

Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m - drinko
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheThingAboutUsefulStuffIs/~3/281978760/xobni-wouldnt-get-out-of-bed-for-20m.html

======
uuilly
This all based on a ton of speculation. There are three big unknowns as I see
it:

-Nobody really knows the details of the offer.

-Nobody really knows what Xobni has in store.

-Nobody really knows how much say the VC's had.

Most companies start with a feature that becomes a product which becomes a
company. The Outlook plugin could be the tip of a much bigger spear. I have
never used xobni b/c I don't use outlook but I can see a bunch of possible
directions for them. Who knows though? Maybe it is a minor feature. But anyone
in a startup knows enough to know how little they know about the inner
workings of another company. And anyone who's tried to raise money knows how
thoroughly you have to explain your long term plans and revenue models. If you
can't say I'm going to be a $100 million dollar company in X years b/c of Y
and Z reasons, you're not going to get a series A. You'd also know that $20
million is a small offer after a series A.

~~~
utnick
Regarding what xobni has in store....

couldnt u just then sell the outlook plugin for 20 mil

then start on your real big idea in a couple years with 20 mil in the bank

~~~
wanorris
1\. There's a good chance that at that multiple the VCs get the bulk of the
money.

2\. A deal with Microsoft almost certainly requires them to come on board at
Microsoft for some period of time.

3\. A deal might include a noncompete for after they leave.

It really does depend on what the terms of the deal on the table were.

------
webwright
People need to do some math before they say this was a good opportunity for
Xobni (and the investors-- who likely have the power to veto any acquisition).

When you take 4.35 million in investment, you are giving away a percentage of
your company. Say it's 1/3rd for the sake of argument. That creates a post-
money valuation of $13m. Which means that a $20m buyout (once the lawyers get
their slice) is, what-- a 1.5x return on investment? The only way an investor
would approve that is if the company was tanking (Xobni isn't-- they are
buried in good press).

Outlook (and email) is the #1 technology time-sink on the planet (RescueTime
has the data to prove it-- someday we'll publish some interesting stats).

If you could walk up to any enterprise and propose to make email 10% more
efficient, that's worth a TON of money.

~~~
apathy
_RescueTime has the data to prove it-- someday we'll publish some interesting
stats)_

I see what you did there ;-)

Your business model makes a lot more sense now.

------
pg
How on earth did this troll post get 17 votes? There's only one paragraph in
it that's even new, and that doesn't say anything that hasn't already been
said.

~~~
paul
I'm starting to get the feeling that there's a big jealousy factor developing
here. The formula is simple: find something that's getting traction and
getting talked about, and then bash it. This bashing is very appealing to
people whose own efforts are less successful (or more likely have never
started), because it reassures them that the other people's efforts and
success aren't "real" or legitimate. The same thing can be seen in the
comments on TechCrunch (along with the jealousy of failed competitors).

~~~
jdroid
It's lame to pretend the reactions of potential clients aren't important. Even
if there is a jealousy factor, a good founder would take it into account and
act accordingly.

"But isn't xobni just an outlook plugin?"

Clearly people have that idea in their head. Now what is xobni going to do
about it?

~~~
nostrademons
Many of the people who're objecting - at least on these TechCrunch and
FeedBurner stories - would never have bought it anyway. It's better to
concentrate on the folks who _will_ buy it (I assume they're out there, though
I'm not one of them...) and make something that they'll use, love, and tell
people about.

[http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/what-ive-learned-from-
sa...](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/01/what-ive-learned-from-sales-
part-i.html)

------
greatapps
Just in case I am missing features from the version I have installed, here's
what I can access in Xobni from the top \- emails received time summary graph.
\- count of emails sent/received and resultant ranking \- request for phone
number / phone number captured from email \- "schedule time" which opens a
blank email \- create email \- listing of other people that were included on
emails received from the contact, and ability to hop onto the email profile
for that person if they too are one of your contacts \- list of emails from
the contact which you can navigate to \- list of file exchanged which you can
navigate to

Anyone got anything different? I ask only because as I'm evidently missing
something in the app, based on some of the comments made towards me.

Let's be clear, if you love the app then that's great and I want to hear how
it has helped you. If I am missing a trick, then perhaps others are to and so
help us to be believers. If you've spotted where this app is heading,
explicitly clue the rest of us in, don't simply allude.

------
michael_dorfman
I tend to agree with the analysis here, and think that Xobni missed a nice
chance. I'd be surprised if Microsoft comes knocking again, and I don't see
any reasonable way that they can build their tool into anything that is _not_
parasitic on Outlook, much less effectively monetize it...

~~~
cdr
So what if it's parasitic on Outlook?

