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."<p>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.<p>Default dead, or default alive. That is a really important question right now.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/groups/269680180066362/</a>
Its crowdfunding page, on Indiegogo, is a bit bizarre to me:<p><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-smartest-motorcycle-helmet" rel="nofollow">https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/skully-ar-1-the-world-s-s...</a><p>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).
Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews:<p><a href="https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false" rel="nofollow">https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.ht...</a>
<i>"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.<p>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.<p>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."</i><p>In what world is shutting down, a superior alternative to selling the company to LeSports for some cold hard cash?
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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...<p>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.
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
I recently installed a Sena BT system for my helmet. And I'm fairly pleased with it.<p>It would be nice to have a HUD for driving directions, but relying on just the voice prompts is usually sufficient.<p>The Skully design is neat, but I don't see a big enough market for it.
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).
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.<p>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.
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.<p>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?"<p>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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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.
Their shopping cart [1] is still taking orders as of 4:21 PM PDT.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.skully.com/store" rel="nofollow">https://www.skully.com/store</a>
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.
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.
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?
I remember reading <a href="https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.skully.com/delivering-on-our-promise/</a> just last week !
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.
As a rider myself I'm not surprised.<p>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