Color.xxx Pitch Slides Lampoon Tech Bubble Absurdity

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

Alexia Tsotsis works for TechCrunch as a writer. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles... → Learn More

“Find someone. Take pictures together. Party. Play date. Lunch?” — Color Labs copy

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s official, we’re in a bubble.”Jacques Mattheij

If you’re like most people in the tight-knit incestuous family we like to call the tech industry, all of the headlines in this Techmeme cluster on social photo-sharing app Color nabbing $41 million are actually declaring one thing, “Tech Bubble, Now Official.”

While the Color team, helmed by Lala founder Bill Nguyen and BillShrink’s Peter Pham is impressive, the media frenzy surrounding the company’s funding and launch is pretty jarring. I mean WSJ’s “Sequoia To Color Labs: Not Since Google Have We Seen This” headline reads like it’s from the Onion.

Tony Bacigalupo, founder of co-working space New Work City, took this opportunity for parody a bit further and created a fake slide deck for a fake app called Colors.xxx, which hypothetically lets you share your favorite colors with your friends. Tagline: “People. Colors. Apps. Cats. Bacon. Organic. Bieber. Mobile. Social. Local. Pivot.” Highlight: “But will people want to know Ashton’s favorite color?”

Bacigalupo tells me that the slide deck isn’t meant to specifically skewer Color, but rather today’s irrationally exuberant investment climate.

“I don’t have any problem with the app itself or the people behind it, my concern is with the fever pitch of ever increasing investments in companies that have less and less obvious utility,” he says. “Obviously I’m poking fun at Color, but the vast majority of what’s in the slides is not directed at Color at all … People are increasingly feeling that a bubble is forming in the industry.”

In fact Bacigalupo actually likes the Color app itself, “It’s a cool concept, even though it crashed my phone. I’d like to see them build some really cool tech into it — And it’s extremely young, they’re obviously going to do a lot with it, so I’d like to see where it goes.”

And while the slides are hilarious, and all in good fun, what’s more disconcerting than the possibility of a looming tech bubble is the fact that some didn’t get the joke, “A very small number of people thought that we were being serious. I don’t know what to think about that,” Bacigalupo says.

Well, probably that it’s time to party like it’s 1999.

Company: Color Labs
Website: color.com
Launch Date: 2010
Funding: $41M

Color is a social app for photos. You take photos and then the photos appear on the fly with other photos in your vicinity. You get to see the photos your friends are taking as well as other people within 100 feet of your photo. The app will group photos based on who your friends are so you are more likely to see photos that you are interested in. The service is available on Android or iPhone.

Learn more

Tags:

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads

Sponsored Ads

Upcoming Events

SXSW 2012

Austin, Texas

Disrupt NY 2012

New York City

Disrupt SF 2012

San Francisco, CA