Are there any other companies that were reasonably successful before starting in YC?
I suspect the Net played a bit part in enabling this to happen and the continued rise of smartphones and apps is furthering this capability.
Had we raised money out of the gate on the premise that there was a business in palettes... we probably would have executed differently and killed what we were growing.
Instead it grew naturally and we took guidance from our users, creating new products and services for them. We're profitable because we're lean and don't need a lot of the large expenses some other founders have to deal with. This has been our greatest asset as we built COLOURlovers.
Now, we have a thriving community of people, a solid amount of traffic and a business model that doesn't take anything away from the experience our users love and use.
And another point about niche... when the whole world is your audience, even the most obscure interests can find a sizable market.
What was your reasoning for joining YC after you already had momentum?
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Actually, the ability to pick a color out of a picture is quite cool - but would be better if you could pivot that selection to do further searching, such as "Pick a color, then show me all the pictures in my phone that contain that color" "Show me all the pictures that match this new palette I made" "tint selected picture with the color/palette I choose"
Great job, fellas.
We (COLOURlovers & ColorSchemer) actually merged up in summer '09 before doing YC last winter.
YC is just an experience, it's up to the founders to make it a great one.
I love the site and show it to designer friends all the time for colour inspiration.
Its interesting to know that with more resources at hand, a simple idea like this can scale well.
Then again if YC invested, pg and the rest of the panel must see something I'm not seeing...
