

Xobni Closes $7 Million Series B Financing - auston
http://www.xobni.com/blog/2009/01/05/xobni-closes-7-million-series-b-financing-bring-on-2009/

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staunch
Speculation: Cisco wanted to buy Xobni, but Xobni said they wouldn't sell for
less than $too_much, so Cisco invested instead and will end up buying them
later if they do well.

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ALee
That same logic would seem to apply for Microsoft wanting to invest. Perhaps
MSFT had a chance, but they didn't like the valuation at all.

If you read "High Stakes, No Prisoners" (a book that both founders of Xobni
recommend), the author recommends getting non-VC Series B investors so that
you don't have the same genetic pool (i.e. Series A VCs colluding with Series
B).

I think the more likely scenario is that this Series B is strategic for Cisco,
wonder what they're cooking up.

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redorb
11.4mm is an amazing amount of money to raise, congrats. This is one of the
applications I think add real value to offline software; I just wonder how
they deal with the pressure that Microsoft could duplicate the feature of
search or otherh features in the next outlook... and this has to push the
price (20mm wasn't enough from microsoft) - how much do they need now to
accept the offer? - probably in the 100mm range eh?

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vaksel
especially in this market

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steveplace
GOOG and MSFT were founded in similar market conditions.

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bigbang
Yeah, but they didnt depend on the existance of another product(like Outlook).

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pmjordan
"the IBM PC", "the consumer internet/www"

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staunch
Is this like an IQ test question?

    
    
        Which one doesn't belong in this list?
    
        1) The IBM PC
        2) The Internet/Web
        3) Outlook

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potatolicious
None. The poster's point stands: all of the above successful companies built
themselves within the ecosystem of yet another product. There's no need to own
everything end-to-end, Outlook is a popular enough product that relying on it
is not too bad a bet in the short to mid term.

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langer
Taking money from Cisco is a very smart move. Congrats on the round guys!

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cstejerean
I wish I knew why that is. Could you please elaborate?

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okeumeni
I bet the only reason is because it is Cisco...

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asnyder
I'm generally wary of Cisco, and hope it doesn't end up affecting Xobni
negatively in the end. We used to use WebEx until CISCO bought them which
bolstered them to jack up prices, fortunately, Citrix updated their
GoToMeeting product, which is better and more cost effective solution than
WebEx. Hopefully, something like this won't happen to Xobni, I would hate to
see a $579 bill for an hour of xobni usage.

~~~
jonknee
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Because you don't like the prices of WebEx,
Xobni is going to start (somehow) charging you by the hour. And not just by
the hour, but for almost $600 an hour.

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wumi
congrats matt and adam (and the entire team)! excited to see what you guys do
in 09

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bprater
Just out of curiosity, why does this get modded so high? A tech company takes
investor money, great! But is it truly hackerous?

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pmjordan
A number of users here are YC "alumni" and presumably know the Xobni guys in
one way or another. Even non-YC people (myself included) enjoy reading stories
like this. It's just nice to follow people's success stories, particularly
when you can relate to those people, and in this case, when they're also
Hacker News users.

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alex_c
Congrats, guys!

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ahoyhere
This seems like kept woman money, like a mash note. I can't imagine what they
need with this much money, so it seems to me to just further inflate their
evaluation to make them unacquirable by anyone else.

Except MS, of course, with more money than god, but...

Xobni could be reproduced by Microsoft for less than their alleged $20m offer,
too. Even with their lumbering corporate inefficiencies.

I don't know about you, but I don't look at massive funding rounds as success.
They're not exactly debt, but they're not exactly your money, either.

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ajkirwin
I'd so love to try Xobni, but, I am not forking out $110 for Outlook 2k7 for
the privilege of doing so. :/

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jhancock
building a business on top of a customer base that has proven to open their
wallets is a good move. Would you rather be trying to pry money out of people
that think email is not worth $110?

I am a mac user, so its not an option for me. But I were still on Windows, I
would pay for Outlook as the alternatives are significantly less interesting.

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mattmaroon
Or just do what I do, get a hosted Exchange email service. Then they give you
a copy for free. You could cancel after one month and get a copy for $8 if you
don't want to keep it.

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e1ven
Just to be pedantic, this is normally against the ToS of the hosting company,
and violates the license that comes with Outlook.

If you're going to pirate it, so be it, no one is going to stop you, but going
through the 1 month registration doesn't really change the moral or legal
issues involved.

For instance-
[https://www.mailstreet.net/exchange/outlook_order_1.asp?SOUR...](https://www.mailstreet.net/exchange/outlook_order_1.asp?SOURCE=+&RESELLERID=&PROMO_CODE=)

"As a MailStreet account holder in good-standing you may download or order
Outlook 2007 media for use with the MailStreet service. You may install the
software on each computer that you have MailStreet service with. If you do
leave the MailStreet service you must uninstall the Outlook software or
purchase a retail version from your regular software vendor. If you have
multiple computers, you only need to order one copy of the software. "

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mattmaroon
Yeah, you're right. Just pirate it.