~~~
michael_dorfman
Then the best business model available to them is to get bought by Microsoft.

This is not a bad business plan, by the way-- there are quite a number of
folks who have made good money filling some gap Microsoft missed, and getting
acquired.

------
jgrahamc
From TFA: "What is Xobni OTHER THAN a feature of Outlook?"

The core problem with this commentary is that the writer doesn't understand
that Xobni can be more than just an Outlook feature. I think he has a hard
time seeing beyond the UI that's been presented.

I am reminded of VitalSigns that many people saw is just a toy for looking at
how well your dial up connection was working. Others realized that the
underlying technology was interesting, that it applied in the business
environment and VitalSigns was bought out for a good price.

~~~
greatapps
Please elaborate on the many things you evidently think it could be,
highlighting how easily and in what timeframe they could achieve this, thereby
"educating" the rest of us?

~~~
nanijoe
It may be time to put down the hatorade for a minute, and consider that the
guys who walked away from $20m may be intelligent enough to value their own
product.

~~~
justindz
Amen. I'm not eval'ing their move one way or the other, but I would suspect
that they have more inside info about their company, product, the deal and
business plan. By definition, you know.

------
bosshog
He cropped his photo, which was a good move.

Can we concentrate on the merits of his argument this time?

~~~
greatapps
re the photo, one tries to please. Sadly, I am getting fewer invitations out
for a drink following the change :-)

------
wumi
1\. It's obvious that Xobni has more stuff planned, whether or not they're
"features." I'm sure the "leak" just happened to be timed before the
acquisition rejection.

2\. "especially since there is no clear revenue stream opportunities with the
product - do you really want ads inside Outlook or would you really pay in
order to get the "information" being thrown up about email traffic?"

I'm pretty sure there are more ways to potentially monetize Xobni than
advertising or b2b/b2c SaaS.

Than again, if I remember correctly, this guy didn't really do his homework
last time either, so why should I think he's done it this time?

~~~
greatapps
Homework? In the last blog post to which you refer I gave a personal account
of the usefulness of Xobni to me, and wasn't presenting a research paper.

I'd be delighted to hear the ways you think they can monetise the
product/feature, partly to demonstrate the amount of thought you've given the
matter.

In its current incarnation, Xobni is a tool aimed at the individual user.
Obviously, the company/product can go in all sorts of directions but so can
anyone given time/money/effort.

Let's consider the possibility that their current offering is a prelude to
looking at the corporate market. There are already tools that seek to discover
corporate relationships at a macro level from data mining email inboxes,
albeit they are only starting to make inroads into businesses. They work
unobtrusively behind the scenes to provide business "intelligence" which can
include highlighting colleagues who appear to have active communications with
a "target".

You should also consider that many CRM tools already enable emails to be
automatically incorporated into the communication profile/history of a
contact, supplemented by richer tools than Xobni presently offer [task mgt,
workflow] e.g. salesforce, zoho crm, siebel.

~~~
wumi
"'information' thrown up about email traffic."

you clearly still consider just the analytics part of the email, which shows
you STILL probably haven't really used the product if that's all you think it
is.

"While Xobni is focused for now on email organization for Outlook, it wants to
be able to aggregate information from different webmail clients such as Gmail,
Yahoo, and others. It also wants to bring in instant messaging, and aggregate
information from social networks.

Brezina gave the example of a friend who remembers a story another friend
related about a ski resort in Vermont. A user will be able to search Xobni’s
database for “Stow,” the name of the ski resort, and instantly find all the
related threads , conversations, and media traded with friends."

sounds a bit like useful social search to me.

and since you've already nixed advertising, and a saas model -- again based on
apparently never trying the product

there's also freemium, support & service behind the product a la open source,
cross-sales/ partnership with a CRM package (read: salesforce or zoho)

~~~
greatapps
I got my invite to trial the product on Dec 14 2007 and tested the Xobni
service over a few weeks using Outlook 2003. I've also re-installed it
recently, just in case there were new features which would change my views -
not so far.

Several people have mentioned the requirement to aggregate across multiple
webmail clients - I confess that I'm not affected by this as I consolidate
multiple email accounts in one location and avoid the need to check separate
email services individually. If operating on multiple webmail clients is
common practice, then I confess to having been ignorant of this gap in the
market - of course, people could consolidate their email in either Outlook or
Gmail.

As for search, does Google Desktop search not work on your PC? It searches
both within your email [certainly Outlook and Gmail] and across the filing
system, whilst being free. This should go some way to addressing your example
of locating conversations. As for the media attachments, I concede that I've
long since stopped using my email inbox as a filing system, saving them off to
file directories if they are important enough [Pst files in particular always
seem to react badly].

