The Lily Camera Drone: The Selfie Drone That Faked Its Own Demo Video

In 2015, a startup called Lily Robotics released a product video so compelling that it became the drone industry's equivalent of a Hollywood trailer. A man throws a small white drone into the air. It hovers. It follows him as he kayaks, snowboards, runs through fields. The footage is gorgeous — stabilized, cinematic, effortlessly tracking its subject through terrain that would challenge a professional camera operator.

The video went viral. Thirty-four million dollars in pre-orders flooded in from people who watched a man throw a drone in the air and thought, "I would like to throw a drone in the air."

One problem: the footage in the demo video wasn't shot by the Lily drone. It was shot by a GoPro mounted on a completely different, much larger drone. The Lily drone — the product people were actually paying for — didn't exist in a form capable of producing that footage. The beautiful video was a lie. The stunning tracking shots were a lie. The silky stabilization was a lie. The only honest part of the video was the man throwing something in the air, because throwing things is easy. Making them fly is the hard part.

Lily Robotics declared bankruptcy in January 2017 without shipping a single unit to customers. The San Francisco District Attorney sued for false advertising. The company settled for $375,000 in refunds — approximately one penny on the dollar for the $34 million in pre-orders.

The Vision: Throw It and Forget It

The Lily pitch was the pinnacle of millennial-targeted drone marketing: a "throw and shoot" camera that required zero skill, zero piloting experience, and zero thought. You literally threw it in the air and it did the rest. It would follow you using a GPS tracking device worn on your wrist. It was waterproof. It was autonomous. It was, in the company's words, "the world's first throw-and-shoot camera."

The founders, Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, were graduates of UC Berkeley's robotics program. They had credentials. They had a working prototype — of sorts. They had a vision of a drone so simple that anyone could use it, which is a noble goal that unfortunately requires the drone to function, a requirement they were less focused on.

Pre-orders opened at $499 for early birds, eventually rising to $899. The website promised delivery in February 2016. February 2016 arrived. The drone did not.

The Glorious User Experience

Jess from Boulder, CO — ★☆☆☆☆

"I pre-ordered a Lily in May 2015 because the video showed it following a snowboarder through fresh powder and I am, above all things, a person susceptible to well-produced marketing. I received exactly twelve monthly 'we're almost there!' emails, zero drones, and eventually, a bankruptcy notice. My $499 is gone. The snowboarder from the video is fine. He was being filmed by a different drone the entire time. I am not fine."

Alex from San Francisco, CA — ★☆☆☆☆

"I went to a Lily demo event in San Francisco. They showed the video on a big screen. Everyone clapped. Nobody asked to see the drone actually fly, because the video was so convincing that asking seemed rude, like asking a magician to explain the trick. In retrospect, asking would have been extremely appropriate, because the trick was that there was no drone."

Raj from Austin, TX — ★☆☆☆☆

"What gets me is that the San Francisco DA proved the video was filmed with a different camera on a different drone. They didn't even bother to fake it with their own prototype doing a mediocre job. They went full Hollywood and used professional equipment and a professional drone and professional editing and then said, 'This is what our $499 consumer product does.' That's not exaggeration. That's fiction. I could sell you a video of my Honda Civic doing 200 mph if I filmed a Lamborghini and called it a Civic."