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Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

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Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#31

Post by 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.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#33

Post by 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.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#34

Post by justindz »

nanijoe wrote: post #15
greatapps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#35

Post by jdroid »

pg wrote: post #27

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.

I agree with michael_dorfman's comment below and think it's unfair to call him a troll... Not everyone will be positive and taking that into account is important.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#36

Post by Prrometheus »

michael_dorfman wrote: post #5

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...

They could license their product to large businesses for more money than you think it's worth. Even if they save users 10 minutes a day, do you know how much an executive is willing to pay to save 10 minutes of frustration?

Any extension to the Microsoft Office suite should just be marketed straight to enterprise customers. More hours are spent looking at Microsoft Office every day than probably any other activity save sleeping. It's a huge market filled with deep-pocketed customers.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#37

Post by paul »

pg wrote: post #27

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.

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).

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#38

Post by wumi »

greatapps wrote: post #30
wumi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"'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 mes…

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 locati…

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.

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#39

Post by ashu »

paul wrote: post #37
pg wrote: post #27

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.

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…

I think the "never have started" is probably the crux of the matter. People who don't actually build things tend to look at the world from a very different perspective. The focus is more on "how is this thing different from anything else I have seen" and not on "is this thing actually useful to a non-trivial set of people out there". When they focus on the first part, it is very easy to bash almost all things out there. Google? That's just search. Gmail? That's just webmail. IPhone? Just a smartphone - doesn't even have 3G and GPS!

Re: Xobni - wouldn't get out of bed for $20m

#40

Post by 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.

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