Path
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Path was a mobile-first private social network founded in San Francisco in 2010 by former Facebook executive Dave Morin, Napster creator Shawn Fanning and Dustin Mierau. Billed as a 'personal network', it deliberately capped users at 50 contacts (later raised to 150, then 500), inspired by the anthropological 'Dunbar's number'. The company raised roughly $70 million, was once valued at $500 million, and turned down a reported $100 million acquisition offer from Google in its early months.
02 / Path FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Path failed because its home-market growth stalled while Facebook dominated mobile social networking. The artificial friend limit that defined the product also throttled the network effects competitors enjoyed; Facebook copied Path's signature features such as stickers and reactions. Path lost staff, users and momentum, and its Path Talk messaging spin-off never took off. South Korea's Kakao bought the company in 2015 mainly for its Indonesian user base, but could not revive it, and shut the service down three years later.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Acquisition
The company or its assets were acquired.
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
In 2015 South Korean messaging giant Daum Kakao acquired Path for an undisclosed sum, seeking to capitalize on its roughly four million Indonesian users.
- 02
Under Kakao the service continued but failed to regain momentum over the next three years.
- 03
Path was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play on October 1, 2018, and the service was shut down entirely on October 18, 2018; no formal liquidation proceedings were reported.