Sequoia über Color: ‚Seit Google haben wir so etwas nicht gesehen‘

Color, eine neue mobile App, sorgt in den USA dank einer Investitionsrunde von 41 Millionen US-Dollar vor dem Produktlaunch für Aufsehen.

Was steckt dahinter? John Battelles Erklärung deutet darauf hin, dass die hohe Finanzierungsrunde nicht völlig widersinnig ist:

[..]what Colors does is offer up a visual public timeline of any given location, in real time. Every single image captured at any given location is instantly „placed“ at that location, forever, and is served up as an artifact of that location to anyone using the Colors application.

Put your brain to that idea for a second, and you realize this is one of those ideas that is both A/ Ridiculously huge and B/ Ridiculously obvious in retrospect. And pretty much every idea that passes those two tests only has to pass a third to Be Really Big. That third test? Execution.

Battelle hat eine Vision für die Idee hinter Color:

In short, if Color is used by a statistically significant percentage of folks, nearly every location that matters on earth will soon be draped in an ever-growing tapestry of visual cloth, one that no doubt will also garner commentary, narrative structure, social graph meaning, and plasticity of interpretation. Imagine if Color – and the fundaments which allow its existence – had existed for the past 100 years. Imagine what Color might have revealed during the Kennedy assassination, or the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, or hell, the Rodney King beating?

[..]

Trust me on this. If Colors fails, it will be due to execution, and someone else will get it right. Because the world wants and needs this, and the time is now.

Das klingt alles sehr interessant.

Die 41 Millionen US-Dollar, die das Startup von unter anderem Sequoia Capital erhalten hat, stellen auch sicher, dass man Color auf dem Schirm behalten sollte:

Of course, that doesn’t mean Color will succeed. In fact, such big ideas are more prone to failure. But that’s also why the $41 million is so important. Most startups raise a small amount of money, enough to get off the ground, first. Then they go back for more. And then more. And so on — if they can. Sequoia just gave Color two years worth of time not to have to worry about that. They can simply focus on the product.

Bei Sequoia Capital, der extrem erfolgreichen VC-Firma, die seinerzeit unter anderem in Google, Yahoo, Apple, YouTube und PayPal investiert hat, ist man auf jeden Fall euphorisch:

“They told us that every 10 years or so a company and a marketplace and an opportunity come together that’s transformative,” Nguyen said. “They told us, ‘Not since Google have we seen this.’”