing GDR (East Germany) another 5 billion DM credit in 1983 was the most right-wing party head of Germany at the time - the political differences between the players can hardly be any more extreme. Terrorism has in Europe has been much higher in previous decades - Germany, Spain, Britain (and I may forget a few other countries) all had their own very active domestic terrorists. What's the use of pointing to negative interest rates - if you can't make money with the business you'd always lose even more. Same reason why pointing to tax rates is disingenuous except for special cases - either a business makes sense or it doesn't. If you don't show a profit tax levels there's no need to worry about tax levels. Same goes for your example, if the business does not seem viable what use is it to point to an overall difficult situation, should you continue investing into what you think is a bad business just because of that?
ansible 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      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 10y ago
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sundvor 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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.
  - jwarzech 10y ago
    In the U.S. lane splitting is only legal in certain states.
  - nhangen 10y ago
    That's a recipe for getting your ass kicked, or at least targeted for an attempt.
    - aianus 10y ago
      Where do you live so I can avoid going there?
      - nhangen 10y ago
        It's like that everywhere in the US. Not always legal, and also incredibly rude (frowned upon).
        throwaway049 10y ago
gkya 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
ginkgotree 10y ago
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.
deleted 10y ago
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erobbins 10y ago
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.
adomanico 10y ago
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
a_small_island 10y ago
Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.ht...
- sbierwagen 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
  - imauld 10y ago
    > The challenges are multidisciplinary and are always challenging. Challenging challenges? Sign me up!
  - wwalser 10y ago
    I agree that this specific case looks pretty damning but as a general rule I've always considered Glassdoor reviews to be a poor proxy for company quality. It suffers from the same problems of all other anonymous review platforms with a few unique kinks thrown in for good measure. IMO, it's a reasonable way to get a pulse but not much more. As for the fake reviews… People across the org may have wildly divergent experiences working at a company. Even a fairly small company. Often the person who someone reports directly to has an outsized impact on said person's experience. In an early stage company the individuals doing people management tend to be, at best, very new to that specific part of the job. At worst the company grows large-ish before any official "reports-to" structure is put in place. I've worked at places where my advice to leadership would be "keep doing what you're doing" while other Glassdoor reviews seemed to have had one of the worst experiences of their lives. That doesn't mean that I planted a review. Maybe I had a particularly good manager? I could have worked in the only good part of the org or a negative review may have come from someone who worked in the only bad part of the org.
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danso 10y ago
Its crowdfunding page, on Indiegogo, is a bit bizarre to me: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest-motorcycle-helmet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-s... 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 10y ago
  $2,446,824 USD raised by 1940 backers 979% of $250,000 flexible goal Did they ship to all the Kickstarter backers?
  - allcheese 10y ago
    No, I was one of the first 25 indiegogo backers, haven't received anything.
    - dav 10y ago
      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.
whack 10y ago
"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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  > In what world is shutting down, a superior alternative to selling the company to LeSports for some cold hard cash? In a world with lots of cash where a companny like Skully is just pocket change and they'd rather not deal with as they have bigger fish to fry. So you are in the business of buying and selling houses and you do $1M transactions every month. This is like finding a lawn mower in a garage, and yeah you could sell it for $200 on Cragslist, but in the big scheme of things it is not worth your time.
  - bravo22 10y ago
    Any company IP would be cheaper to pick-up in a post shutdown sale. It isn't the VCs personal money they invested, but they do have a lot of personal relationships which could pay off in the future for strategic reasons. You don't need all the investors on board to pull off such a thing. I've seen it before.
cdibona 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
- dav 10y ago
  I really don't think the HMD would be a problem in a crash. If it somehow came into contact with my face, it would basically mean the helmet caved in, in which case I already am in plenty of trouble so who cares about the HMD.
- manarth 10y ago
  I tried Recon's skiing goggles and found their HUD awful. A true HUD doesn't need you to look away, or refocus your eyes. The Recon screen's position (near the bottom of the goggles) means you have to almost go cross-eyed to read it, and focus on short-distance…absolutely not what you want when you're skiing! Their handbook says it should only be looked at when stationary. BMW's HUD looks like the way forward : a sunken dash-mounted display, which projects the data onto the windscreen. In other words a true HUD: directly in your line of sight, no need to refocus your eyes. I'd be interested to understand if there's some technical limitation preventing this approach with goggles/helmets.
Animats 10y ago
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 10y ago
  If you click checkout you will get a message that the product is not currently available.
porsupah 10y ago
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.
AcerbicZero 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    > 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 10y ago
      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."
nullcipher 10y ago
I remember reading https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/ https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/ just last week !
dav 10y ago
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/
encore2097 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
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.
simplehuman 10y ago
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.
youngButEager 10y ago
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 10y ago
  It's one thing to fail, it's another to screw your vendors.
wanderr 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
viseztrance 10y ago
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?

