Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/24/sequoia-to-color-labs-not-since-google-have-we-seen-this/

by bjonathan • 15 years ago

58 71 15 years ago

blogs.wsj.com

I think the knee-jerk cynicism about valuations and raises is blinding a lot of people on HN. Sure, Color's 41M is a lot, and it is YAPSS (Yet another photo sharing service). But Reading the techcrunch article about it, it sounds like one of those "sum is more than the parts" things, like the iPad or Google search results.

The integration of all the sensors and data to automatically determine your connections and maintain it for you with no work could be huge! Don't be fooled by the fact that it started with photos - that's a convenient vector to start with and fuel growth, but there's nothing stopping them from hooking into phone and sms messages to make the implicit social connections more robust.

I'm not bullish on Color, but I'd take Color with $41M over Path, Instagram, or any of a zillion other sites with their raise. They have a huge chicken-and-egg problem, but isn't that what the money is good for?

ig1• 15 years ago

A lot of Facebook's growth was driven by photo sharing.

neutronicus• 15 years ago

This is an understatement, if anything.

waterlesscloud• 15 years ago

Thats it. This isn't photo sharing, it's dynamic ad hoc social networking that is exciting people.

mikeryan• 15 years ago

but isn't that what the money is good for?

This just made me think that Color's best use of that money is using 10M to pay 1M people 10 bucks to use their app for a week.

pchristensen2• 15 years ago

That's basically what PayPal did.

notahacker• 15 years ago

Cynicism aside, I kind of get what they're trying to do - minimise the barriers to active participation in social networks (and therefore maximise the effectiveness of targeting) because it figures out things like tagging and networks for you. Unfortunately for them, I think the hurdle of "can I be bothered to join yet another pointless, invasive service" is a bigger one to cross than "can I be bothered to tag all my photos on Facebook". Even with inferior technology, I'd fancy Facebook could build a better model of which friends I associate with the most and where, if they wanted too.

Then there's the problem voiced elsewhere that intentionally collating all that data is just a bit too creepy, and I say that as someone who couldn't care less about Facebook privacy settings and thinks CCTV in public places is generally a good idea.

andrewpbrett3• 15 years ago

"Will $25 million help you get five years into one?"

Can 9 women produce a baby in one month?

biot• 15 years ago

Because, like pregnancy, businesses can't scale with more people?

I'm as skeptical as anyone about this insane valuation, but I don't see your analogy applying here.

aepstein• 15 years ago

People-focused businesses can scale with more people, but they're trying to get more people to use an app.

If they keep getting killed in their App Store reviews, no amount of employees or money will speed up adoption.

anon808• 15 years ago

has nothing to do with scale, its about speeding up the future. not possible, regardless who's giving you the money.

andrewpbrett3• 15 years ago

It's a simplification, like any analogy. It's also a version of Brooks' Law[1], in case that wasn't apparent to all.

Businesses can certainly scale with more people. But this isn't a business, and to loosely paraphrase Andy Bechtolsheim at startup school this year, throwing money at problems is lazy, you should be throwing minds at problems. $41M in the bank will almost certainly be harmful at this stage of Color's development.

Also, even $41M is not going to (noticeably) speed up the surrounding ecosystem.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookss_law

bioh42_2• 15 years ago

Because, like pregnancy, businesses can't scale with more people?

It is well established that certain work scales almost linearly with more people. But it is also well known that a lot of other types of work do not at all scale when you throw more people in. Usually it is intellectual tasks, like programming or turning a startup into a profitable business, that don't scale well.

Try reading the mythical man month.

tptacek• 15 years ago

It's a classic b-school aphorism. He's not really trying to defend an analogy. He's saying, "it is not necessarily true that more money will scale this faster; there are probably other limiting factors". Don't be so quick to jump on him.

matthew-wegner• 15 years ago

I think the aspects of a business that don't scale are how user behavior evolves over time. It takes awhile for groups of people to try new things and figure out all the different/awesome ways to use something (Twitter and @replies, RTs, etc are one clear example).

