Haptly
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Haptly, founded in 2016 by Auckland-based Nelson Shaw and his co-founder Rab Heath, was a drone startup that aimed to let farmers monitor pasture growth with drone and satellite imagery and machine-learning algorithms. Shaw was co-founder and CTO, building the software; the project originally explored a beyond-line-of-sight drone platform before pivoting to pasture monitoring.
02 / Haptly FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Haptly failed from lack of experience: after 10 months of work, Shaw and his co-founder could not find a way to technically build the product and shut the company down in 2016, even though they had won a $20,000 grant from a startup accelerator. Shaw later said in a Failory interview that they spent the money without delivering a working product.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Haptly was founded.
- Recorded event
The structured record contains an event involving Haptly, but does not support additional detail.
- Product or service closed
Haptly closed the recorded product or service.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Nelson Shaw and Rab Heath founded Haptly in Auckland in 2016 to monitor grass growth for farmers with drone and satellite imagery.
- 02
They won a $20,000 grant from a startup accelerator.
- 03
After 10 months of work they could not technically build the product and shut the company down in 2016.