142 points by prateekj 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > Most of the time, credit cards are not charged until goods are shipped. Not true.
- muzz 10y ago
  My original post may have been incorrect if Skully was crowdfunded-- in that case FCBA does not apply

ChuckMcM 10y ago

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.

mathattack 10y ago
"we would prefer to follow in this round, rather than lead it." There are some legal reasons for this if it's a down round. If the initial investment is in one fund, and there's a down round in another, they need someone else to drive pricing so that it doesn't look like they're favoring one fund at the expense of the other. (I'm not sure why this isn't an issue during an up round)
- ganeumann 10y ago
  It's often an issue in up-rounds as well. Sometimes firms can't follow-on from a different fund even if they're following, up-round or down-round. That's why funds usually reserve money for follow-on investments. Firms often have to go back to their LPs if they want to invest in the same company across funds.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    This highlights why it's important to see how VCs operate over time on issues like these. Some VCs make transition rounds easier than others.
lifeisstillgood 10y ago
My question is that with 10 trillion dollars in bonds that the lender now has to pay in order to lend to the Swiss / US / Japanese governments, just how good does the likely return on startups have to be to get some of that money re-investing? Or is it simply that with wars, elections, terrorism and Brexit, everyone is scared?
- Noseshine 10y ago
  Wars, elections, terrorism have always existed, and if by "elections" you mean Trump, business in general would not care (of course, some businesses may benefit more from this or that candidate). Business has been and is being done regardless of politics for ages. The guy who organized the already heavily ailing GDR (East Germany) another 5 billion DM credit in 1983 was the most right-wing party head of Germany at the time - the political differences between the players can hardly be any more extreme. Terrorism has in Europe has been much higher in previous decades - Germany, Spain, Britain (and I may forget a few other countries) all had their own very active domestic terrorists. What's the use of pointing to negative interest rates - if you can't make money with the business you'd always lose even more. Same reason why pointing to tax rates is disingenuous except for special cases - either a business makes sense or it doesn't. If you don't show a profit tax levels there's no need to worry about tax levels. Same goes for your example, if the business does not seem viable what use is it to point to an overall difficult situation, should you continue investing into what you think is a bad business just because of that?

ansible 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

sundvor 10y ago

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 10y ago
> 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.
- jwarzech 10y ago
  In the U.S. lane splitting is only legal in certain states.
- nhangen 10y ago
  That's a recipe for getting your ass kicked, or at least targeted for an attempt.
  - aianus 10y ago
    Where do you live so I can avoid going there?
    - nhangen 10y ago
      It's like that everywhere in the US. Not always legal, and also incredibly rude (frowned upon).
      - throwaway049 10y ago

gkya 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

ginkgotree 10y ago

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.

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erobbins 10y ago

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.

adomanico 10y ago

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

a_small_island 10y ago

Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.ht...

sbierwagen 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
- imauld 10y ago
  > The challenges are multidisciplinary and are always challenging. Challenging challenges? Sign me up!
- wwalser 10y ago
  I agree that this specific case looks pretty damning but as a general rule I've always considered Glassdoor reviews to be a poor proxy for company quality. It suffers from the same problems of all other anonymous review platforms with a few unique kinks thrown in for good measure. IMO, it's a reasonable way to get a pulse but not much more. As for the fake reviews… People across the org may have wildly divergent experiences working at a company. Even a fairly small company. Often the person who someone reports directly to has an outsized impact on said person's experience. In an early stage company the individuals doing people management tend to be, at best, very new to that specific part of the job. At worst the company grows large-ish before any official "reports-to" structure is put in place. I've worked at places where my advice to leadership would be "keep doing what you're doing" while other Glassdoor reviews seemed to have had one of the worst experiences of their lives. That doesn't mean that I planted a review. Maybe I had a particularly good manager? I could have worked in the only good part of the org or a negative review may have come from someone who worked in the only bad part of the org.

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danso 10y ago

Its crowdfunding page, on Indiegogo, is a bit bizarre to me: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest-motorcycle-helmet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-s... 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 10y ago
$2,446,824 USD raised by 1940 backers 979% of $250,000 flexible goal Did they ship to all the Kickstarter backers?
- allcheese 10y ago
  No, I was one of the first 25 indiegogo backers, haven't received anything.
  - dav 10y ago
    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.

whack 10y ago

"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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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.
rdtsc 10y ago
> In what world is shutting down, a superior alternative to selling the company to LeSports for some cold hard cash? In a world with lots of cash where a companny like Skully is just pocket change and they'd rather not deal with as they have bigger fish to fry. So you are in the business of buying and selling houses and you do $1M transactions every month. This is like finding a lawn mower in a garage, and yeah you could sell it for $200 on Cragslist, but in the big scheme of things it is not worth your time.
- bravo22 10y ago
  Any company IP would be cheaper to pick-up in a post shutdown sale. It isn't the VCs personal money they invested, but they do have a lot of personal relationships which could pay off in the future for strategic reasons. You don't need all the investors on board to pull off such a thing. I've seen it before.

cdibona 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.
dav 10y ago
I really don't think the HMD would be a problem in a crash. If it somehow came into contact with my face, it would basically mean the helmet caved in, in which case I already am in plenty of trouble so who cares about the HMD.
manarth 10y ago
I tried Recon's skiing goggles and found their HUD awful. A true HUD doesn't need you to look away, or refocus your eyes. The Recon screen's position (near the bottom of the goggles) means you have to almost go cross-eyed to read it, and focus on short-distance…absolutely not what you want when you're skiing! Their handbook says it should only be looked at when stationary. BMW's HUD looks like the way forward : a sunken dash-mounted display, which projects the data onto the windscreen. In other words a true HUD: directly in your line of sight, no need to refocus your eyes. I'd be interested to understand if there's some technical limitation preventing this approach with goggles/helmets.

Animats 10y ago

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 10y ago
If you click checkout you will get a message that the product is not currently available.

porsupah 10y ago

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.

AcerbicZero 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  > 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 10y ago
    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."

nullcipher 10y ago

I remember reading https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/ https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/ just last week !

dav 10y ago

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/

encore2097 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago

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.

simplehuman 10y ago

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.

youngButEager 10y ago

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 10y ago
It's one thing to fail, it's another to screw your vendors.

wanderr 10y ago

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 10y ago
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.

viseztrance 10y ago

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?