There is some limiting rate for iteration...

jmathai3• 15 years ago

I see a business opportunity here!

dstein• 15 years ago

  working to build out the infrastructure necessary to
  manage photos and videos **from what it hopes** will be
  hundreds of millions of users.

Emphasis mine. I especially like that part.

They've been tricked by their investors that they've already succeeded. That they already have won the market for photosharing apps, yet all they have is a domain name, a crummy unfinished product and a lot of PR. How can they possibly NOT get those millions of users with this kind of marketing hype and capital?

petervandijck• 15 years ago

Early optimization and all that.

phlux• 15 years ago

They must be investing in the team!

trickjarrett2• 15 years ago

I don't get it. I just don't understand what is so big about this.

rayboyd• 15 years ago

Hype. If they say it's big it must be so. $41mm funding announcement and the fanfare with it, they need a lot of early traction fast. And it seems this is how they are going about it.

trickjarrett2• 15 years ago

But this is ludicrous even for a hype machine. "Not since Google" is absurd for a social photo and video app.

piper74• 15 years ago

I thought SearchMe and Mahalo were suppose to be the next Google?

jmathai3• 15 years ago

Cuil.

sylvinus2• 15 years ago

This is a serious contender in the shortest joke contest :)

gojomo• 15 years ago

But here's the thing about 'next Googles': you can try (and tout) 500 of them. You only need to get one right.

bradleyland• 15 years ago

"Not since Google have we seen this"

I'm sorry, but this is the biggest line of bullshit I've seen in a while. Here's the thing: no one saw Google early on. Google happened, more or less, organically. They implemented a better algorithm and gained a lot of users by providing better results.

Color appears to be Instagram + location awareness. Awesome. I can't wait to use it, but to call it "Google" is just ridiculous.

I'm skeptical that this product is even going to be a success -- if I'm 150' from someone, why not just walk over to them, snap a group photo, and post it to my Twitter/Facebook/Whatever -- and even more skeptical that someone like Facebook won't clone the idea, roll it out to their 500 million users. Instagram already supports location detection. How long until "near me" shows up as a feed option?

Here's the real rub. Currently, there are 143 one & two-star reviews in the App Store. There are 49 four & five-star reviews. That's not good. Anyone claiming this is the next Google is either straight up lying to generate interest (It's the Next Google!™) or has no idea what they're talking about.

unohoo2• 15 years ago

Give the Sequoia guys the benefit of doubt. They probably have seen something more (related to the product) that the rest of us havent or might be privy to other features in the pipeline. Obviously, they're a bunch of smart people who have backed some of the biggest companies in the tech landscape.

In short, dont be so hasty to judge.

bdotdub2• 15 years ago

While I do think that $41mm is crazy, I agree with unohoo. If they're getting that much money from Sequoia, you can sure as hell bet they're not investing in "just another photo sharing app".

Part of $41mm is because of the team, but I'm betting most of the money is because of the long term, ambitious vision they have for it. But to get there, they have to release a decidedly short term vision product and build from there. This is probably just the launching pad.

But still, $41mm before any sort of traction or any proof of a userbase is really crazy

alex_c2• 15 years ago

I've been hearing that about Twitter for years now, and I'm still waiting.

fizx2• 15 years ago

It's reasonably likely that a good portion of the 1 star reviews aren't opinions of the app, but are rather expressions of disapproval of the funding/ecosystem/bubble situation.

bdotdub2• 15 years ago

Have you used the app? It a terrible first experience. I used it last night and had no one around me. In New York City. During dinner time. Most people probably open the app, don't get it / don't see people on it, and never open the app again

alexyim• 15 years ago

Well, if you invested $25mm, saying such a thing would be perfectly reasonable.

