I changed my opinion after seeing this Interview with Color's CEO, Bill Nguyen

Wed, Mar 30, 2011

I think it's no secret that I'm a big fan of This Week in Startups. In this latest episode (no 128) Jason Calacanis interviews Color's founder, Bill Nguyen.

Color has obviously had a lot of attention because of it's enormous pre-launch raise and the low quality of it's initial application. The interview addresses these issues and gives you a little glimpse into the way Bill sees things.

There are a few things that made me think:

  1. Bill calls himself a social recluse. Some people would probably call that being an introvert. What's interesting about that is that Color is actually a social network and yet people generally say that entrepreneurs should work on problems they themselves have - so you're your own customer in a sense. That might actually make Color even more interesting because it's a social network for people who don't generally like human interactions. How weird would that be?
  2. He also doesn't like conferences - I can understand why and it's refreshing to see somebody successful sharing this view. I've been thinking that I'm a freak and that I'll never have any success since I don't like social gatherings a whole lot. I guess there is hope.
  3. This point about you not really having any authentication or identification in the application is pretty interesting. Also the parts he mentioned about the network gets protected from misuse in the same way that society protects itself - because the network is the people who are physically close to you. It's interesting. It certainly makes you think... Edit: Well, then there are issues like this one.

The interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WGdwY6h5JI

Thoughts

After watching the interview I had what you could probably describe as an epiphany: Proximity and general "localness" are topics that really we have only yet scratched the surface of. Seeing this refreshing view of what a social network like this could look like, really opens up the door to all kinds of possibilities.

Now when I look at Foursquare I can't help but think that it's in some way outdated. Old-fashioned almost. They'll probably have to move very quickly now to keep being relevant.

The future is exciting. It will be fun to see what happens in this space in the coming months.