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As a VC, how is a $41 million investment in Color justified?

35 points by pclark 16y ago

jayzee 16y ago
TL;DR: Sequioa is awesome and invests after due deliberation. Color's next release is going to fix UI issues.
FirstHopSystems 16y ago
For the Love of GOD who cares about how much money Color raised. It was nice to hear about, oh..the first 4 times here. Deleting the huge rant I just typed up. Anyone want to throw in ideas on why Color is such a hot topic? I might be a little blind to it due to my attitude reading it on here so many times.
- hartror 16y ago
  Because they have done what (almost) everyone on here wants to do, get funding for their idea. The fact that the idea is "obvious" and "simple" means everyone can bike shed [1] it to death. [1] http://bikeshed.com/ http://bikeshed.com/
- geoffw8 16y ago
  Everyone whose on this "are we still talking about color" thing is starting to get on my nerves. Theres still LOTS of mileage in it - more write ups, VC opinions, yada yada. Its how the world works. They just raised $41m, one of the largest pre-launch rounds. Expect to hear about them. Saying "are we still talking about color" doesn't make you cool. Nobody cares if your "over it because your so hooked in to the tech scene". If you don't want to read about it, don't click on the link.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    If there's something insightful to say, sure. But the bubble/not-bubble, talented-team/questionable-product, smart-VCs/dumb-VCs, can't-use-$41m/can-use-$41m debates don't seem to be getting anywhere, as far as I've seen. Not just that it's repetitive, but that none of the discussions, even if they were the first and only one you saw, has a lot of substance. They all seem to be some combination of ridicule and "it's not worth ridiculing but maybe is good" defensiveness, with both sides mostly based on speculation rather than any solid facts. Am I missing the insightful writeups where this case study can help me learn something about either technology or the technology business? I click to the HN discussion in hopes of finding such things!
    - erikpukinskis 16y ago
      This particular writeup said a lot about the strategies Sequoia could be using to protect themselves which I hadn't seen in previous discussions.
    - mweatherill 16y ago
      I see a lot of similarity between the Color discussions and anything written about Fukushima; a small number of facts are being drawn together to produce wide-reaching conclusions. It is a lot less interesting to say "we don't know all the facts so lets just wait and see how this turns out". These days I find it much harder to find people who are undecided about a topic - everything is polarising.
- foobarbazetc 16y ago
  Because a lot of people on here have a vested interest in it.
- FirstHopSystems 16y ago
  Way to go on missing the point. I did ask 'Why' is it such a hot topic. I was hoping to get a little more of a response about my question than my comment. I didn't want to discount the buzz color is creating. My thoughts were, I'm not Color, It's not the last ever VC deal in the world(I hope)...and most important, It's not helping me debug this FPGA I'm working on =P. I was thinking I might be able to get good idea from some of the comments...
- gruseom 16y ago
  Anyone want to throw in ideas on why Color is such a hot topic? Seems to me a mixture of envy and schadenfreude.
kalvin 16y ago
Slightly off topic, but if you're ever somehow lacking for great reading material, just read yishan wong's other answers on quora. Lots of insight, not just about startups, and often hilariously entertaining.
pclark 16y ago
I really enjoyed Yishans answer if for no other reason than it was positive about Color. I wish Hacker News members, who have zero vested interest in other people's startups, would be a bit more optimistic when it comes to publishing comments. Between Color, and various YC startup launches here - the place feels rather mean spirited, frankly.
- nickbp 16y ago
  Not mean spirited; realistic.
  - icey 16y ago
    You can't call it realistic unless you know what the investors know. I have a hard time thinking that Color could be so amazing that it warrants such a huge early investment, but it's not realistic for me to say that Sequoia wasted their money because I don't know what they know.
  - alexqgb 16y ago
    You don't need all the details to be unimpressed by creepy data mining operations.
- akashs 16y ago
