[codewright]

Perceived addressable market or size of opportunity.

VCs tend to care principally about how big it could get, to the exclusion of other potentially important principles.

A good counter-example to Color is actually Bingo Card Creator.

It's a great product, very well managed and fine-tuned by patio11, but it has a pretty rigid ceiling on its opportunity.

VCs avoid businesses that seem limited or overly niche so as to create a limited maximal market opportunity.

Another contrast would be anything in the ad business. It's such a huge business that a lot of startups that go into the ad industry end up making a sizeable amount of money fairly early on.

VCs tend to be keen on advertising startups that want to build a large platform or catch-all service that all the buyers/content providers will want to use. Nevertheless, they'll still invest in smaller scope ad startups that have an opportunity to expand.