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In 1.5 years, $41 M gone. This company was full of so much drama. It's a shame that really good investors had to deal with a lot of grime.
by francesca 14y ago
In 1.5 years, $41 M gone. This company was full of so much drama. It's a shame that really good investors had to deal with a lot of grime.
- botolo 14y agoWhere did all that money go? How many employee did the company have?
- runemadsen 14y agoI would also love to know this. Where did the money go? In an era where infrastructure cost is cheap, the big expense should be labor. But seriously, $41m?
- jonknee 14y agoWho said the money was all used up? Last I heard they had a lot of it in the bank ($25M or so) and since they sold off assets to Apple it's likely they were able to return a pretty decent chunk (in the neighborhood of 70%). http://www.fastcompany.com/3002341/color-failed-what-happens-its-41-million http://www.fastcompany.com/3002341/color-failed-what-happens...
- danso 14y agoWill we ever know how much Apple paid for Color?
- nairteashop 14y ago$7m, apparently: http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/sources-apple-paid-7-million-for-color-labs/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/19/sources-apple-paid-7-millio...
- casca 14y agoGiving a company a large amount of money and watching it spent poorly does not make "really good investors".
- edictive 14y agoI completely agree.
- rauljara 14y agoInvestors in startups are making bets. If they deserve the huge payouts they get when they bet correctly, then they don't deserve pity when their bets go wrong. In this particular case, Bill Nguyen had a whole bunch of red flags, including exiting shortly before his previous companies failed. I, for one, am not happy that investors continue to give such large amounts of money to such obvious carpetbaggers. The Bill Nguyen's of the world thrive because they are allowed to.
- casinaroyale 14y agoPut yourself in his shoes. You have seen that the team is not working well together. The product vision is getting executed badly. Lot of VC money went down the drain. What would you do? Wouldn't you exit while the sun is up?
- robryan 14y agoNot let it get so dysfunctional in the first place. You are right that down the track after everything the best thing was to exit.
- tlb 14y agoNo. Like the captain of a sinking ship, the CEO of a fucked company's duty is to make sure customers get their data back, employees have a soft landing, and investors get back any remaining money.
- edictive 14y agoI completely agree! It should be a fiduciary duty.
- georgemcbay 14y agoAs investors, isn't it part of their job to ensure the people they are giving boatloads of money to aren't grime? I agree that the whole story of Color was a "shame", but the whole thing sounded like an overhyped pipedream to most onlookers to begin with, so when it turns out that's what it was I'm not going to cry a river for the investors.
- pnathan 14y agoBluntly, that's the point of investing. The investor assumes the risk that their invested capital vaporizes. The risk assumption predicates the possibility of higher returns than a less risky investment. It's not a savings account with guaranteed returns. Last time I heard vague numbers thrown around, 90% of VC-funded startups fold, 9% go into some kind of functional equilibrium, and 1% make it big. Ergo, you should actually reckon on failure being the norm.
- rogerjin 14y agoCompany still has a significant amount of cash left in the bank that they're returning to investors. Someone below quoted 25m? I wouldn't be surprised if it was even higher.
- brackin 14y agoWho's to say that they spent the $41.m million? What ever's left will be returned. The fact that Apple bought them for $9M hints that Apple may be covering the amount they spent but even that is pretty hefty. The investors won't be able to reinvest it in their current funds though.