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Skully has crashed and burned

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Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#41

Post by rhizome »

api wrote: post #28
a_small_island wrote: post #18

Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.ht...

"management is throwing away investors' money on hot cars, bikes, parties and travels etc (only for themselves of course)" Can't comment on whether this is true in this case but I've seen it before and I always wonder how, and where are the investors, and aren't they paying attention, and ....?

I wouldn't be surprised if it's generally categorized as either Bizdev or Teambuilding, and thus prevalidated as a run-of-the-mill expenditure (not a technical term). Holiday party type stuff.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#42

Post by johncolanduoni »

ben_jones wrote: post #31
hkmurakami wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also feel for the junior developers being minted in droves from the various bootcamps across the country, but particularly in the SF Bay Area. Since we have it the hottest here, the pain will be the most acute as well when the downturn finally arrives in full force. Those who believed in the narrative that a 10 week developer bootcamp was the ticket to a good job in the "new era" will be in for a rude awakening. It…

I would feel for them if their weren't tens of thousands of C.S. graduates who payed north of $80,000 and four years of their lives for the privilege of entering the future job market. We need more STEM right?!

To be fair, not getting a CS degree (even if you want to code) has been fairly popular advice for a while now.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#43

Post by abtinf »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

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…

> No linkedin or big social media at the time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#44

Post by encore2097 »

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.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#45

Post by honkhonkpants »

AcerbicZero wrote: post #34

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.

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?

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#46

Post by jwarzech »

aianus wrote: post #32
sundvor wrote: post #6

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 enginee…

> 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.

In the U.S. lane splitting is only legal in certain states.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#47

Post by pixelbash »

cdibona wrote: post #25

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…

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.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#48

Post by dharmon »

api wrote: post #28
a_small_island wrote: post #18

Skully has a few interesting glassdoor reviews: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SKULLY-Reviews-E1046917.ht...

"management is throwing away investors' money on hot cars, bikes, parties and travels etc (only for themselves of course)" Can't comment on whether this is true in this case but I've seen it before and I always wonder how, and where are the investors, and aren't they paying attention, and ....?

Investors will look at financial statements (in whatever sad form they exist at most startups), but they don't look at itemized expenses. They also expect lots of money to be spent.

For example, let's say I wanted to take an expensive vacation. I would fly to Europe (1st class, of course), stay in nice hotels, and basically live it up. I would mark this down as a "recruiting expense", or "customer acquisition cost". If the investor cared to drill down to this level, all they would see is a $75,000 trip to Europe for recruiting. They wouldn't know how many people went, or how successful it was. $75k is nothing next to an engineer's salary, and a recruiter would take a fee on the same order of magnitude, so I doubt they would bat an eye, but a 20-something founder could take a pretty sweet vacay for $75k.

Want a new motorcycle? Its for product testing, of course. New $80k Tesla? We're exploring how our tech could be expanded to used in cars, not just with motorcycles. Hookers and blow? Team building.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#49

Post by 467568985476 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

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…

Anecdotally, it seems that investors (funds, really) are getting more conservative with series A rounds, but the seed money is still quite loose. But bubble-spec is kind of a pointless thing to argue on the internet. Either buy your short positions and laugh all the way to the bank if you're right, or don't, but creating FUD is bad for everyone.

Re: Skully has crashed and burned

#50

Post by ganeumann »

mathattack wrote: post #8
ChuckMcM wrote: post #3

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…

"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)

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.

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