Kickstarter Hires Journalist To Probe Collapse Of Zano Drone Project

Here’s an intriguing move: crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has commissioned a freelance journalist to investigate — and ultimately (it hopes) explain — the collapse of a high profile drone project which was also the most funded European project to date.

The immediate audience for the article is the more than 12,000 very irate backers who collectively pledged more than £2.3 million in the hopes of being shipped an autonmous micro drone called Zano this summer.

But it will also be made publicly available so anyone can read the lessons contained therein.

The Zano drone was billed as “intelligent enough to fly all by itself” when it launched onKickstarter in November 2014, with the team touting on-board sensors for obstacle detection and avoidance — which they claimed would also enable other advanced features such as the ability for multiple Zanos to fly together in a swarm. Given thatmicro drones have been in the market for years, the autonomous element was Zano’s primary differentiator.

The company was still claiming it was “on target” with its development schedule at the end of May. In an email to TechCrunch on May 31, Zano’s marketing and business development director Reece Crowther wrote: “The good news, we’re on target with our development schedule and expect to be in a position to supply production ZANOs by June-end/Early-July.”

Crowther also offered to “give a full demo” of the drone, and sent links to two videos apparently showing the Zano’s obstacle avoidance tech in action, and detailing how the latest stage of development was progressing (both videos are no longer available as the company’s YouTube account has been closed).

The problem was their tech claims never panned out and the drone never shipped. The hardware was still clearly far from ready when the BBC visited the firm in Wales to get a demo in August 2015. The news organization reported that it watched the drone fail to function outdoors and found it could only fly indoors for around five minutes before running out of battery.

“Nevertheless, the company is determined to start shipping the Zano to backers at the end of this week,” wrote the BBC‘s Rory Cellan-Jones at the end of August.

Zano did not ship the following week. And the CEO of the business resigned in November, citing “personal health issues and irreconcilable differences”. The company collapsed into voluntary liquidation shortly afterwards — leaving Kickstarter with a PR disaster on its hands.

If you’re in the storytelling business, as Kickstarter is by proxy — given it’s a platform for storytellers to sell their ideas — then figuring out a way to create satisfying narratives when things go wrong is a smart move. Although there still remains a risk that some critical analysis might end up being directed at Kickstarter itself. But if it’s seen to be trying to learn from its mistakes that’s at least a better look than silence and the perception of failures being swept under the carpet.

Explaining the commission in a Medium post, the journalist in question — Mark Harris— says Kickstarter is paying him for his services, and will be seeing the article before it’s published (likely in mid-January). However he claims the company won’t have any editorial control or input into the content of what he writes.

Looking into Kickstarter’s role in the project is a specific part of the commission, according to Harris.