Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Path to Success - 2011

The latest and greatest smartphone "app" is "Color". "Color" enables us to transmit our photos, videos, and clever comments not just to Facebook friends or those on our e-mail distribution lists, but to any fellow "Color" app-holder within a 150 ft. radius. That photo of underage Timmy doing a keg stand can be seen not only by his friends but by law enforcement. Your snarky comments on Tiffany's slutty behavior can be read by any pervert within range. That video of you barfing on Mr Wilson's lawn can be seen in real time by Mr Wilson himself. Clearly, this is the extension of social networking that we've all been anticipating.

"Color" is the brainchild of Bill Nguyen, a "seasoned entrepreneur" from Palo Alto, CA who is also a "self-described recluse" who says that the service "drew him out of his shell". And what a shell it is. According to a newspaper article, Bill "works from a white porcelain bathtub in the window of his company's headquarters to the amusement of passersby". Tom Edison and Henry Ford never did that. Disdaining the "corporate suit" culture, he pads around the office and town "in a sleeping bag suit". The Snuggie rises from the family TV Room to the Corporate Boardroom.

Of course, Bill's idiosyncratic ways did not prevent Sequoia Capital, the same firm that originally backed Apple and Google from handing Bill a cool $40 million to develop "Color".

The Path to Success, 2011 update, appears to involve sitting in a bathtub as opposed to sitting at a desk, wearing a Snuggie instead of a three-piece suit, and coming up with a web-based "app" that is likely to get its purchasers arrested. The times, they are a-changing.

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