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An iPhone photo app called Color announced last night that it raised $41 million from Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital pre-launch.
To use a favorite expression of Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowly, that's banana town.
It's OK.
How could this have happened?
A VC you've heard of but doesn't want us sharing his name for obvious reasons, has a purely speculative theory:
I just couldn't grok why the best early stage investor [Sequoia] would put that crazy amount of money in a pre-launch company and moreover do it alongside one of the worst [Bain]. But then figured it out.
I have no facts at all about this but bet you Sequoia seeded it and then Bain came in at higher price and got them to agree to say they did it jointly. Basically Bain paid $40 million to look Like Sequoia's peer and get Valley mojo they desperately need. No other way this could have happened.
Update: CNET's Caroline McCarthy tweets at us: "Sounds like a good theory, except that a Color exec told me Sequoia's $$ was nearly triple Bain's." So we're back to: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
Related: Take A Tour Of Color, The $41 Million App Everyone Is Freaking Out About
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Nicholas Carlson was Business Insider's global editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2024, overseeing its emergence as a National Magazine Award, Emmy, SABEW, and Pulitzer Prize-winning global news organization with more than 500 journalists reaching 200 million readers and viewers each month.Before that, he was Business Insider's chief correspondent.Carlson is also the author of "Marissa Mayer and the Fight To Save Yahoo!"He was an Executive Producer of "Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV," which, during its debut week, was the most-watched television show on any streamer and the most-watched show in Max history.His investigative reporting rewrote the histories of Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon. He also wrote the award-winning features "The Truth About Marissa Mayer: An Unauthorized Biography" and "THE COST OF WINNING: Tim Armstrong, Patch, And The Struggle To Save AOL."Longform.org named "THE COST OF WINNING" the best long-form business story of 2013.Carlson's coverage of Yahoo won Digiday's award for Best Editorial Achievement of the year in 2014.In 2015 Carlson wrote a New York Times Magazine cover story, "What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs." It was a finalist for a Mirror Award for best in-depth/enterprise reporting.Carlson began his journalism career at InternetNews.com and then Gawker Media's Valleywag. He went to Davidson College. Disclosure: Nicholas is an investor in private and public companies and adheres to Insider Inc's Conflict of Interest policy, which you can read here.