$0.02

There’s been no shortage of commentary from the peanut gallery about the recent $41 million investment in Color.  Therefore, I’m going to withhold my meaningless, baseless comments on bubbles, bad investments and the like.  I do however, feel compelled to share my meaningless and baseless opinions on what I perceive as the real problems facing Color.

By most accounts, Bill Nguyen, Color’s founder / CEO, is one of the smartest and most successful technology entrepreneurs out there.  Having had the pleasure of spending time with him, I can also attest that he’s also one of the nicest.  Bill isn’t a person you want to bet against.  Color’s lead investor, Mike Moritz of Sequoia, is no slouch either.  I’m highly confident, without access to any privileged information that Color is pursuing a gigantic idea.

Color’s problems lie in mismanagement / miscalculation around two fundamental and well-documented challenges that have plagued many start-ups focused on the consumer web / mobile space:  PR/D1 — Public Relations and Day 1 (a.k.a. the ‘Ghost Town’ Problem).  Let’s consider where things went wrong for Color in each of these two areas.

Public Relations

There’s a saying in sports that if ‘talking could win a championship, there would be no need to play the game’.  Never has that been more self-evident than this year with an NCAA Final Four consisting of precisely zero #1 or #2 seeded teams. The so-called ‘little guys’ got on the court and kicked the assess of much ‘better’ teams on paper.  They earned their trips to the Final Four.  

Color, like all pre-launch start-ups, hasn’t ‘earned’ anything. It’s a new application competing for user eyeballs, engagement and adoption just like the application of an unfunded start-up operating in a garage.  The quote attributed to Mike Moritz that Sequoia hasn’t “seen a company this transformative since Google” can be read like a seasoned VC that’s found the next big thing. But his comment can also sound like the braggadocio of a hot-shot coach or athlete “guaranteeing” that his team will win a championship and insulting a lot of people in the process.  There’s a lot of other teams, some much further along than Color (Facebook, Twitter, Zynga etc.), some that might even be in Sequoia’s portfolio, which might take issue with the statement that Color, an application with ZERO users at the time the statement was made is ‘most transformative’ since Google.  Big talk is never bragging, provided you back it up, but it’s rather embarrassing if you don’t.  Plus, you make your cause hard to support and cheer for.

Silicon Valley might not be populated with the world’s greatest athletes, but our community is nonetheless very, if not hyper-competitive.  There’s a bunch of brilliant, hard working people with big egos (myself included, at least on the ego part) building companies, some of those companies are growing rapidly and a few are even making boatloads of cash.  Yet, I can’t think of another consumer app start-up that’s had the luxury of starting life with $41 million dollars in pre-launch investment.  I wasn’t privvy to Color’s pitch and I stipulate to the fact that it was amazing.  But Color doesn’t actually get to operate in a “we said it’s awesome, therefore you will agree its awesome” multiverse.  It operates in an ecosystem, specifically an early stage technology ecosystem. Consumer apps don’t succeed by pissing-off early adopters. Who are ‘early adopters’?  Many of them are no doubt early stage entrepreneurs and their teams at companies in the valley and around the world.  The very same people busting their asses and building real businesses without the luxury of $41M and without heralding the second coming of Google. 

I found it very telling that now roughly a week after the color launch, with 700 ratings on iTunes, a full 490 ratings give the app a 1-star rating.  What type of people are likely to be using Color in the first week of it’s life? My mom back in Memphis (since we valley-types use ‘moms’ to represent the faceless, non-tech savvy masses) or the tech community in the valley and elsewhere?  Color is guilty of essentially ‘talking trash’ before the game. And it appears that many of the other teams that play the game don’t like it.  

With such a brilliant, all-star team of 27 people and $41 million in the bank pre-launch, Color needs to go out of their way to ‘play nice’ and do something awesome.  Color has the tech equivalent of ‘Duke’ level talent, a bunch guys who are 1st round draft picks and their team has the biggest endowment in start-up basketball. Color’s Coach Mike Moritz, basically when on ESPN and said, ‘we’ve assembled the greatest start-up basketball team since the undefeated 88 win UCLA teams under Coach Wooden’. Color, might have the best team and the best idea, but Color still has to play the game. Color might in fact one day be bigger than Google. But today, only Facebook (maybe one or two others) has earned the right to make that claim and mind you, Facebook hasn’t really made that claim. Color needs to learn the importance of being considerate of all the other teams (entrepreneurs) playing the game.

