venture backing from Sequoia Capital, bringing
Color’s total to $41 million. For an app. Before
it had even launched.
The debut of Nguyen’s Facebook killer was
scheduled for 5 p.m. PST that evening. But by
late afternoon, Apple had yet to approve the app.
Back at Color’s offices, anxiety ran high. “We
thought, This is awful. All this press is going to
come out and people won’t be able to get the app,”
says Nguyen. If only he knew what was to come.
With minutes to spare, the app got approved.
People started downloading Color so quickly that
it rocketed, briefly, to the No. 2 most-downloaded
social-networking app—just behind Facebook.
The developers were ecstatic that their brainchild
was finally out in the world, even if most were
ridden with a nasty stomach flu that had been
circulating the office. “I don’t get the sense peo-
ple were exhausted,” recalls Kuch. “I was tired
because I was doing press for weeks and weeks.”
And then, that very night, everything came
crashing down. Color execs started noticing
that users were quick to rate the app a measly
one or two stars out of five—nails in the coffin,
given an oversaturated app
market that was spawning
more than 1,000 new apps
a day. The problem was
simple: In order for Color to
work, many users had to be
in a similar location, but
since Color hadn’t widely
seeded the app prelaunch,
users arrived to a social net-
work that resembled a ghost
town. “I wanna see that
pitch deck,” ranted influential tech blogger
Robert Scoble. “It must have had some magic
unicorn dust sprinkled on it.” A mock satirical
pitch deck began circulating around tech circles,
spoofing Color’s attempt to capitalize on every
web 2.0 cliché: “People. Colors. Apps. Cats. Bacon.
Nguyen says
his wife hates his
dream home in
Maui: “She thinks
it’s emblematic of
her husband,
which is, He’s
obsessed with all
things beautiful
but cares less
about whether it’s
functional or not.”
Organic. Bieber. Mobile. Social. Local. Pivot.”
“Within 30 minutes I realized, Oh my God,
it’s broken. Holy shit, we totally fucked up,” says
Nguyen. “I thought we were going to build a
better Facebook. My reaction was like putting
your finger into a light socket. You know some-
thing went very wrong.”
simonwatson
Six months after Color became synonymous with
“bubble 2.0,” Nguyen is readying Color’s relaunch. Over the spring and summer, Nguyen
fired president Pham; Patil, his head of product,
resigned. The rumor mill geared up, most notably with the shocking (and unconfirmed)
report that, before the launch, Google offered
Nguyen $200 million for Color, only to get turned
down. “It’s become an ongoing joke,” says Paul
Kedrosky, a Silicon Valley investor and commentator, who says the startup is now the Valley’s cautionary tale for a certain naive fervor
for mobile and social networks. “It’s become a
punch line. You can stand up at VC events and
say, ‘Color,’ and people literally laugh without
anything else being said.”