~~~
wumi
I think there's a simple answer to this: the product doesn't suite you.

That's OK -- I'm sure Xobni's not crying about it.

Somehow you've translated Xobni not suiting you to Xobni not being worth $20
million.

That's OK too, but at the end of the day, there are a lot of start-ups
following these threads, and I wouldn't expect any coming your way.

------
apathy
Wow, it's a good thing that Xobni couldn't integrate with GMail or Yahoo! Mail
and play off the monstrous business interests against each other.

Also, it's a good thing that the information they mine from the social
structure of your contacts is useless. (Moreso, the joint distributions of
contact networks among multiple employees in a large organization, or the
temporal patterns therein... nothing to see here, move along now)

But most of all, it's a good thing that everyone commenting on the deal knows
all there is to know about the product, its futures, and their value to
Microsoft and other companies, due no doubt to vast, deep expertise in the
field.

Because if the above were not true, well, then it would be just a windbag
yelling into an echo chamber, and that simply would not do!

Yes, it's a great thing that everything has already been invented, cannot be
improved, and is already maximally efficient. We're done now, let's go get a
low-paying service job (or, worse, program Java for a big company)

~~~
chaostheory
Xobni’s Secret Project: Merge Outlook With Yahoo Mail

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/28/xobnis-secret-
project-m...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/28/xobnis-secret-project-
merge-outlook-with-yahoo-mail/)

------
iloveyouocean
"More than a feature." - My guess: [Forward Looking Statements]

Xobni is able to be integrated into 'all' email clients.

Lots of people do this because its FREE and provides some immediate benefit
(enhanced information, etc.).

When you use Xobni, your 'information' is synced back to Xobni's servers. From
this they create a social network-like thing that is sort of a hybrid between
Plaxo (contact management) and LinkedIn. [Even if you only try out Xobni, they
still extract your 'email social structure' to add to the big picture]

Suddenly Xobni is a Social Productivity Network riding on top of Email that is
super useful to businesses and that people are willing to PAY FOR to get
enhanced networking capabilities, productivity tracking, spam filtering,
mobile directory[People include their cell phone nums. in emails all the
time]. It requires almost no effort from people to establish 'connections',
email is ubiquitous, blah social, blah networking, blah aggregate, blah circle
jerk.

Profit.

------
aneesh
> _Duh? What is Xobni OTHER THAN a feature of Outlook?_

Everyone can criticize all they want, but this is a clear case of asymmetric
information. Xobni knows a lot more about their value than you or I do. But
even with the limited information I have, I have to say they are a lot more
than just a feature.

With the Yahoo! Mail release (and I'm guessing GMail/hotmail/other client
releases in the pipeline), what they're really doing is being a hub for all
your contacts, attachments, and online interactions, INDEPENDENT of your email
client. I use 4 different email addresses, and at least a couple different
email clients for various reasons.

With this synchronization across mail clients, Xobni has transformed itself
from an analytics feature to a full-fledged network to manage your contacts
and interactions. I could see this integrating powerfully with, for example,
Salesforce.com.

------
josefresco
You don't value your own company, value is set by the market, and in this case
the market said 20 mil.

Will it increase or decrease depends on the actions of Xobni and the market.

The arguments that the founders "know their potential value" better than us is
completely irrelevant. Don't you think MS investigated the company first, it's
offerings and it's future before making an offer? I own a startup and think it
could be worth billions someday... does that make it so?

~~~
bigtoga
Huh? One company valued xobni at $20m - how is that the be-all, end-all of
valuation? If I value my company at $500,000 and someone offers me $100,000,
am I wrong or are they wrong (or are we both right) when I turn them down?

Answer: you don't have enough information to make a decision.

~~~
cstejerean
until someone else gives you a $500,000 valuation your company is not worth
500k. So far Xobni is only worth 20 million. They are hoping that one day they
will be worth more.

~~~
emmett
Xobni is worth at _least_ $20,000,000. It is currently unknown as to whether
they're worth more.

Evidence suggests those with the most at risk believe they are worth
significantly more.

------
aswanson
I'm starting to understand, why, in some cases, a narrow, limited
communication channel is a good thing.

------
metatronscube
good for them!!

