This represents a rare (AFAICR) failure for Sequoia. I don't mean to be the naysayer but even at the time, for me, Color had disaster written all over it. All flash, no substance.

I wonder how much of that $40+ million is left and will be returned to investors. Anyone know how many employees Color has (had?)?

It's been said that the military is always busy planning for yesterday's war. The lessons of the past often don't reflect the change in circumstances. I think the tech sector suffers from a version of this, particularly for VCs. Facebook is big. Instagram sold big. Lots of people are chasing social. But IMHO social is largely yesterday's war.

Take one of my current bugbears: social search. Many view it as the Next Big Thing. Social is seen as a key future driver to recommendations and the like. IMHO this is completely overhyped. This is something that's been much-discussed already but a month or two ago I had an interesting conversation that I think shed some light on the problem.

Let's say Alice is friends with Bob. Bob likes a particular movie. We as programmers and entrepreneurs see an opportunity to use technology to solve a "problem" here: namely, how to allow Bob to express that information in such a way as to expose it to Alice, who it is argued, may well be interested in that.

The problem here is that the view of the "problem" here is backwards. We see social interactions as an inefficient way of disseminating information but in most cases in the real world, it's the opposite: that movie recommendation is simply a way of enabling and facilitating a social interaction. In other words, the movie recommendation is a means to an end not an end in and of itself. Too many social startups (IMHO) view the social interactions as a means to an end when in fact it is the end.

Anyway, my condolences in particular to the employees of Color, who I have no doubt worked hard over the last year or so. Luckily we're in a market where you should easily be able to move on to bigger and better things.