  I think I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think people you are referring to are the mean spirited haters you make it seem. I think people are just curious and are honestly just trying to figure out what is so ridiculously special about Color that they were able to raise that much money. I don't think it helps anything that they've had tons of press and the only things that have come up are 1) Bill Nguyen is awesome 2) they recreated some technology from the Dark Knight. If Bill's such an awesome leader, and they have 27 awesome people, and $41M, why is the app still horrible (interface, experience, data mining, etc.) at launch? I'd honestly be happy for them if it takes off and it's the next big thing. And Sequoia usually gets it right, so I think everyone's just curious to know what's so great about this company and this app. But, we just aren't convinced yet.
- MJR 16y ago
dataminer 16y ago
Sequoia invested in youtube and it turned out very well for them. Color is more likely the next youtube instead of next facebook. I haven't tried Color yet, but from what I have read it makes it dead easy to share photos and form social groups. Remember the real breakthrough of youtube was you click on a link and the video starts playing, it was and still is the most hassle free way of watch videos, there were no codecs to download, no heavy flash pages to load just fast and easy. People like easy and Color is making it easy to share photos and form social groups. About $41 million, yes that is high but now the company can go to work instead of worrying about the next round of financing.
il 16y ago
This seems reasonable, except that the #1 rule of investing is that past performance does not guarantee future results. If the team is so great and VCs are investing in the team, then why is the UI/usability of Color so bad? I think the reason startup people are so down on Color is that they believe that $41M distributed among many different startups would be better for the tech ecosystem/community as a whole, resulting in more innovation and progress than a single photo sharing app.
- pclark 16y ago
  I am not sure your opinion on the #1 rule of investing applies to Venture Capital considering the primary focus is on the team. Mind you, perhaps this is a reason as to why Venture Capital on the whole has been less than stellar at times. I believe what happened to Color is that they got tunnel vision on their ideal environment for their product, ad optimised around that - rather than the initial user experience. Specifically, I mean they were using Color around dozens of other users, whereas most new users today use it in their bedroom miles from a second user - so a lot of the UI elements are confusing when no additional data is avaliable. People do make mistakes.
- rudiger 16y ago
  I highly doubt that real "startup people" are that socialist (ie. we should distribute Seqouia et al.'s $41M among many 2-3 person startups vs. a single team of ~30 people).
- alphaoverlord 16y ago
  > $41M distributed among many different startups would be better for the tech ecosystem/community as a whole In what ways? How would that be true? It's a free market - you get what you can get. You can argue fb doesn't deserve its valuation either, but there doesn't seem to be same amount of disbelief and schadenfreude-seeking.
chr15 16y ago
I just submitted a story where you can see a video of Color in action: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2376602 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2376602 The UX is better once you have a lot of people using it. I can see how it's useful if you're at a concert, basketball game, or any other event.
to 16y ago
41m for an app i could rebuild on a weekend. just read the app reviews in the app store and guess how likely it is that anyone tries to do it.
nickconfer 16y ago
Can anyone name a situation where a company received record funding or major pre-release hype and wasn't heavily criticized for it? I can see why groups like KickStarter chose to have their funding stay silent while they grew.
zaidf 16y ago
Simple: (1) spend 30M acquiring bunch of high-usage apps with lil revenue (2) collect anon user data (3) license / sell data to ad firms on ad exchanges and more Most of HN has no idea how crazy the ad exchange business is because they are pretty tightly controlled and require high minimums to play. I wouldn't know if I didn't have a brother working inside day to day. Suffice to say, there is a flourishing market where anon user data is bought and sold for millions to improve ad targeting. One great example is rapleaf. When they launched, I was like "meh, another reputation management co." Turns out they are doing alright doing what I describe here. Yet if you simply judged them when they launched or from their consumer front they put up, you'd never know.
- alanfalcon 16y ago
  A good time to mention the NAI Opt-Out page: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
  - zaidf 16y ago
    On the topic of opting out, I personally like that the ads have become a lot more targeted in the past year or so. Especially the re-targeting stuff...I'd much rather see ads for products I already have some level of interest in than the days of random punch-the-monkey and drugstore.com ads.

