color

What you can do with $30 million of venture funding

Have you heard of Color? It’s the start-up that raised a staggering $41 million without a product. Unfortunately,  that capital didn’t translate into a hit and Color soon folded.

Clinkle could be the next Color. Clinkle raised an amazing $30 million, also on the back of concepts and not actual product. Unfortunately, that capital didn’t translate into a hit and…Clinkle is now pivoting.

TechCrunch has a story on the pivot, now called Treats, and it basically sounds like a debit card with rewards you give to your friends. I use the word “basically” because I’m still confused by the mechanic, despite TechCrunch laying it out in point-by-point form.

That’s got to be worrying for Treats.

People are busy and have enough problems; most won’t learn something new that’s complicated when there are already so many good alternatives.

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HTC is becoming like Color, the app that raised $41M and then died

Recently, an angel investor asked me to provide advice to a start-up in which he was the sole investor. I researched the space and came to the meeting with a hypothesis on why they weren’t doing well: the product was bad; they scaled too quickly, at one point with 50 people at the company; tried to do too many things, etc.

The founder, investor and I met up at Starbucks and after a couple hours discussion, the investor shocked the entrepreneur and me by declaring that — based on what he just heard — he’s going to liquidate the company. Wow! He later clarified with me that he was already thinking it, and wanted to get my input before he made a final decision.

I just hope I don’t cross paths with the entrepreneur…or if I do, to make sure there are plenty of witnesses around in case he decides to take violent revenge!

I share this story because something in the news about HTC’s new business unit, HTC Creative Labs, which created apps like the ZOE on HTC One, caught my eye.

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