Also, keep in mind the context of the quote.. it's not referring to the current state of the product. There's probably a lot more we haven't seen from this article.

"They told us that every 10 years or so a company and a marketplace and an opportunity come together that’s transformative"

dominostars2• 15 years ago

> if I'm 150' from someone, why not just walk over to them, snap a group photo, and post it to my Twitter/Facebook/Whatever

What if you're all at a concert taking pictures of the band and crowd? Or you're at the beach and many people are taking pictures of the same beautiful sunset? You now have access to multiple photos without having had to coordinate with the strangers around you.

It actually seems like a somewhat compelling tool for capturing events.

> Currently, there are 143 one & two-star reviews in the App Store. There are 49 four & five-star reviews.

My guess is a lot of angry geeks, since they're all who know about it so far.

dzlobin• 15 years ago

>My guess is a lot of angry geeks, since they're all who know about it so far.

Actually I think it's the fact that the app seems to be a buggy POS according to a large number if people. I think there are a lot of people in the startup/geek world who aren't happy with the extremely high valuation and the all the hoopla around them, but I doubt they would sabotage their app rating intentionally.

gobongo• 15 years ago

Not Since Google* Have We Seen This...

... Google Wave, that is

http://paradoxdgn.com/junk/avatars/trollface.jpg

nutjob123• 15 years ago

I believe that the interest from these investors does not lie in the consumer facing functionality of sharing photos but the ability to target locations and inject relevant advertisements into this stream of photographs. The large amount of user centric information which this app is collecting is very attractive to market research groups which pay a lot of money. These are two revenue streams heavily utilized by google and facebook.

hackscribe• 15 years ago

I think this is all a talent acquisition strategy.

fourspace• 15 years ago

There just has to be something else going on here. Right?

JarekS• 15 years ago

I don't get it.

I've installed the app and still don't get it.

I have no idea what problem does it solve?

I've seen http://view.io during SXSW - didn't work that well (not many people were using it). Concept was very similar - pictures of interesting things near you taken by other people with some descriptions. Nobody was declaring this app the next google.

Social network for mobile phones that is the next big thing???? I'm sorry but I don't buy this. Facebook will clone this using their location service + photo sharing functionality and there you go. 41mlnUSD down the drain.

dave16193• 15 years ago

Sequoia is not going to give $25 million away without good reason. It's just that folks like us can't see the good reason. Either the "good reason" is being hid from us for strategic reasons or Sequoia made a big mistake and the app/company is a dud.

URSpider94• 15 years ago

Sorry, but this is really terrible logic. I have first-hand experience with watching VC's pour literally hundreds of millions of dollars into a company that I was certain was never going to make it (and which has since been sold off for pennies on the dollar). All along, people kept arguing that I must be missing something, because people wouldn't invest that kind of money unless success was assured.

dave16193• 15 years ago

I'm not saying that the "good reason" will result in a proven product. I'm just saying in their perspective they have good reason to spend that amount of money. And also it's Sequoia and they're not stupid.

dave16193• 15 years ago

Some positive articles about Color:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2011/03/why_color_matters_...

http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/03/23/color-a-twitte...

http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110323/with-41m-in-han...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1742209/lala-founder-unveils-41-m...

itswindy2• 15 years ago

Webvan, eToys, Pets.com and a gazillion million other sites got funded. But if Groupon is 'worth' $25 Billion

arfrank• 15 years ago

I hope with 41M of funding and 18-24 months until they need to raise again that they are willing to throw out many revisions of their product until they get one that truly "revolutionizes" life. Right now so much is focused on hype and so little is focused on product/potential roadmap of where this could be in 5 years(compressed to 1 year).

jonmc12• 15 years ago

Has anyone else tried using the android app? Its at 1.5 stars on the market, and on my device (G2), it did not work at all. It appears no QA was done on a number of device types.

I'm really surprised that Color is using Sequoia's brand for PR on WSJ, Techcrunch without ensuring that what users see on Android is not just plain awful.

