
Color CEO Bill Nguyen Checks Out Of Day-To-Day Operations - olivercameron
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/28/color-ceo-nguyen-is-out/
======
MattRogish
Can you imagine any other CEO of a company doing this? His behavior is bizarre
and confusing. Imagine Tim Cook's email to his employees:

From: Tim Cook, Apple's CEO To: Apple Employees Re: Maps and... stuff..

Hi everyone,

As you know, I haven't been at work the past few months. What have I been
doing? Well, "What _haven't_ I been doing?" is the better question! I've taken
the jet to Fiji, hiked Kilimanjaro, and eaten just the best crème brûlée at
this little place off of the Champs-Élysées.

This is what I do when I know a project is a complete disaster, which happens
often. I do this all the time. I just travel around. Drink a lot of beer,
smoke a lot of pot. It's no big deal; nothing new or exciting.

You'd think the board would've fired my ass a long time ago, but nah - I've
made sure to stack the deck with my buddies and we've got enough cash to
flounder around for a while. The CEO checks keep coming, and I keep cashing
them, so I'll keep the title warm.

Since iOS6 release, the Maps app has gotten a lot of criticism. In response,
I've decided to go to Hawaii. To recharge my batteries. Yeah, they were pretty
well charged from my last two months' off but you have no idea how draining it
was to write this letter. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that.

I think I need another couple of months to recover. If some of you quit
because of my irresponsible and downright bizarre behavior, I totally
understand. To the rest of you, though, expect a pivot. Or something.

Aloha,

Tim

~~~
wheels
Please leave the asinine BS out of this forum. One of the things that sets the
conversations here apart from run of the mill news sites is the civil tone.
Note that it's very possible that the guy you're making fun of is reading what
you write, and one of the guidelines is, "Don't say things you wouldn't say in
a face to face conversation."

Projects fail. I would be exceedingly surprised if Bill takes the current
state of affairs lightly and would even expect that his absence is only
nominally his choice. Do you really want people lining up to mock you the next
time you invest a chunk of your life into a project and it goes south? The guy
is already rich from previous _massive_ successes; the CEO checks that you
mention won't contribute significantly to his net worth.

~~~
potatolicious
Maybe I'm just an asshole, but if I were involved in Color and my CEO has been
vacationing for two months while we struggle with product failure... I'd say
something fairly similar to his face (if he showed his face in the office,
anyhow).

> _"Do you really want people lining up to mock you the next time you invest a
> chunk of your life into a project and it goes south?"_

Nobody is picking on him because of Color's product failure. Not even the
TechCrunch article. People are picking on him because he's vacationing while
his company flounders.

I don't know enough about this guy's life to tell whether or not this is the
right call for him _personally_ , but I don't think it takes a rocket surgeon
to figure that this is _really_ bad for the company and its employees.

~~~
wheels
Your comment assumes he's actually just on vacation and not that he was forced
(or significantly nudged) out. I'd put my money on the latter. That he wrote a
mail saying, "Everything's fine, this is totally normal..." in a time of
(probable) crisis speaks very little to actual structure of events.

~~~
amirmc
So we should be second guessing his own quotes (assuming they're accurate)?
_"I do this historically. I take off for a little while and I vacation. It’s
nothing new or exciting,"_

From my point of view, a guy who's not been in the office for two months, who
takes a phone call from a journalist while boarding a plane to Maui, doesn't
sound like he's being 'forced' to do anything.

------
ilamont
_“I do this historically. I take off for a little while and I vacation. It’s
nothing new or exciting,” he said. “The roles of founders and CEOs is to get
everyone engaged and give opportunities to people. And when things haven’t
worked out as expected, the best way for me to recharge is to go on
sabbatical.”_

The only similar situation I can recall is Michael Arrington taking a break in
2009 after someone spat in his face at a conference:

<http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/>

The spitting incident was the last straw. I believe Arrington was truly burnt
out from working like a dog for four years, and putting up with a lot of other
stressful situations (Crunchpad, legal threats, etc.). And, to his credit, he
came back after a month or so. It's also worth noting that he had a CEO
(Heather Harde, who joined TechCrunch in 2006) still running the business.

As for Color, you can imagine what would happen if a CEO at practically any
other company in a similar situation (major product failure, staff bailing,
impending pivot) took off on an indefinite sabbatical for months. He or she
would be out.

