I am delighted to announce the BlackBerry Partners Fund's newest investment: Xobni. We are part of the latest $10 million dollar round. This has been in the works for some time and I've been chomping at the bit to blog about it.
The Why:
First, the people. This team is off the charts good. Virtually all of the hot buttons you hear from the VC community, these guys nailed em. For example, Matt Brezina and Adam Smith, the two co-founders, have been brilliant in their hiring. They went out and got an amazing CEO, Jeff Bonforte. They pulled in brilliant coders, QA folks, and others in all departments. The team is world class. No egos, no control phreak stuff, no nonsense about titles, just laser focus on building a great team to drive the vision forward. Well done, guys, well done.
Second, the product. Dead on smart, solves a pain point, and adds an amazing 'I would pay for this' value to that slog we call email. Nobody add more value to email and thus my business life.
[Side note: Lifehackers has a great post on all the ways to boost Outlook.]
Third, the technology. In the 90s (ah the 90s, stock options, first bubbles, some irrational exuberance), I worked the developer circuit hawking, among other things, messaging interfaces and the adventure of riding piggyback on other products, Outlook in this case. They nailed it. Adam's brilliance in exploiting Outlook can't truly be appreciated until you dive in and see the code. Just off the charts smart. When doing my due diligence, I reached into the Redmond gang and no less than three times was given the "I can't figure out how the $%#! they are doing this, it's really amazing" commentary. Top tier respect coming right from Microsoft and a text book perfect play on the value add strategy. Well done.
So why the BlackBerry Fund:
Simple. That smart phone you love, carry everywhere and would give up sex before you give up it up? That's your next computer if it isn't already and that’s where power products will have tons of demand. I'm on the go 90% of my working day. I want the power of what's on my desktop with me. I want the productivity hit on my device. Xobni has a very compelling value proposition and we look forward to its extension into new platforms and use cases.
I've joined a board with some amazing people and along with my BBPF partner, Kevin Talbot, we'll be doing everything we can to help the company in any way possible.
Download the product, folks, it really is amazing. It reflects the amazing people behind it.
Thanks for the investment and the nice words, Rick. Glad to have you and the BBPF on board!
Posted by: Jeff Bonforte | March 24, 2009 at 22:56
Congratulations, Rick and BBPF! Xobni is a great product that we've been using for a while now...
Posted by: Scott Pelgton | March 25, 2009 at 02:53
Nice! Congrats to you and your partners.
Posted by: Mark MacLeod | March 25, 2009 at 03:45
Congrats to all involved,
I am a technical recruiter in the IT field and have used Xobni since Beta. I could not say more about this product, it is truly amazing. I have every one in my office converted to Xobni and can hardly wait for a blackberry version.
I doubt the intention was to create a recruiting tool, but they have created by far the most useful tool on the market; for free. I truly see this as a few steps away from replacing my current database. It is that useful.
I look forward to the new version and any coming improvements (every upgrade continues to impress me).
Regards
Robert Fleischhauer
Technical Recruiter
Digital Intelligence Systems (Disys)
www.disys.com
Posted by: Rob Fleischhauer | March 25, 2009 at 06:42
Very exciting news and well-deserved funding for a great product. Any chance we will see stronger scheduling functionality (a la Timebridge) in future versions? That's a big opportunity area that I think Xobni would be well positioned to tackle.
Posted by: John Gannon | March 26, 2009 at 12:21
Sorry but the beta totally turned me off to even considering the final product.
Not only was it very slow, it loaded a service into the background that ended up having conficts with other programs on my PC. In addition once it was uninstalled, I keep getting a message from Outlook that it needs to be uninstalled (?) everytime I start Outlook 2007.
So, Xobni? No thank you!
Posted by: Mike Drips | March 26, 2009 at 12:45
Rick knows that historically I am a reader, not a poster. However, in response to the "Xobni, no thank you" from above, I disagree. I am in the Biz Dev world and have tons of projects on the go at all times. Being able to see networks (i.e. associated contacts), attachments, and historical emails as soon as I select any email is invaluable. It saves me from having to dip into our SFA solution for quick information requirements. No conflicts, no slowdowns, no issues (yet :)). Note - I am in no way connected to JLA, BBPF, or Xobni.
Posted by: Ed Leavens | March 27, 2009 at 08:06
Hi Ed,
Thanks. You can pick up your check after 3p ;-)
Posted by: Rick Segal | March 27, 2009 at 08:41
I just don't see the value in this offering. I suppose if you are an Outlook heavy user this may be valuable but why would you put so much money into this? Try as I might I can not see a sufficient exit strategy (revenue based / equity based / debt based / complex derivative base (even if you bought CDO's against default on this one).
Fine I understand somewhat the value, but how will you extract at least 15% YOY from this?
Posted by: Fred Almeida | March 28, 2009 at 07:22
Wish I could use Xobni with Google Apps for Domains.
Posted by: George Favvas | March 28, 2009 at 11:47