Down In Flames: Kickstarter’s Biggest Failure

The little drone that cost almost US$3.5Million

Mark Harris is a technology journalist. He’s written for The Economist, The Guardian and New Scientist, among others. In December 2015 he was tasked with what may have been his most unusual assignment yet. Kickstarter contacted Harris, asking him to compile a report on one of the platform’s biggest failures — a tiny drone named the Zano from Welsh company Torquing Group. He recently published his 13,000-word opus on Medium, explaining the failure and giving the backers some closure on where the project went wrong.

As Harris explains in his piece, the Zano was a microdrone, boasting such high-tech features as Wi-Fi connectivity, automatic tracking, obstacle avoidance and selfie shooting. When it debuted on Kickstarter in November 2014, the creators of the Zano said “Our supply chain is 100% ready to go, from vital components that make Zano fly, to the very boxes that Zano is packaged in.” For a pledge as small as £139 (around US$210), backers were promised a Zano of their own within 8 months.

The Zano campaign exploded on Kickstarter, earning a spot on the front page of the site with a ‘Staff Pick’. By January 2015, over 12,000 backers from around the world had pledged an amazing £2.3m (nearly $3.5m), more than 20 times the original goal, and were told they would receive their drone by June 2015. It was, and still is, Kickstarter’s most funded European campaign.

Torquing Group was ecstatic, and understandably so. However, soon after the funding was secured, the project began to unravel. While early updates were full of optimism, months began to pass and there were more and more project updates without any signs of fulfilment. Disgruntled backers began to voice their frustration on social media.

In September 2015, after numerous delays, a handful of Zanos were shipped, but just a tiny fraction of those that had been promised. What was worse, many of the Kickstarter backers were overlooked in favour of those who had funded the Zano through Torquing Group’s website. Those that received them expressed their disappointment at the limited functionality of the product. Reports surfaced about drones that would hover briefly off the ground before crashing back to earth. The cameras were awful and the autonomous features that had been marketed so heavily were completely absent. The Kickstarter delivery date was pushed back to 2016, but it was obvious that something was badly wrong at Torquing Group.

“Going from potentially building 1,500 to 10 times that number was a monstrous headache and created a lot of issues in itself.”

As Harris’ report details, there were a number of factors at play in the downfall of the Zano, but the most crucial was deciding to launch into full production before the product was ready. “I was very strongly opposed to going down the avenue of committing so much to stock so early,” former CEO Ivan Reedman told Harris. “I made my opinion known, but ultimately, what happened happened.”

Ultimately, the crushing weight of expectation killed the project before it had a chance to take off. Reedman confesses that the volume was simply too much, and that the company over-promised what they could deliver, especially in an 8-month window. “If we’d doubled our goal, we would have had 1,500 drones,” he told Harris. “We could have tested every single drone, literally have had somebody flying each drone before they got sent out. Going from potentially building 1,500 to 10 times that number was a monstrous headache and created a lot of issues in itself.”

Much of the footage in the Kickstarter video was faked or manipulated to make the Zano prototype look more ready than it was

Harris also reveals that much of the footage in the Kickstarter video (arguably the main factor in many backers decision to back the project) was faked or manipulated to make the Zano prototype look more ready than it was.

In November 2014 the collapse of the project was confirmed when Torquing announced via a Kickstarter update that it was entering liquidation. “It’s our reputation on the line every time,”, says Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler, explaining the decision to hire Harris. “The only reason that Zano was able to raise this amount of money is because we have done such a good job administering this platform and working with trusted creators over the last six years. And when something like Zano happens, that burns.”

As per Kickstarter’s terms of use, the fault for the failure lies with the creators, not with Kickstarter, but more than 12,000 backers are unlikely to recieve any kind of reimbursement. Ultimately, Harris report is a reminder that crowdfunding is a risky business, still finding its feet. Be careful what you back, and never pledge money that you can’t afford to lose.

For more information, be sure to read his full report here on the Zano.

This is an edited version of an article that first appeared on Bokeh.