Visible Path

company

About

Visible Path is a business social network allowing users to organize and display their business contacts.

  • 11 - 50

Details

Last Funding Type
Series A
Last Funding Money Raised
$3.70M
Industries
Computer,Social Media,Software
Founded date
Jan 1, 2002
Number Of Employee
11 - 50
Operating Status
Active

Nipping at the heels of competitor [LinkedIn](http://crunchbase.com/organization/linkedin), Visible Path is a new incarnation of business social networking. Visible Path entered the market with a different way of organizing and displaying your business contacts. Instead of showing all of your extended contacts to all the contacts in your network like LinkedIn, Visible Path focuses more on strength of relationship between contacts to determine who can add who to their contact list. This effort precludes "contact farmers" from adding you simply for the sake of adding someone. In a smaller circle of contacts, your relationships are more meaningful and cannot be as easily diluted. In order to create this more discriminatory contact circle Visible Path collects information about all your contacts through a 6mb Microsoft Outlook plugin which tracks who you've sent emails to or have meetings with.

The more often you are in contact with someone through Outlook, the stronger the relationship and vice versa. People outside of Outlook can also be added to Visible Path, but must be done so by searching for them specifically. Since contacts are generally all made through Outlook, the business relationships you make are very real. Because Visible Path users do not have the option of seeing your extended network, a much higher percentage of your business contacts will actually be people you have conversed with.

At its current state, Visible Path's Outlook plugin is prone to simply making all your office contacts your strongest. User's may email or have meetings with people in their office more consistently than they do with very important contacts who work for other companies or in different locations. In these cases Visible Path would incorrectly recognize the importance of your relationships. It's a fallacy that more contact with someone means you have a stronger relationship with them. Visible Path is currently looking into other methods to track relationship strength. Drawing data from phone calls and IM's is currently on their plate, but some way for the content of conversations needs to be analyzed for Visible Path to work without flaw. Business Networks are very helpful when all your contacts are meaningful. Unfortunately exposure to the web often causes networks to expand rather than become more useful.

Funding Rounds

Number of Funding Rounds
Total Funding Amount
1
$3.70M
Visible Path has raised a total of $3.70M in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Feb 12, 2004 from a Series A round.
Announced Date Round Money Raised Number of Investors Lead Investors Post Valuation
Feb 12, 2004 Series A $3.70M 1 Caufield Angel Fund Detail

Investors

Number of Lead Investors
Number of Investors
1
1
Visible Path is funded by 1 investors. Caufield Angel Fund are the most recent investors.
Investor Name Lead Investor Funding Round
Caufield Angel Fund Yes Series A