Thoughts on the Xobni Acquisition

Yahoo acquired Xobni today for somewhere around $60M in total consideration (according to Techcrunch). For a company that raised $42M in venture capital with the most recent $10M Series D raise valuing the company at $90M, this acquisition is merely a soft landing for something that was not working out. The investors are cutting their losses.

I first heard of Xobni shortly after they launched their free addon to Outlook. I was successful in installing the product and used is for a few days. Then it failed. I tried everything to make it work, and it kept failing. It was a very frustrating product. A year later, I tried again on a new computer and got the same error message. It appears that Yahoo will be shutting down many of the Xobni products within the next year.

Xobni had great press and a great rise in adoption. They had a chance to dominate the email contact intelligence app. Their poor product execution left the door open for others, like Rapportive that I really enjoy, to enter the market and benefit from a second mover advantage.

Xobni is lucky to have had a soft landing, but I doubt any of the founders will take home much of a paycheck from that amount.

What do you think about today’s Xobni acquisition?

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