
Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This - bjonathan
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/03/24/sequoia-to-color-labs-not-since-google-have-we-seen-this/
======
bradleyland
"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.

~~~
unohoo
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.

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

~~~
unohoo
While I am no longer active on Twitter, I cant deny the fact that Twitter has
become a massive distribution channel for content,links etc. There are two
other such online distribution channels -- Google and Facebook. And they make
lot,lot of money.

Twitter might still not have a viable business model, but they can experiment
(now that they have a huge user base and data) and try to find one. While its
not easy and obvious at times to find a viable business model, just reaching
the sheer distribution scale as Twitter's is a huge hurdle in itself that very
few incumbents will ever reach.

~~~
alex_c
I'm not arguing that - Twitter has grown much more than I expected. I was
referring to the "I'm sure they know things us mere mortals are not privy to"
argument.

------
pchristensen
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?

~~~
mikeryan
_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.

~~~
pchristensen
That's basically what PayPal did.

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

Can 9 women produce a baby in one month?

~~~
biot
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.

~~~
andrewpbrett
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>

------
jonmc12
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?

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

~~~
fistofjohnwayne
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.

------
dstein

      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
Early optimization and all that.

------
JarekS
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.

------
sylvinus
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.

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

~~~
rayboyd
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.

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

------
dave1619
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
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.

~~~
dave1619
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.

~~~
Cossolus
There's a name for "good reasons" that don't result in proven product. They're
called "bad reasons".

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

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

------
djjose
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
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.

------
hackscribe
I think this is all a talent acquisition strategy.

------
moblivu
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.

------
piper74
I thought SearchMe and Mahalo were suppose to be the next Google?

~~~
jmathai
Cuil.

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

~~~
jmathai
Damnit, I should have left out the period.

------
arfrank
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).

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

~~~
cyrus_
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.

------
itswindy
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.

------
Kilimanjaro
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.

------
haploid
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.