------
acabal
Based solely on what's in this article (perhaps reality is different), this
reinforces my inkling that people get truly rich from mostly just two things:
who you know, and marketing. Market yourself (or your product) well and know
the right people, and you too can be the CEO of a vaporware company funded
with more money than most people will see in their entire lives, while
spending your months on sabbatical in Tahoe and Hawaii. Unbelievable. On the
other hand, this _is_ Techcrunch, and the reality is undoubtedly a little more
nuanced than what's presented here.

~~~
vecter
You're right, the reality is _far_ more nuanced than what's presented here.
Setting aside the current Color fiasco, Bill Nguyen is a highly accomplished
entrepreneur with close to $1B worth of startup exits in his past [1][2]. To
say that he's gotten rich from "who he knows", and "marketing" is spitting in
the face to a guy who's built real genuine successes from scratch, when he was
a nobody. He is _not_ making off like a bandit with the current $41M
investment. This is turning out to be a failure from which he will not benefit
financially in any significant way.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nguyen> [2]
<http://www.fastcompany.com/1784823/bill-nguyen-boy-bubble>

~~~
ludwigvan
Is this wiki page for real?

"He grew up in Houston, the son of Vietnamese immigrants whom he says he
consistently disappointed. They wanted him to score A's. Instead, he scored an
unpredictable mix of A's and F's, and earned a 1.4 grade point average in his
senior year. He was easily distracted and confused."

Pretty much sums it up.

------
bradly
It's strange to me that most of the talk around Color is focused around the
founders and not the investors. The investors are a much more interesting
subject. I mean, there are always going to be people willing to accept 40
million without a real product, heck I'm probably one of them, but I'd like to
see interviews with the people who thought it was a good idea to give a
company at that stage much money. I'm much more interested in hearing from
them.

~~~
smacktoward
That _would_ be interesting, but I doubt it will ever happen. Nobody with any
interest in participating in the VC-funded ecosystem (which includes much of
the tech media, sadly) is ever going to point at one of the investors who fund
that ecosystem and publicly call them out as a sucker.

Even if they, you know, _are_ a sucker.

------
bane
Another valid title could be "Interview with Irresponsible Aloof CEO who lives
in Bizarroland."

If there was any explanation of why Color is a giant smoldering pile of
failure this article encapsulates it pretty well.

I'd put particularly salient quotes from the article here but they're all fine
examples that could be used as chapter headers in a book called "How Not to
CEO (or wasting other people's money because YOLO)"

~~~
nostromo
Maybe he was too aloof, or maybe not, we don't know. But what we do know is
that most startups fail. I think you're being overly harsh.

~~~
bane
I don't disagree with your central point (most startups fail). But my personal
opinion is that it is the epitomy of unprofessionalism to "go on sabbatical"
when you are the CEO and your company is literally melting down around you.

At his point it the decision should come down to "how do I right this ship?"
or "should I turn over the helm?" not "should I go to Maui, Tahoe or both?"
His responses show such an unbelievable detachment from the investment made in
the company, the employees, the technology and anything else that's going on
around him.

"I do this historically. I take off for a little while and I vacation. It’s
nothing new or exciting."

Imagine the CEO of any company, after having some disasterous lauches and
_really_ _really_ struggling to find a direction and needing somebody at the
helm more than ever, just up and disappearing for a couple of months, nobody
really knows exactly where he is or how to get ahold of him. Banging around
Monte Carlo or the Maldives or the Alps. And when somebody finally gets ahold
of him to find out his opinion on why the dev team up and left, why the
product and company are failing and what he's going to do to fix things comes
back with this pile of nonsense.

"I feel bad about it, I can see why people would leave, you know with
everything we've ever done being a giant failure and then with me up and
disappearing for who knows how long, if I was back at the office I'd probably
pivot, maybe, but I'm not there, maybe I'll feel like figuring something to do
with the money we have left in the bank when I finish parasailing, maybe
whatever, it's not like I don't have a habit of just up and disappearing like
this, the board _knows this about me_. We'll chat when I get back from
Snowboarding in the Alps."

Most startups fail for a variety of reasons, lack of experience, funding,
mistargeting the market, etc. Most startups don't fail because the CEO took
his money and ran off to a tropical paradise "to vacation" while the house was
on fire.

------
smacktoward
_According to several sources close to the company, Nguyen has not been seen
at Color’s Palo Alto headquarters for more than two months. The speculation
was that Nguyen was “probably either in Tahoe or Hawaii.”_

And then a little further down...

 _We’re told the changes have come after a power struggle between members of
Color’s board — some of whom are loyal to Nguyen, and others who were anxious
for a change._

The guy hasn't even shown up for work in _two months_ , and there are still
board members who are _loyal to him?_ He must have some pretty awesome
blackmail material on them.

