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Path was created in 2010 by former Facebook employee Dave Morin as a sort of anti-Facebook. It stood out with one good idea: limits for friends. You couldn’t add more than 50 people to your network when it first launched.
As Facebook ballooned in size and our friend lists grew with it, Path sought to be the place where you chatted with only the people you were closest to. And for a little while, the idea seemed to work. Quickly, Google reportedly tried to gobble it up. By mid-2013, Morin proclaimed that people were checking the app “over 1 billion times per month.”
But after years of irrelevance, it decided to finally shut its doors in 2018. What went wrong and what could have been? We explore that and more on today's episode.
This episode is brought to you by:
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
Logi Analytics is the leading platform for embedded analytics. Take your dashboard and reports to the next level. Rocketship listeners get free access to the Logi Analytics library of product demos by going to logianalytics.com/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
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In 2000, Reed Hastings, the founder of a fledgling company called Netflix, flew to Dallas to propose a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his team. The idea was that Netflix would run Blockbuster’s brand online and Antioco’s firm would promote Netflix in its stores. Hastings got laughed out of the room.
Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010 and Netflix is now a $28 billion dollar company, about ten times what Blockbuster was worth. So what happened that led Blockbuster's demise? We explore that and more today on the show.
This episode is brought to you by:
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
LinkedIn Jobs will match the right talent with your open roll, fast. Head to Linkedin.com/rocketship to get $50 off your first job post.
Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get a free wireframe workshop by going to augusto.digital/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From creating unsafe driving conditions to aggravating spouses across the globe, todays failure is a lesson in what happens when your team lacks diversity, especially of lived experiences that help build empathy for your customers. Today, we take you behind the scenes of Audibles iOS7 redesign that overhauled the design of the app, but forgot to take several key use-cases into consideration.

This episode is brought to you by:
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
Logi Analytics is the leading platform for embedded analytics. Take your dashboard and reports to the next level. Rocketship listeners get free access to the Logi Analytics library of product demos by going to logianalytics.com/rocketship.
Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get $1,000 off by going to augusto.digital/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On September 11, 2001 two American Airlines airplanes were hijacked. One was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center and the other crashed into a field on it's way to the White House killing everyone onboard. As people scrambled to find out what happened to their loved ones, the American Airlines automated phone systems failed as they refused to included what is known as the Mayday codes.
Today we talk with Blade Kotelly, who built the automated phone system for several Airlines, including some affected by the September 11 hijackings. His systems didn't fail that morning - so what happened at American Airlines?

This episode is brought to you by:
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
Logi Analytics is the leading platform for embedded analytics. Take your dashboard and reports to the next level. Rocketship listeners get free access to the Logi Analytics library of product demos by going to logianalytics.com/rocketship.
Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get $1,000 off by going to augusto.digital/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've been talking a lot about well known product failures, but at this point in the series, we're going to take a little pause. Today, we remember that there are very real people behind these failures. These people have feelings and the failures they’ve experienced, they’ve probably affected them in different ways.
Today we sit down with Jerry Colonna. Jerry is an American venture capitalist and professional coach who played a prominent part in the early development of Silicon Valley. He is known as the CEO whisperer and is famous for being Alex Blumbergs executive coach at Gimlet captured for the Startup podcast. Jerry get's personal with Mike Belsito about his own failures and helps to put our work accomplishments and our personal worth into perspective.
This episode is brought to you by:
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
Logi Analytics is the leading platform for embedded analytics. Take your dashboard and reports to the next level. Rocketship listeners get free access to the Logi Analytics library of product demos by going to logianalytics.com/rocketship.
Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get $1,000 off by going to augusto.digital/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Raising $41 million dollars before launch, Color should have been an instant hit, but instead met a swift demise. When it launched, the application had around 1 million downloads. By September 2011, the service had a little under 100,000 active users. Founded by serial entrepreneur Bill Nguyen and successful operator, Peter Pham, Color had one of the best teams in the business.
However, in the weeks following Color's initial launch, controversy surrounded the startup's $41 million funding and mixed reviews on the product. The initial launch left users confused with the application's user interface and purpose. Its initial rating in the App Store was 2 out of 5 stars. In an interview with Robert Scoble in April 2011, Pham and Nguyen admitted that Color's launch was a wasted opportunity. But it wasn't just the launch that would sink the company.
Today we take you behind the scenes of Color's rise and fall.
This episode is brought to you by:
Gusto, making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. Rocketship listeners get three months free at gusto.com/rocketship.
Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription.
Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get $1,000 off by going to augusto.digital/rocketship.
Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices