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Path Axes 20 Percent Of Staff In A ‘Realigning Of The Company’
- Steko 13y agoPath laid off 13 staffers today, axing 20 percent of its workforce... Path founder and CEO Dave Morin, who celebrated his 33rd birthday yesterday, has not responded to requests for comment. Cmon Techcrunch, you should know that Path dude never answers his phone, it puts him on defense.
- amirmc 13y agoSome context for those who don't know the reference. > "I don’t use a ring of any kind on my phone. This is so that I am always on offense and never defense." [1] [1] http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/my-phone/2013/03/dave-morin-path-facebook-apple http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/my-phone/2013/03/dave-mori...
- nashequilibrium 13y agolol.... that honestly made me laugh. I never read the interview before but will make use of that line sometime. Regarding path, they need to boost numbers, so started exploiting peoples address books, when this worked they raised more money but those users where spammed and probably just deleted the app. The only thing i hear about path is the design, if you did a frequency distribution of word usage in path articles, it's about design. The funny thing is, i downloaded the app last year, then invited my wife to use it, she text me saying she didn't know how to use it and never did so i deleted it as well. Therefore the great design appealed to the tech inclined but to cross the chasm they needed familiar design like instagram & twitter.
- w1ntermute 13y agoHere's a great breakdown of the interview: http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/a-cunt-and-his-iphone http://jesuschristsiliconvalley.tumblr.com/post/46539276780/...
- trimbo 13y agoWhy doesn't that guy post more often? He's hilarious!
- photorized 13y agoAlso in meetings all day and all night.
- dannyr 13y agoI wonder which phone Techcrunch called. They might have called his night phone this morning.
- adamnemecek 13y agoI'm surprised that so many people remember this.
- malandrew 13y agoIt was recently mentioned in another thread in the past few days so it is fresh in the minds of some.
- yapcguy 13y agoI bet Dave would take a call from Marissa Mayer. Yahoo are pretty good at paying over the odds for mutton dressed as lamb.
- prawn 13y agoDid they call his day phone or his night phone?
- presty 13y agofunny thing is he comments on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davemorin https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=davemorin
- sniddy 13y ago"The spokesperson said that Path currently has 20 million users" Has Path ever released a data point other than total number of registered users?
- yapcguy 13y agoTranslation: Path stole 20 million e-mail addresses from iOS and Android address books and spammed them.
- stekenwright 13y agoNot email addresses. Phone numbers. http://www.branded3.com/blogs/the-antisocial-network-path-texts-my-entire-phonebook-at-6am/ http://www.branded3.com/blogs/the-antisocial-network-path-te...
- meritt 13y agoI wonder how many of those guys had job offers in their inbox before they had their exit interview.
- jfb 13y agoIs Path particularly well-regarded?
- pedalpete 13y agoPath itself is likely not regarded poorly, but with a shortage of good devs in the valley, I suspect the data people they've (possibly) let go would have had offers. Not so sure about marketing.
- meritt 13y agoNot necessarily. But Silicon Valley engineers with startup experience who just lost their job and are likely to accept lowball offers so they can continue to pay their hyper-inflated apartment leases, those people are highly sought after.
- debt 13y agoHa. Actually engineers in general are sought after out here simply because there's a shortage; which is likely due to the fact that outsiders hold your viewpoint. NOT EVERYONE WHO MOVES TO THE BAY AREA LIVES OR NEEDS TO LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO. THERE ARE A PLETHORA OF OPTIONS. Look at a map, jeesh.
- timcederman 13y agoI very much doubt engineers laid off from a well-regarded startup like Path would take low-ball offers. I've seen similar situations firsthand many times now, and I'm almost certain they will get multiple competitive offers.
- perishabledave 13y agoOverlooking their privacy issues, the app was well done. The experience felt fresh when the app first came out. A few things I thought were particularly neat: the circular menu for posting statuses, the polished timeline, and the drawer (which to my knowledge they were the first to do).
- 6thSigma 13y agoTo people who use Path - why do you use it over Facebook?
