Quick Poll: The fate of Color

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375162

by huhtenberg • 15 years ago

24 42 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Udo• 15 years ago

> Will Color flunk spectacularly?

One can only hope. People here have been suggesting that we're beating a dead horse at this point, but when I open the App Store (German version of course, not that they give me a choice) I see a lot of positive reviews. "Great idea!", "Neat App" they say. People are still not getting it.

However, there is probably little new insight about the app and the concept itself. For me this review says it all: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375027

I finally tried out the app today, otherwise I wouldn't have commented. It's awful.

stevenj• 15 years ago

I think it'll have a moderately successful exit (i.e. it'll get acquired for more than $41MM).

bhousel• 15 years ago

Agreed.. Furthermore I think the whole purpose of this company is to get acquired by Facebook prior to their 2012 IPO (possibly trying to get Microsoft, Apple, Google into a bidding war). We'll see if I'm right.

These are smart and well-connected founders and investors who know what they're doing.

mayukh• 15 years ago

You realize that taking 41 mm raises the bar substantially on the exit price right? Conservatively speaking if 41 mm represents 49% of the company its being valued at 82 mm. Thats the first round. Should they need to go back to the funding trough again the value is going to go up even further. With the standard requirement that investors be paid back first (liquidation preference), I don't think the investors and founders are looking at an early exit (< 2 years) any time soon.

alizaki• 15 years ago

I will have to abstain here, just because there is nobody who can maintain a neutral reaction with all thats written. I bet half the people here havent even tried the app.

eklovlfjkeos• 15 years ago

Here's why I don't need to try the app: I've been looking at Color's website, its app description in iTunes and Android, and at various blog posts linked to from HN, and so far not a single person has been able to tell us what the app actually does and how it's used. Why would I install something which no one can tell me the purpose of?

Sure, Color might be awesome for companies that buy the data collected through the app, but as a plain user, what's the point of the app?

apas• 15 years ago

It won't fail or flunk spectacularly, I see there's a future about it but it's too early to say something. Current data say they failed massively regarding PR, launch, etc. Boy, they have $41, failure is a) not an option for them b) there's no (b).

—I agree with Gruber in other news.

jarin5• 15 years ago

With $41 million to work with and an insane amount of PR (even bad PR), Color will probably end up rising from the ashes and laughing all the way to the bank.

It's the Rebecca Black of iPhone apps.

nutjob123• 15 years ago

They've already shown that they budgeted a large amount of money for marketing by purchasing color.com for 350k. I'm sure at some point they will start infiltrating their marketing into news/media.

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

CNN just did a pre-commercial blurb where I'm pretty sure they mentioned Color indirectly. Something about "sending photos to strangers."

edit: yep

It's an interview piece.

kmfrk• 15 years ago

They have done a very poor job of convincing users of the app's worth (and f¤#"ing purpose!) and sceptics of the prudence of the investment.

They, dare I say it, may have to pivot.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

Depends how you define spectacularly.

Will it achieve absolutely nothing of note? Very unlikely.

Will it justify the investment? Much harder to tell.

alex_c• 15 years ago

Too early to tell / not enough information.

vain2• 15 years ago

yes they will fail. they have already spent money carelessly on their domain name. Just think what a few good developers could have done with that money.

Unless they change radically, which I dont think they will, they are going to die.

jarin5• 15 years ago

I see what you mean.

After that $350k domain purchase they're only left with the measly sum of $40,650,000.

vain2• 15 years ago

well, if they bought it for 20 million, they'd be left with a measly 21 million

rrival• 15 years ago

Does this remind anyone of the marketing/PR around Cuil?

trotsky• 15 years ago

Unless you're an insider, it's hard to understand how any opinions about their longevity would be anything more than knee-jerk uninformed speculation at the present.

I'm not very impressed with their PR posture or product so far, but I know enough about business to not count anyone out this early, especially those with a track record and money.

revorad4• 15 years ago

You've written a very civil and calm version of the comment I was going to write. I don't get all the hate for Color from clueless strangers.

