The Lily camera drone has been shared online for many times, however, it seems the hype will not guarantee sustainability. Despite the Lily Robotics earning $34 million in pre-orders, the company admitted that it won't be able to deliver their product.
The Lily co-founders Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow revealed through a blog post called "The Adventure Comes to an End" that they were unable to secure financing to unlock their manufacturing line and send out their first units. As a result, the company is planning to wind down and instead provide refunds to customers over the next two months. Customers do not need to do anything except wait for refunds to appear in statements. The company will refund to the payment cards used for the original transactions. However, customers with expired payment cards are required to fill up a form that will help them be given refunds through other means like Paypal or a check.
The initial promotional material for the Lily camera drone wowed the public with its smart sensing abilities packed into a quadcopter that can capture pretty stunning images. Lily was marketed as a "throw and shoot camera" which works by simply being thrown it into the air. The drone would then readily track its users with a tracking puck while taking still shots at 12 MP and 1080p videos at 60 fps and can last up to 20 minutes. The drone was also apparently slated to be safe for landing in water.
Lily's pre-sale price costs $899 which was set to increase to $999 for its regular retail price.
Another failed Kickstarter that raised millions was the highly funded Zano, marketed as the world's most sophisticated autonomous intelligent nano drone. By the end of January 8, 2015, there were over 12,000 funders who pledged around $3.5m which was 20 times the original goal.
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