Color

Forty-one million dollars before launch, an app nobody understood, and a shutdown within two years: the cautionary tale of the 2011 app boom

Shut down
19902026

Color was a photo sharing app launched on 23 March 2011 by Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham with $41 million in funding announced the same day, the largest pre-launch round of its era. It showed you photos taken by anyone within about 150 feet, with no accounts and no friends list, and most people who opened it saw an empty screen. After a pivot to live video the company shut down, with Apple hiring some of its engineers, and the app was withdrawn on 31 December 2012.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2011
  2. 23 March 2011 Launch
    Color launches with $41 million announced

    Sequoia, Bain Capital Ventures and SVB.

  3. April 2011 other
    Co-founder Peter Pham leaves
  4. September 2011 pivot
    Color 2: live video to Facebook friends

    The proximity idea is dropped.

  5. 2012
  6. 17 October 2012 Shutdown announced
    Reports that Color is winding down and Apple is hiring engineers
  7. 20 November 2012 Decline
    Shareholders vote to dissolve the company
  8. 31 December 2012 Shutdown
    The app and service are withdrawn

The site through time

Read the old front page here, in one piece, from our own capture: color.com, 1 June 2011 →

Browse color.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2011 2012 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Color Labs, Inc. 2010–2012 Founded Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham, Palo Alto

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Color never found an audience. The launch app was a photo feed of strangers within 150 feet, which made no sense outside a crowded event; a pivot to live video through Facebook in 2011 did not help. In late 2012 the company wound down, Apple hired part of the engineering team, and the app was withdrawn at the end of December 2012.

Our analysis: Color raised $41 million from Sequoia and Bain before anyone outside the company had used the product, and the money became the story. The product was built for a situation, a stadium or a festival where everybody nearby is taking pictures, and launched into an empty room: open it at home and it showed nothing, because nobody near you had it. Reviews were one star. The team tried a different app, then a video app tied to Facebook, and each change erased what little audience existed. It was the moment the press stopped assuming that a famous founder, a famous investor and a big cheque added up to a product.

History [edit]

Proximity instead of friends

Bill Nguyen had sold Lala to Apple and Onebox to Phone.com, and he could raise money. On 23 March 2011 Color launched on the iPhone alongside the news that Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank had put $41 million into a company with no users. Sequoia had never given a first-round cheque that big. The domain, color.com, had cost $350,000 on its own.

The app itself did something nobody had asked for. There were no accounts, no follow buttons and no friends. You took a picture and it appeared in a shared stream with every picture taken by every Color user within roughly 150 feet. At a concert this might have been wonderful. At your kitchen table it showed your own photo, alone. Within days the App Store was full of one-star reviews saying the app did nothing, which was accurate.

Pivot, pivot, close

Co-founder Peter Pham left in April 2011. The team rebuilt the app, then in September 2011 released a second Color that streamed 30-second live video to your Facebook friends, which required Facebook login and abandoned the proximity idea altogether. Few people noticed. By 2012 reports said the company had spent a fraction of the money and that the investors wanted it returned.

In October 2012 it was reported that Color was winding down and that Apple was hiring about 20 of its engineers; the board voted to close in November. The app came off the store and the service stopped at the end of December 2012. The remaining funds were returned to investors, which is more than most failed apps of that year managed.

The domain today

color.com later passed to other companies and is now used by a healthcare firm. The name remains shorthand in Silicon Valley for raising too much, too early.

Similar projects

Wunderlist The to-do app Microsoft bought to bury 2010–2020 Google Goggles Point your phone at a landmark, a book or a wine label and Google told you what it was, eight years before Lens replaced it 2009–2018 Astrid The to-do app with the friendly squid, four million users, bought by Yahoo and closed 96 days later 2008–2013 Houseparty The lockdown living room, closed by Fortnite's owner 2016–2021 Secret Anonymous confessions from your own contacts, worth $100 million for about a year 2014–2015 Google Latitude See where your friends are on a map: Google's location sharing, four years ahead of its time and folded into Google+ in 2013 2009–2013

Sources [edit]

  1. Color launches with $41 million in funding TechCrunch 23 March 2011 [archived]
  2. Color Labs shutting down, Apple hires engineers The Verge 17 October 2012
  3. Color Labs Wikipedia 1 January 2024 [archived]
  4. A start-up with $41 million and an unusual app The New York Times 23 March 2011

Last verified: 22 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).