

Colourlovers Raises $1 Million To Make Everyone An Artist - citizenkeys
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/03/colourlovers-raises-1-million-to-make-everyone-an-artist/

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pacemkr
I don't know why there is hate in the comments. Just because the word "color"
is involved, doesn't mean these guys don't actually deserve the -- much more
reasonable -- funding.

As a non-designer, I can testify that colourlovers is solving a problem for
me. If they give me an even better crutch when it comes to design, I can
easily see paying for it.

Somebody mentioned Kuler. Kuler is actually not very good. It's flash based,
lacks the polish, and I find myself incredibly frustrated every time I sit
down to use it. Colourlovers, on the other hand, leaves me with positive
emotions every single time. In my mind, the two are not comparable.

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fuzionmonkey
Agreed. There are a lot of "color scheme" sites, but Colourlovers is by far
the best.

I use Colourlovers all the time for color inspiration and palettes. Its a
wonderful site.

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fishtoaster
As a developer who is semi-color-blind but still likes to dabble in graphic
design, I'm a fan of colourlovers. I can't pick a palette to save my life, so
I just pick one off of there. :)

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matdwyer
This was the first startup I ever "signed up" for back in 2004 (before I even
knew what a startup was).

Amazing to see how much it grew in those 7 years.

Congrats to everyone involved!!!!

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rayboyd
Ditto. I've been using this site since Darius called himself Prettyboy on a
little known forum. Been great watching it grow over the years.

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aepstein
We were actually YC W10 :)

(edit: original title referenced "YC W11")

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citizenkeys
I see now... CHROMAom was the original name?

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aepstein
Yup, it's still our legal parent company name, but we found that when we told
people we were CHROMAom they said "huh?", and when we said we were
COLOURlovers they said "I know COLOURlovers!"

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aepstein
Oh, and we're hiring and we'd love to work with you!
<http://clrlv.rs/workwithcl>

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richcollins
Apparently the new funding buzzwords are "mobile, local, social and color"

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sdf66
And "lean" isn't a buzzword? What's with the hate?

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dariusmonsef
Pffft. We were into color way before $41M :)

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mitjak
> (if you’re interested they’re targeting hires in Portland — Monsef describes
> the hiring market in San Francisco as “pretty nutty”...

A bit unrelated but does anybody else feel frustrated when a closing bracket
is omitted in an article? Perhaps it is too much lisp exposure but I always
keep scanning the text for that closing braket looking to find the end of the
"scope" of the bracketed sentence.

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jp
Both Colourlovers and Adobe Kuler have non-commercial palette API´s. I know,
because I thought about supporting them in this -
<http://teppefall.com/products/colorspace>

So they must be totally paranoid about traffic numbers, social hooks and brand
dillution. And it seems to be a winning formula. Impressive.

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kilian
Looks like a very interesting app, but all the links (screenshots for each OS,
clicking the screenshot itself) on that page seem to be broken.

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teyc
Colourlovers is a cool site. I'm not a colour geek, but I can appreciate what
darius has achieved (and congrats) with cultivating such a large community and
I'm glad it has worked out financially well for the team.

I'm just as curious as anyone how CL will monetize this since I'm not the
target audience but whatever it is, it will be interesting to watch.

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melvinram
How will they make money?

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MPiccinato
Great site and great community.

I use this site all the time to get inspiration from the color palettes.

Congrats!

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gabaix
I was looking for an app like that. Ideas for monetization: \- license
technology to interior designers \- sell trends data to paint retailers \-
build a deviant art community where people sell their pattern kind of hard to
guess frankly ... more usage will help! definitely solves a good problem I
had.

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ericwu01
Congrats to Darius, Aaron, and co.

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HardyLeung
Congrats! I use Colourlovers a lot and I think it's a great service. My
application requires a lot of palettes (I can "themes"), over 200 of them, all
of which come from Colourlovers. I tried to use Kuler, but it's just not as
good.

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pmikal
So quickly people forget Adobe's free Kuler:

<http://kuler.adobe.com>

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carbocation
I had been under the impression that kuler was a knockoff of colourlovers, but
I'm on my mobile and am having a hard time finding evidence.

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pmikal
Kuler has been around since November of 2006 if I remember correctly....

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aepstein
And COLOURlovers has been around since Dec 04.

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BasilAwad
O wow. I've been having fun there and I didn't even know y'all were YC backed.
Congrats.