35 points by pclark 16y ago

TL;DR: Sequioa is awesome and invests after due deliberation. Color's next release is going to fix UI issues.

For the Love of GOD who cares about how much money Color raised. It was nice to hear about, oh..the first 4 times here. Deleting the huge rant I just typed up. Anyone want to throw in ideas on why Color is such a hot topic? I might be a little blind to it due to my attitude reading it on here so many times.

hartror 16y ago
Because they have done what (almost) everyone on here wants to do, get funding for their idea. The fact that the idea is "obvious" and "simple" means everyone can bike shed [1] it to death. [1] http://bikeshed.com/ http://bikeshed.com/
geoffw8 16y ago
Everyone whose on this "are we still talking about color" thing is starting to get on my nerves. Theres still LOTS of mileage in it - more write ups, VC opinions, yada yada. Its how the world works. They just raised $41m, one of the largest pre-launch rounds. Expect to hear about them. Saying "are we still talking about color" doesn't make you cool. Nobody cares if your "over it because your so hooked in to the tech scene". If you don't want to read about it, don't click on the link.
- _delirium 16y ago
  If there's something insightful to say, sure. But the bubble/not-bubble, talented-team/questionable-product, smart-VCs/dumb-VCs, can't-use-$41m/can-use-$41m debates don't seem to be getting anywhere, as far as I've seen. Not just that it's repetitive, but that none of the discussions, even if they were the first and only one you saw, has a lot of substance. They all seem to be some combination of ridicule and "it's not worth ridiculing but maybe is good" defensiveness, with both sides mostly based on speculation rather than any solid facts. Am I missing the insightful writeups where this case study can help me learn something about either technology or the technology business? I click to the HN discussion in hopes of finding such things!
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    This particular writeup said a lot about the strategies Sequoia could be using to protect themselves which I hadn't seen in previous discussions.
  - mweatherill 16y ago
    I see a lot of similarity between the Color discussions and anything written about Fukushima; a small number of facts are being drawn together to produce wide-reaching conclusions. It is a lot less interesting to say "we don't know all the facts so lets just wait and see how this turns out". These days I find it much harder to find people who are undecided about a topic - everything is polarising.
foobarbazetc 16y ago
Because a lot of people on here have a vested interest in it.
FirstHopSystems 16y ago
Way to go on missing the point. I did ask 'Why' is it such a hot topic. I was hoping to get a little more of a response about my question than my comment. I didn't want to discount the buzz color is creating. My thoughts were, I'm not Color, It's not the last ever VC deal in the world(I hope)...and most important, It's not helping me debug this FPGA I'm working on =P. I was thinking I might be able to get good idea from some of the comments...
gruseom 16y ago
Anyone want to throw in ideas on why Color is such a hot topic? Seems to me a mixture of envy and schadenfreude.

kalvin 16y ago

Slightly off topic, but if you're ever somehow lacking for great reading material, just read yishan wong's other answers on quora. Lots of insight, not just about startups, and often hilariously entertaining.

pclark 16y ago

I really enjoyed Yishans answer if for no other reason than it was positive about Color. I wish Hacker News members, who have zero vested interest in other people's startups, would be a bit more optimistic when it comes to publishing comments. Between Color, and various YC startup launches here - the place feels rather mean spirited, frankly.