This poll reeks of hate and jealousy. Please stop it.

huhtenberg2• 15 years ago

No hate, no jealousy either. For one, I had my exit, thank you very much :)

I am just looking at the idea and it looks overly complex to be instantly usable. Experimental if you will, solving a problem that does not exists, and more fit for an academic research rather than a business venture. That's not even considering the amount of funding.

Just ignore the 41 mil, and do tell me based on what they have described to the public so far if you see them having a respectable userbase within a year? I very much doubt it, and only then, considering the amount of funding it would constitute a spectacular failure.

So, no, no hate whatsoever. It just doesn't make any sense (with an exception of a theory that this is a setup for VCs to extract their money from Facebook by making it acquire Color later on - that is ingeniously clever).

mellis• 15 years ago

What's wrong with knee-jerk uninformed speculation?

revorad4• 15 years ago

In this case, it's negative, hateful, doesn't benefit anyone involved and given how ill-informed people are, is almost guaranteed to be wrong. It's like people feel personally insulted because a startup got funding.

mgcross• 15 years ago

I think it would stand a much better chance if every review containing "$41M" in the app store was discarded. The app may well deserve a one star rating, but is the money relevant?

Apples and oranges, I know, but it reminds me of Kindle owners polluting Amazon book reviews based on cost/availability of the Kindle version.

itistoday2• 15 years ago

The Color bashing is amusing, really, but at this point it's quite literally becoming marketing for them (perhaps that was their real genius). The more Yes upvotes it gets to flunk, the less likely that is it seems.

If this app is really so outrageously bad, then it seems odd to devote several of the top stories on HN to it; perhaps leave that to Reddit. ;)

jarin5• 15 years ago

Is it really HN's place to attempt to influence the fate of Color? I'm not a fan of the app by any means, but I'm not sitting here hoping for it to fail.

itistoday2• 15 years ago

> Is it really HN's place to attempt to influence the fate of Color?

Certainly that is not HN's place or purpose. HN's purpose is to provide high-quality Hacker News. Its readership gets to decide what that is.

(Sidenote: A side effect of that is, yes, a force that can influence the fate of one project or another.)

jsnell• 15 years ago

The "no publicity is bad publicity" marketing strategy doesn't actually work if your product is crap. Take Cuil for example: they launched with a disastrous product with massive hype, and became the target of endless jokes. Regaining credibility after that must have been impossible, even if they'd managed to fix their search engine.

It's even worse if your product depends on network effects; poison the well early on, and you reduce the chances of going viral later even if the issues are fixed. It seems a safe bet that whatever chance Google Buzz had died with the initial privacy controversies.

GavinB• 15 years ago

Color clearly has a much bigger vision than what we're seeing. Sequoia knows what they're building, and has the experience to know how much money it might take to build it.

Even if they have a 90%+ chance of flopping, the investment in them could be justified. If a VC sees the potential for them a market size like Google or Facebook and a small chance that they could capture it, tossing in $43 million makes sense.

So I think Color will most likely not be a success, but that doesn't mean the investment was a mistake.

I believe there is certainly a level of innovation in social connections that will make Facebook look like Lycos and Altavista. Color probably doesn't have it, but they managed to convince Sequoia that the might, and you have to take those gambles.

nlh• 15 years ago

Here's what I would be curious about -

Does anyone have any stats/history about companies that have in the past gotten the "big valuation/major PR" during their initial launch/funding and ended up actually becoming a $billion dollar business? I feel like the pattern is usually the opposite -- Google started as a grad school project and was funded with $100k (before Sequoia put in $25M). Facebook started a few years ago without a ton of fanfare and $500k, etc.

I feel like everyone is predicting failure because usually when companies and investors so loudly proclaim brilliance/future success in such a public way, we're used to seeing failure in the end (Cuil)...

