Color Labs Inc. (Apple)

Color Labs Inc. was a Palo Alto, California social photo-sharing startup founded in 2011 by Bill Nguyen and Peter Pham. Its Color mobile app let people photograph and browse photos taken nearby, grouping content by proximity and social graph. The company raised roughly $41 million before launch — $25 million from Sequoia Capital, $9 million from Bain Capital Ventures, and $7 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank — and reportedly declined a $200 million acquisition offer from Google. After a March 2011 launch that drew about a million downloads but fell under 100,000 active users by September 2011, the board voted in October 2012 to wind the company down and the service closed at the end of that year. Apple then acqui-hired the remaining engineering team in a talent acquisition reported at roughly $2–7 million. Color Labs never shipped a public developer API, SDK, or developer portal, and it has had no live web or API surface since 2012. Its former domain, color.com, is today operated by the unrelated Color Health, Inc. This profile is retained as a historical record of a Bain Capital Ventures portfolio company; there is no API surface to enrich.

Color Labs Inc. (Apple) is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, Commerce, Defunct, Acquired, and Social.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub

6.8/100 minimal ▬ flat Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

0 APIs

CompanyCommerceDefunctAcquiredSocialPhoto SharingMobileConsumer

Kin Score

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scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5

Composite quality — 6.8/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 25

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20

Commercial Clarity 0.0 / 20

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 13

Governance 0.0 / 12

Discoverability 6.8 / 10

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 15

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

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Source (apis.yml)

aid: color-labs-inc-apple
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/color-labs-inc-apple.png
name: Color Labs Inc. (Apple)
description: Color Labs Inc. was a Palo Alto, California social photo-sharing startup founded in 2011 by Bill Nguyen and Peter
  Pham. Its Color mobile app let people photograph and browse photos taken nearby, grouping content by proximity and social
  graph. The company raised roughly $41 million before launch — $25 million from Sequoia Capital, $9 million from Bain Capital
  Ventures, and $7 million in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank — and reportedly declined a $200 million acquisition offer
  from Google. After a March 2011 launch that drew about a million downloads but fell under 100,000 active users by September
  2011, the board voted in October 2012 to wind the company down and the service closed at the end of that year. Apple then
  acqui-hired the remaining engineering team in a talent acquisition reported at roughly $2–7 million. Color Labs never shipped
  a public developer API, SDK, or developer portal, and it has had no live web or API surface since 2012. Its former domain,
  color.com, is today operated by the unrelated Color Health, Inc. This profile is retained as a historical record of a Bain
  Capital Ventures portfolio company; there is no API surface to enrich.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/color-labs-inc-apple/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- bain-capital-ventures
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: defunct-no-api-surface
x-status: defunct
x-defunct-date: '2012-12-31'
x-acquired-by: Apple
x-acquisition-type: acqui-hire
x-domain-note: color.com resolves to Color Health, Inc. (unrelated); colorlabs.com resolves to ORLY Color Labs (unrelated).
  No successor domain carries the Color Labs Inc. surface.
specificationVersion: '0.20'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-07-20'
tags:
- Company
- Commerce
- Defunct
- Acquired
- Social
- Photo Sharing
- Mobile
- Consumer
apis: []
common: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-20'
  status: nochange
  artifacts_added: 0
  pass: local-v1