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A cautionary tale for anyone who wants to start a startup. The individual story points such their $499 price point or their "fake" video are, in my opinion, no
by sonyalo 9y ago
A cautionary tale for anyone who wants to start a startup.
The individual story points such their $499 price point or their "fake" video are, in my opinion, not the cause of their failure. For one, many companies, especially early stage ones, operate and even sell at a loss to get their product and brand out into the world and in the hands of customers.
Second, as has been pointed out here, products have been promoted before where the advertised features were not fully functional at the time of their promotion.
I also think that the features advertised are possible to build, even if not as perfectly advertised (i.e. I never expected the drone to fly if I were to, say, chuck it off of the empire state building).
I believe the root cause of the Lily's failure was in its founders execution. Releasing the drone with at least a couple of basic features may have pissed people off in that it didn't come as fully advertised but it would've have probably saved them a government investigation; and a well executed (as well as transparent and sincere) PR campaign would have quelled the masses.
The lean startup process would have been perfect in this scenario. The two features I would've picked would have been the follow feature (even if the range was limited) and the throw and go feature (even if it could only function as a "light" throw).
Comments like "It was a combination of hubris plus optimism" and "An engineer who led the software development team insisted on revamping the drone software to be his own original invention" are red flags that the founder's attitude and management was flawed and their ultimate downfall.
The moral of the story for any aspiring entrepreneur as I see it is to stay humble, spend your money carefully, and above all, learn from those around you. Take heed of advice and warnings from others. Perhaps if they had done that, we'd all be watching them fly towards success.