Curious to hear any examples folks might have....

bane• 15 years ago

A better question..."do you and all your friends get together and take photos together in one place? or does one person usually take the photos for the group and just send them out?"

The implicit social network concept of Color fails even the simplest of tests. I can say that I've never been in a situation, out with my friends, where we were all snapping away at our environment. At worst 2 or 3 people out of a dozen took a couple pictures of the group, then just emailed them out from their phones in 3 or 4 more steps.

cletus• 15 years ago

It's somewhat premature and reactionary to be a doomsayer with regards to Color.

Fact is, Sequoia isn't a fly-by-night operation. No doubt they're investing in the idea, the team and the (non-public) direction it's going. I wouldn't be so quick to declare failure.

Spontaneous geo connections, which seems to be the idea (like most other people, I don't quite "get it" yet), is an interesting idea. It reminds me a little of Twitter, actually.

Still, it does make me worry when a company makes a big splash with what seems to be poor execution (the app). Time will tell.

In the current environment I hesitate to predict failure of any kind, particularly with that much runway. Chances are that the worst outcome is going to be a breakeven to moderate exit due to a Facebook or Google talent acquisition. After all, it's social, it's mobile, it's local... pack in those buzzwords!

For people who don't "get it" (like me), ask yourself this: did you "get" Twitter when it first started? I know I didn't. If you're honest enough to say you didn't (because I bet virtually everyone didn't) then take pause before declaring failure.

jarin5• 15 years ago

I felt like I "got" Twitter right from the get-go because Leo Laporte did a pretty good job of explaining it and hyping it up on TWiT right after it launched.

I still haven't figured out Evernote. I mean I get the idea, but I haven't been able to get any use out of it that I wouldn't get from Pinboard, but the fact that Evernote is pretty successful just lets me know that I don't have to personally "get it" for it to work.

Which is why I'm not counting Color out just yet.

revorad4• 15 years ago

From what little I've used of Evernote, it's the OCR capabilities which seem like the killer feature. Photograph or scan a receipt and be able to search it anytime. I don't know how well it works but it seems pretty useful.

GeoffreyHull• 15 years ago

But these days everyone wants to be the first one to call a failure a failure. Why? Well, it’s a lot easier than predicting a winner. Read an interesting article on the Color phenomenon http://thegeoffreyhull.com/post/4094961998 that describes almost an insatiable desire of the blogosphere to see Color fail

yuvadam• 15 years ago

I still don't get Twitter.

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

It's like OOP. It doesn't make perfect sense until you actually use it for something.

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

No. It will take some time for people to 'get' the concept, and then people will either use it or not. I don't think it'll be 'spectacular' in either case.

They're calling it a 'moving social network', but it seems to be more about collecting photos/videos attached to specific locations. The 'social' aspect is a partial byproduct - almost feels like a buzzword thrown in to give you some justification for taking pictures - "take pics with your friends!".

But really this seems to be a stab at making large-scale data collection 'fun'. However 'fun' it may be, the focus is still on data collection.

"Sharing Content publicly with others from different locations is what this App is about. If you find this objectionable, please consider not using our App or Site."

How much of the info they collect will they make truly public?

Imagine being able to see/hear/watch activity that went on at any location at any point in history from multiple points of view. Color.com could end up being the wikipedia of realtime-location-based-multimedia-sensorfied data.

mkr-hn3• 15 years ago

The problem I see is that the whole concept relies on selling data for profit, while the app itself is (from what I've read) poorly assembled. If people won't use it, the sellable data isn't going to come.

gumbo• 15 years ago

I think the announcement of that big money wasn't a good idea because it putted too much focus on a product "not so good yet". I think they could have waited before announcing this.

In order to succeed, such soo revolutionary app need to live undercover for a while and find the "right product" first.

Now no one can tell if it will fail now or not, but the first impression so far from the tech people seems to be not good.

Quick Poll: The fate of Color

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