~~~
malandrew
I can see someone checking out to a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat to
think about where to take the company, but to go hang out in Maui for two
months is beyond inexcusable. There is no insight he's earning on day 60 that
he couldn't have gotten on day 10.

------
ChuckMcM
If you recall the discussion we were having about really stressful situations,
and the way people react. One is to become a tiger and fight, the other is to
flee.

It is important to realize that this is not necessarily a conscious choice,
you learn a lot about yourself when you get tested like this, you can see it
in people experiencing a disaster like Katrina, when it finally sinks in that
this may be the last few days of their lives. That level of stress flips the
switch and blam! there you are either fighting or running.

Time to move the CEO into a different role, one which takes advantage of the
charisma and energy and vision, but one that does not involve being ultimately
responsible.

~~~
bane
I do remember this. I wonder if Nguyen has never encountered a failure before?
He's apparantely a successful early-stage startup CEO. Has everything he's
worked on worked out?

------
kevinpet
"I don’t think there is a pivot happening now at all, but if I were there we
would pivot."

Hey man, if you're the CEO and they aren't pursuing the right strategy, then
get your ass back there and do your job. If you don't feel like doing your
job, then resign and let the board find someone who is at least going to try
to accomplish something.

------
timjahn
This reads like an article on the Onion. Unbelievable.

------
aristidb
Just some historical context: <http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/160/bill-
nguyen-startups> (HN discussion:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229299>)

That was about half a year after Color got funded with $41 million.

------
tatsuke95
When Color where all the rage in the tech circles a year ago, weren't they
represented as the epitome of _"invest in talent over the product"_ , with Mr.
Nguyen as the star?

Where does that leave them?

------
tferris
Color was a great idea, far beyond any social network. The concept of an
elastic network which cannot be influenced, where you cannot friend or
unfriend people and where a system decides who is your friend was just
awesome. Adding friends or contacts manually is so 2005.

~~~
majormajor
I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. The bit "[a network] where a
system decides who is your friend was just awesome" could easily go either
way.

Did you actually find out interesting things from its statements as to who
your friends were, or do you not like the idea (it doesn't sound particularly
appealing to me)?

------
jaggederest
Boy, I sure wish I could get paid to travel while not having to deliver any
results of any kind. Must be nice!

------
nanijoe
What does color make these days?

~~~
jarek
Not money.

~~~
hack_edu
Except lots of it for their CEO to pay for his vacation.

------
jconley
A lot of commenters here are mentioning Nguyen is pulling in a "CEO Salary".
Does anyone actually know this? As a founder CEO with a lot of personal cash
in the bank, I would assume he is taking little to no salary. Not that this
makes up for his absence in a time of need, but just sayin'. . .

------
beatpanda
Wait, _what_ day to day operations?

------
arihant
Every time I go on Color webpage, they have a completely different product
under same name. I feel sorry for people getting tricked with ridiculous pivot
attempts.

------
joelmaat
Have you ever listened to this guy? He's completely full of it; one line of BS
after another. It's not even worth hearing what he has to say.

------
nunyabusiness
Rumor has it the guy is broke---his house in Hawaii is for rent and he rushed
out of his house in Palo Alto like it was being foreclosed on--- So he is
likely using the "vacation" time to return to his roots---the trailer parks of
Houston. You BS and lie your way thru Silicon Valley until eventually you end
up right back where you came from---someone should do a "rags to riches to
rags" story

------
sbochins
This all seems a little too hard to believe. I'm not really confident that the
CEO has been smoking pot and drinking beer in Tahoe and Hawaii for the past
two months. When software companies start to fail, the engineers know it. I
wouldn't be surprised if they just talked to some pissed off engineers and
weren't really getting the straight dope.

------
traughber
lol.