nickbp 16y ago
Not mean spirited; realistic.
- icey 16y ago
  You can't call it realistic unless you know what the investors know. I have a hard time thinking that Color could be so amazing that it warrants such a huge early investment, but it's not realistic for me to say that Sequoia wasted their money because I don't know what they know.
- alexqgb 16y ago
  You don't need all the details to be unimpressed by creepy data mining operations.
akashs 16y ago
I think I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think people you are referring to are the mean spirited haters you make it seem. I think people are just curious and are honestly just trying to figure out what is so ridiculously special about Color that they were able to raise that much money. I don't think it helps anything that they've had tons of press and the only things that have come up are 1) Bill Nguyen is awesome 2) they recreated some technology from the Dark Knight. If Bill's such an awesome leader, and they have 27 awesome people, and $41M, why is the app still horrible (interface, experience, data mining, etc.) at launch? I'd honestly be happy for them if it takes off and it's the next big thing. And Sequoia usually gets it right, so I think everyone's just curious to know what's so great about this company and this app. But, we just aren't convinced yet.
MJR 16y ago

dataminer 16y ago

Sequoia invested in youtube and it turned out very well for them. Color is more likely the next youtube instead of next facebook. I haven't tried Color yet, but from what I have read it makes it dead easy to share photos and form social groups. Remember the real breakthrough of youtube was you click on a link and the video starts playing, it was and still is the most hassle free way of watch videos, there were no codecs to download, no heavy flash pages to load just fast and easy. People like easy and Color is making it easy to share photos and form social groups. About $41 million, yes that is high but now the company can go to work instead of worrying about the next round of financing.

il 16y ago

This seems reasonable, except that the #1 rule of investing is that past performance does not guarantee future results. If the team is so great and VCs are investing in the team, then why is the UI/usability of Color so bad? I think the reason startup people are so down on Color is that they believe that $41M distributed among many different startups would be better for the tech ecosystem/community as a whole, resulting in more innovation and progress than a single photo sharing app.

pclark 16y ago
I am not sure your opinion on the #1 rule of investing applies to Venture Capital considering the primary focus is on the team. Mind you, perhaps this is a reason as to why Venture Capital on the whole has been less than stellar at times. I believe what happened to Color is that they got tunnel vision on their ideal environment for their product, ad optimised around that - rather than the initial user experience. Specifically, I mean they were using Color around dozens of other users, whereas most new users today use it in their bedroom miles from a second user - so a lot of the UI elements are confusing when no additional data is avaliable. People do make mistakes.
rudiger 16y ago
I highly doubt that real "startup people" are that socialist (ie. we should distribute Seqouia et al.'s $41M among many 2-3 person startups vs. a single team of ~30 people).
alphaoverlord 16y ago
> $41M distributed among many different startups would be better for the tech ecosystem/community as a whole In what ways? How would that be true? It's a free market - you get what you can get. You can argue fb doesn't deserve its valuation either, but there doesn't seem to be same amount of disbelief and schadenfreude-seeking.

chr15 16y ago

I just submitted a story where you can see a video of Color in action: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2376602 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2376602 The UX is better once you have a lot of people using it. I can see how it's useful if you're at a concert, basketball game, or any other event.

to 16y ago

41m for an app i could rebuild on a weekend. just read the app reviews in the app store and guess how likely it is that anyone tries to do it.

nickconfer 16y ago

Can anyone name a situation where a company received record funding or major pre-release hype and wasn't heavily criticized for it? I can see why groups like KickStarter chose to have their funding stay silent while they grew.

zaidf 16y ago

Simple: (1) spend 30M acquiring bunch of high-usage apps with lil revenue (2) collect anon user data (3) license / sell data to ad firms on ad exchanges and more Most of HN has no idea how crazy the ad exchange business is because they are pretty tightly controlled and require high minimums to play. I wouldn't know if I didn't have a brother working inside day to day. Suffice to say, there is a flourishing market where anon user data is bought and sold for millions to improve ad targeting. One great example is rapleaf. When they launched, I was like "meh, another reputation management co." Turns out they are doing alright doing what I describe here. Yet if you simply judged them when they launched or from their consumer front they put up, you'd never know.

alanfalcon 16y ago
A good time to mention the NAI Opt-Out page: http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
- zaidf 16y ago
  On the topic of opting out, I personally like that the ads have become a lot more targeted in the past year or so. Especially the re-targeting stuff...I'd much rather see ads for products I already have some level of interest in than the days of random punch-the-monkey and drugstore.com ads.