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Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

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11–20 of 41 posts

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#11

How on earth did it take over 3 hours for someone at Color or Sequoia to confirm the company is in-fact not dead? You'd think employees/founders/investors would have been tweeting like crazy to deny the rumor.

Because the last thing you want to do is have employees (even execs) shooting their mouths off in the heat of the moment and saying something stupid. You want to regroup, figure out WTF is going on and how the rumor started, and figure out a sensible statement that is going to calm this down instead of rile it up some more.

> saying something stupid

What kind of stupid thing could you say? The company is either dissolving or it is not. Seems pretty easy to figure out.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#12
post #4

My question would be: Why not?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that most funds are only allowed to invest capital once, so any of the $40M they get back (which I'd hope would be a somewhat large chunk) can no longer be invested.

A smarter move may be looking at and pursuing several pivots, use that 40M to create a few startups within a startup and see if you can get something started that will provide a healthy return.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the last thing you want to do is have employees (even execs) shooting their mouths off in the heat of the moment and saying something stupid. You want to regroup, figure out WTF is going on and how the rumor started, and figure out a sensible statement that is going to calm this down instead of rile it up some more.

> saying something stupid What kind of stupid thing could you say? The company is either dissolving or it is not. Seems pretty easy to figure out.

"We're not dead! In fact, we're going to rock your world with X!!"... oops... was X a secret?

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the last thing you want to do is have employees (even execs) shooting their mouths off in the heat of the moment and saying something stupid. You want to regroup, figure out WTF is going on and how the rumor started, and figure out a sensible statement that is going to calm this down instead of rile it up some more.

> saying something stupid What kind of stupid thing could you say? The company is either dissolving or it is not. Seems pretty easy to figure out.

You underestimate the power of the stupid side. In the heat of the moment you find out what good marketing folks are for.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#17

I'm still trying to figure out how a company who has $41 million in funding and over 400K users can't seem to come up with a business plan that generates revenue. Is this another example of buyer beware when you invest in these kinds of companies?

400K users? total registered users? surely that can't be active users.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#18

How on earth did it take over 3 hours for someone at Color or Sequoia to confirm the company is in-fact not dead? You'd think employees/founders/investors would have been tweeting like crazy to deny the rumor.

Because people have work to do, rather than sitting around checking Twitter, HN, and TC all day long? It's not like something's going to happen if they don't respond ASAP. As long as they'd gotten something out by the end of they day, they'd've been fine.

Yeah, people have work to do... like the PR people whose job is to handle bad news about the company. And yes, part of their job is to monitor tech news sites like the Verge.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#19
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the last thing you want to do is have employees (even execs) shooting their mouths off in the heat of the moment and saying something stupid. You want to regroup, figure out WTF is going on and how the rumor started, and figure out a sensible statement that is going to calm this down instead of rile it up some more.

> saying something stupid What kind of stupid thing could you say? The company is either dissolving or it is not. Seems pretty easy to figure out.

In any normal population of sufficient size you're going to have some screwball outliers.

Re: Color: We Are Not Shutting Down

#20
post #4

My question would be: Why not?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that most funds are only allowed to invest capital once, so any of the $40M they get back (which I'd hope would be a somewhat large chunk) can no longer be invested. A smarter move may be looking at and pursuing several pivots, use that 40M to create a few startups within a startup and see if you can get something started that will provide a healthy return.

Exactly, although they have a tarnished brand. They could find the most talented developer and become somewhat of a Mobile incubator. They've got a lot of deals and scale having dealt with Verizon, physical space and employees. They could use Color labs as the shell for lots of products.
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