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Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

blogs.wsj.com

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Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#41

Post by URSpider94 »

dave1619 wrote: post #24

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.

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.

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#42

Post by RyanMcGreal »

duck wrote: post #33
bdotdub wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I do think that $41mm is crazy, I agree with unohoo. If they're getting that much money from Sequoia, you can sure as hell bet they're not investing in "just another photo sharing app". Part of $41mm is because of the team, but I'm betting most of the money is because of the long term, ambitious vision they have for it. But to get there, they have to release a decidedly short term vision product and build from…

Or... the bubble is nearer than we think.

The bubble or the pop?

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#43

Post by dave1619 »

dave1619 wrote: post #24

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.

Some positive articles about Color:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2011/03/why_color_matters_...

http://blogs.forbes.com/bruceupbin/2011/03/23/color-a-twitte...

http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/20110323/with-41m-in-han...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1742209/lala-founder-unveils-41-m...

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#44

Post by dave1619 »

URSpider94 wrote: post #41
dave1619 wrote: post #24

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.

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.

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.

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#45

Post by alexyim »

bradleyland wrote: post #14

"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.…

Well, if you invested $25mm, saying such a thing would be perfectly reasonable.

Also, keep in mind the context of the quote.. it's not referring to the current state of the product. There's probably a lot more we haven't seen from this article.

"They told us that every 10 years or so a company and a marketplace and an opportunity come together that’s transformative"

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#46

Post by 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.

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#47

Post by [deleted] »

bradleyland wrote: post #14

"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.…

[deleted]

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#48

Post by 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.

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#49

Post by pchristensen »

mikeryan wrote: post #26
pchristensen wrote: post #2

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 mai…

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.

That's basically what PayPal did.

Re: Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This

#50

Post by 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.
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