Compare Color’s launch to Square, Jack Dorsey’s high-profile start-up. After founding Twitter, Jack had earned the right to attract massive venture investment, press and perhaps to even talk a little trash. The Square idea is gigantic, potentially revolutionizing the way we buy and interact with merchants.  Plus, Square makes money. Yet, the Square team went out of their want to downplay expectations. They also were effectively in private beta for many months only giving readers to the number of customers that they could give an awesome experience.  Color crashed repeatedly on my first night using it. Square even had a bit of a false start, but the team remained humble. Square has Kansas talent with Butler or Virginia Commonwealth sensibilities and work ethic. As a result, Square has kept themselves easy to root for. The Color team did the opposite and have launched in such a way that their product is despised by the very people Color needs to adopt it at the earliest stages.

Day 1 (The Ghost Town Problem)

The primary reason a start-up shouldn’t ‘talk trash’ is that there’s still a game to be played, fought and won. The ball doesn’t always bounce anyone’s way.  The ‘game’ consumer web start-ups play is user adoption. The score is measured in user attention and interest. Engagement is the equivalent of a crowd-rousing slam dunk and awesomeness, a game-winning 3 pointer. 

While I’m sure in an office of 27 people using the app, Color must feel awesome! After all, everyone in the office is likely interested in each other and their activities. However, I work in the heart of the tech community in SF. With Twitter, Instagram and 100 other start-ups within mere blocks of my office, I have yet to see more than 1 or 2 photos in the Color feed at anytime. Color delivers an almost non-existent user experience. While “elastic social networks” might be a multi-billion dollar idea, Color has focused too much on the elastic ignoring social. Whatever the Color team is experiencing at their offices isn’t translating to the public because without either the ability to locate my online friends OR a critical mass of Color users within a 150 feet — a $41 million elastic social network that’s not social is bafflingly pointless.  My pre-loaded iPhone camera application delivers superior experience.  

Adding in witty warnings to the app download page can’t fix it. $410,000,000 can’t fix this problem for that matter. There’s the story of the entrepreneur that pitches a VC saying “with one million users, we’ll make a billion dollars”.  The VC responds, “I agree, but you never told me how do you’re going to get from zero to 1 million users?”  Coach Moritz apparently didn’t ask this question. My suggestions? Team Color, please scrap the 150ft thing.  If your application is a ghost town for me at lunch time and I work in middle of South Park/Soma in San Francisco with Centos and Little Skillet literally in my building (these places attract the tech community like moths to a flame), what’s Color like for people in other parts of the  country? If there’s only 2 pictures online in my area, what’s it like for a person trying Color in Denver or Dallas? If my feed is empty when the Instagram team is only 2 blocks from my office, who’s having this great Color experience?  You’d assume Instragram’s team would be taking hundreds of pictures with Color, even if just to figure it out for competitive reasons, but it appears not.

Allow users to add their friends.  Expand the radius to a mile or more.  Color, please put some damned points on the board! Acquire and engage users, show us a good experience. Do something awesome that reveals the magic of your application — then role out the finer, more esoteric portions of your vision, shrink the radius or whatever. 

Think of it this way, have you ever been to an empty party? I have. Now, have you ever had a great time at an empty party? I haven’t. Moritz essentially said that Color is throwing the web’s biggest party since Google. Everyone I know wanted to check out the party. We all went, but it was lame. I wanted to invite my friends to the big party, but Color effectively closed the guest list.

I’m cheering for you guys and the entrepreneurial community in general. But, if I’m allowed to be honest and still be a fan, I haven’t seen anything awesome yet. My advice, tone down the rhetoric and big talk. Quit bragging about the size of your raise and world-changing promises. At this point, I’d be impressed by seeing something more than 1 or 2 context-less photos of some random dude I don’t know and could care less about. Be a good citizen in the start-up community and show us a good time with your app.  We get that you’re the best team, but now give us a reason to cheer for you, to fall in love with your product and not roll our collective eyes when hear hear your name.  When the final buzzer sounds, everyone will have forgotten about your pre-game shenanigans and Color willl be judged on how it plays the game.