1. Nguyen names company 'Color' and buys color.com
2. Sequoia hears about Color, contacts them
3. Sequoia gives them $14 million
4. Other investors want in, and keeps wanting in
money until the total size of the round hits $41 million.
If the implied timeline is correct (and do correct me if I'm wrong), then the founders were more than prepared to shell out for the domain name even before the round.
A tribute to Apple's color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I've used.)
My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web.
Working at Apple was a dream. Color's name is a tribute to Apple.
So, you'd be right, it looks like Sequoia did get in after the purchase of the domain, which could indeed indicate that the domain helped them in some way.
Best rebuttal by far.
Though, one could also argue they might not have been so eager to accept Sequoia's capital if they weren't spending $500,000 on things like domain names.
And Nguyen chose the name Color as a tribute to Apple: http://www.quora.com/Color-Labs-startup/Why-is-Color-named-C...
A tribute to Apple's color logo from the Apple II. This computer changed my life when I was seven (also a reference to another company name I've used.)
My dad bought one from ComputerCraft run by Billy Ladin in Houston. He was one of the first computer resellers back in 1977. In an odd twist, I meet him in an elevator 15 years later and worked for him. He introduced me to the Web.
Working at Apple was a dream. Color's name is a tribute to Apple.