I was / am really excited for this product, but this seems like a botched launch to me. Thoughts? Would it have been better for Color to delay launch? Will this have a negative impact on Color's brand? Sequoia's brand? Or will Color simply fix the Android app after a few iterations and provide a better and better user experience in true startup fashion?

andrewpbrett3• 15 years ago

I tried both the Android and iPhone version and couldn't take a single picture before it crashed. Tried multiple times on both.

fistofjohnwayne• 15 years ago

Same here. It's crashed three times on my iPhone right after prompting me to take a picture of myself, with no option to skip.

jakkinabox• 15 years ago

I can't find it in the market. I tried searching "color" and "color labs". Is it available outside the USA?

evanw• 15 years ago

Am I the only person who thinks this could end badly simply because GPS is so spotty indoors?

cyrus_• 15 years ago

Came here to say that. The iPhone seemed to be okay at using AGPS indoors but my Droid X fails miserably if I'm not outside. Good luck figuring out where I am, Color.

sylvinus2• 15 years ago

Am I the only one to think there is some kind of real-time Google Earth stuff going on behind the scenes, supposedly in their labs ?

$41M, I can clearly see how that would fund a face/shape/... recognition engine, reconstruct some 3D models from the images and then play with them.

Frankly the iPhone app just seems to me like a cheap way for them to get a bigger image dataset and begin telling users that all their photos will be public anyway.

moblivu• 15 years ago

Investing 25 Million in something that isn't an issue or a need? Google brought an organised and simple search engine for the whole web... I don't get the Color app. We'll see how it evolves and grows because right now, it's just another funky mobile app.

Kilimanjaro• 15 years ago

After a thoughtful analysis I've come to the conclusion that the only reason they invested such amount of money is because of patents, not the shitty photo app. If Color Labs patented a way to show the strength of social relationships (with colors, or whatever) using mobile devices, then that alone might be worth billions in the future. At least for facebook.

rexf• 15 years ago

Am I missing something here or is there a typo? The first sentence says:

> Color Labs Inc. founder Bill Nguyen visited the Dow Jones office in New York last week to talk about a big new idea backed by a $14 million round of funding.

Later, the story says:

> With Sequoia’s $25 million, $9 million from Bain Capital and $7 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank, Color has closed a $41 million round of Series A funding before its product is even available in an app store.

Per TC yesterday & the WSJ in the same article, it's a $41M round.

[edit]

The author writes in the comments:

> Ty McMahan wrote: @Frank – The had secured only $14M as of last week. Sequoia came in with an additional $25M and SVP added $2M more.

endtime• 15 years ago

It was going to be 14, then it became 16 + 25 = 41.

djjose• 15 years ago

Am I the only one who's first thought that came to mind when reading up on Color was the Sonar SuperComputer App in Batman: The Dark Knight? I don't mean this to be silly but the concept seems very similar in terms of data and perspective joined with location. If it reaches any type of criticality they'd have an absurd amount of visual data around location and time. That could've piqued Sequoia's interest.

ctdonath• 15 years ago

Seems there are several of us thinking along these lines.

My version: "Color" + "PhotoSynth" = "OMG-level 3D world modeling"

Hype a critical mass of interest, throw a lot of CPU cycles at the data, port the results to Google Earth ... yow.

haploid• 15 years ago

Reminds me of the pre-IPO dog and pony shows I experienced in 1999 when series 1 and 2 investors would tell mezzanine investors that "This is bigger than electricity, bigger than the railroads" with a straight face.

Sequoia is just talking their book to the greater fool. Nothing out of the ordinary here.

itswindy2• 15 years ago

What nonsense, people have run out of ideas so VCs are desperately hoping someone else makes it. From their site: "Simultaneously use multiple iPhones and Androids to capture photos, videos, and conversations into a group album."

How revolutionary is this? Meh.

Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

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