Thursday, 1 May 2008

Walking Away from 20 Million Dollars

I have absolutely got to wonder what it feels like to WALK AWAY from 20 million dollars. Well, that is exactly how team Xobni feels right now.

Xobni is a startup company which provides an outlook plugin that brings much more rich content out of the pile of data that is your email. It find phone numbers, connections between contacts and makes it SO MUCH EASIER to find that file someone sent you several weeks back.

Well, they have apparently been in talks for several weeks with Microsoft to sell themselves over to Microsoft. And they have walked away. Yep, $20,000,000.... No thanks, we're fine. In short, they were a bit unsure in the long run where the future would hold Xobni in a Microsoft world. They are working on a version for Yahoo mail and will likely follow up with Gmail, etc. Those options would likely have disappeared with this deal.

Way to go, Xobni! I am SO looking forward to Xobni for Gmail! :)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/xobni-walks-away-from-a-microsoft-deal/

If anyone wants a Xobni invite, leave me a comment. I have a handful left....

5 comments:

scarlett said...

who walks away from $20M? Thats quite a bold move...

I would love to try it out, if you have any codes left...
scarlett.isabelle@gmail.com

The Cybernetic Entomologist said...

I'll give it a whirl...

Paul Thompson said...

scarlett - will get you an invite out in the next day or so, as soon as I am logged into my work email. :)

and cybernetic entomologist. send me an email (captbunzo at gmail) sith your email address and I will send you an invite.

Rick Castello said...

I'd like an invite - sounds very cool! rick |at| punk |dot| net

Paul Thompson said...

Sorry for the slowness in handing out those invites, folks - we've been on a bank holiday in the UK this weekend and I have yet to be back in the office to actually send them out. HOWEVER, Xobni has beaten me and opened up their closed beta to all. So go download invite-free now!