Launched in November of 2010, Path has grown to over ten million people sharing life with close friends and family all over the world. Path is a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices.The service aims to be a place where users can share with their close friends and family.
Path limits each user’s social network to 150 friends. According to the Morin association, it encourages users to select only high-quality connections. The decision the company says was inspired by psychology research that suggests people have a maximum number of workable social contacts.
Path initially raised $2.5 million funding and subsequently secured $30 million in venture capital from Redpoint Ventures.
Dave Morin, Co-founder and CEO of Path shared these growth strategies and business lessons in various interviews.
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1. Vision: Our long-term grand vision here is to build a network that is very high quality and that people feel comfortable contributing to at any time.
2. Focus: We fashioned Path as a journal, a path through life. A product like that is about accessing memories. A problem with your iPhone is searching through camera albums – on Path you can search for ‘last year in Japan’ and bam, your content comes up.
3. Focus: We focus on creating an intimate environment where people can trust that the information they share, the photos they share, the other information they share, is only going to be going to the people they trust the most and care about the most.
4. Design: We approach everything from a “design first” perspective because if you don’t get the design right, nothing else matters.Great design fades into the background and enables users to experience your product the way you intend. It’s extremely difficult to do simple, contextual design well, but if you make it a priority, you’ll see huge benefits in terms of user engagement.
5. Mobile: Biggest technology opportunity of all time.
6. Success: For us it’s about growing along the curve in a way that is authentic to our values. For us it’s about design. It’s about quality. It’s about people being themselves. It’s about maintaining trust. It’s about doing all those things, and staying focused on humans. How do we have an honest relationship with you? That’s what success maybe looks like for us.
7. On Social Apps: In social, you have to innovate in information. If you have the same thing as everyone else, you’re just not interesting.
8. Lesson: Ignore the naysayers – when we launched Path in 2010, people didn’t think there would be a demand for a social network other than Facebook. We felt very strongly that people were craving a smaller network designed to share their everyday lives – a quickly snapped photo, the book they’re reading or what neighborhood they’re in.
9. Lesson: Don’t be afraid to have the “hard conversations” early on with investors, partners or employees who may not be working out. Human nature is to avoid conflict. Don’t let that stop you. The sooner you deal with the hard stuff, the better off you’ll be. Give a listen.
10. Lesson: The way you should think about mobile is that your first version’s probably going to fail.
11. Lesson: If I learned one thing working at Facebook: If users are trying to use your app in a certain way, get out of their way and let them.
