The Last Guide Company
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
The Last Guide Company was a startup founded in April 2014 by Gowalla founder Josh Williams and Adam Michela (both ex-Gowalla, Dropbox and Facebook), with the mission of building apps and products that made it easier for people to go outside and explore nature and life. Its only product was Goji, an emoji-based keyboard app released in October 2014 that suggested places to go based on the phone's location. The company raised $2.1 million from Freestyle Capital, Founders Fund, Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, SV Angel and SherpaCapital.
02 / The Last Guide Company FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Founder Josh Williams said the team 'failed to execute on our original vision,' and wound the company down after Goji proved to be its only product — the original mission of connecting mobile phones and physical location to improve how people interacted with the world never found success.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Operations ended
The Last Guide Company ended operations.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Founder Josh Williams published a Medium post, 'One Last Update,' announcing the decision to wind down the company.
- 02
The Goji app was removed from the App Store and the company's website went offline.