- gummadi 13y agoFacebook for me is just an address book of all my contacts. I never share anything personal there due to the number of privacy settings I need to hop through to make sure I shared with the right people. Path is just a curated set of close friends with whom I feel free to share anything. Also when it came out Path mobile app is far better than Facebook.
- gooderlooking 13y agoI use Path (mostly) for pictures of my kids. Path is invite/opt-in which makes it easy to share with only the family and friends who are interested. I don't want everyone on Facebook seeing my family photos any more than they want to be flooded with updates from a doting father.
- morewillie 13y agoAccording to their site, they are still hiring for five positions. Maybe it's just a massive cleansing?
- mikkelewis 13y agoor they just haven't updated their website :)
- PLenz 13y agoThey just fired the person who updates their website
- stevewilber 13y agoDid Path destroy itself with questionable ethics[1] or is there really no way to compete with Facebook anymore? [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/path-uploads-your-iphones-address-book-to-their-servers-without-a-peep/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/path-uploads-your-iphones-a...
- untog 13y agoPath originally touted the idea of having a limited friends group - only your closest. I thought that actually made sense. Then they started spamming people in your phone book, completely ruining the entire point of their original pitch. Now they seem to make money selling stickers? I'm not sure why any self-respective developer would still be working there.
- potatolicious 13y agoNeither? The address book debacle was a big deal for a little while, but the bad press faded quickly. I also don't think Facebook's position is unchallengeable. After all, Facebook wasn't the first social network, and it looks like the youth today aren't using Facebook nearly as much as older generations, preferring newer apps like Snapchat. In all likelihood Path destroyed itself by being a not-very-good Facebook competitor. This says little about the feasibility of toppling Facebook.
- wellboy 13y agoThat's what happens when you realise that it costs more to acquire a user than you can make money off him/her. There'll probably another layoff in 4 months and another one and then we have an acquihire, yeah! Ugh, I tried to like it, but I just dont like Path. If I can think of a vanity startup with vanity PR, vanity founder, vanity metrics, it's Path. Ugh.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Andrex 13y agoI'm the same. Really tried using and liking path for 6-8 months but I just couldn't find a use-case outside of using it like Instagram without having to admit I used Instagram. It's derivative and deliberately-limited for no perceivable benefit. And since everyone (even Trello!) is adding "stickers" Path had to hop on the bandwagon too.
- auctiontheory 13y agoI cannot tell from their website what this company does. (Other than that it might be a Facebook clone.)
- lnanek2 13y agoThat's basically what is. A Facebook clone focusing on mobile. They limit your number of friends and have a better mobile experience by doing things like putting things accessible from fewer screens, because mobile users hate multi-screen flows, etc..
- capkutay 13y agoI think this is interesting because this may represent a pullback in the social/mobile consumer space from an investment standpoint. Path is a VC darling given that it raised over $40 million from the likes of KPCB (a firm that also mentioned a direction change[0]). Anyone talking about a SV bubble should consider that some companies with tremendous momentum are scaling back a little bit. It could be a healthy pull back. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540362 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6540362
- sneak 13y agoEither that or the market finally wised up to the fact that Path is managed by asstards who don't have a shred of respect for their customers.
- wellboy 13y agoIt all comes back to you if you try screwing over the market, the market sees everything. I love the market.
- jbooth 13y agoConsider that the people who made the biggest, shittiest decisions here made way more money while doing so than you did during the same period, most likely.
- wellboy 13y agoWhat do you mean by them having made more money than me? As far as I can see, they have to sell Path for more than $41.2M before they make more money than $0 and that´s gonna be a tough one. I'm currently a bit above that number. ;)
- jbooth 13y agoThey likely paid themselves executive level salaries out of that 41.2M all the while. If you're doing much better than a high-end developer salary, congrats, but if you're not, they prob paid themselves more than you.
- trimbo 13y agoWas Matt Van Horn one of them? [Context: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brogrammer-culture-sexist-sxsw http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...]
- dcpdx 13y agoNo wonder Path and Klout are both laughingstocks in the Valley...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]