Hacker News Reader

Comment by qeorge | Hacker News Reader

Honest question:

What was Xobni's plan after turning down Microsoft's offer? Making > $20MM selling $40 software seems pretty unlikely.

Well, three startups have spun out from employees who left, two acquired and (shameless plug ahead..) one making revenue from day 1 and growing like gangbusters.

http://www.remail.com/ (employee #1)

http://www.appninjas.com/ (employee #3)

http://www.dropcam.com/ (employees #2 and #7)

I dunno if that was the plan though ;)

Probably forced by VCs. No point is liquidating at that price range, doesn't make an impact on their fund.

That seems too simple. Why did they get so close to an acquisition if the VCs were steadfast against the sale?

The TC article implies the Xobni team pulled out, over concerns about the product & team's future within Microsoft. If that's true, I'm confused as to why they built an Outlook plugin to begin with.

Then what was the VCs plan after turning down Microsoft's offer? Making > $20MM selling $40 software seems pretty unlikely.

Depending on who you are, wanting more money may not imply you have a plan.

Why does that seem unlikely? That's 500k copies, which is a reasonably high bar, but not at all hard to imagine.

Even less-- Building a $20m company doesn't take $20m in revenue. You can see 5-10x revenue for a software company-- more if there is strategic value.

I think they're trying to be more than a $20m company on $32m in funding.

Hell... my current project took on money at something like a $4.5M pre-money valuation less than 60 days after we started.

Well, VCs seem to have thought well enough of it to put in almost 20 million after the Microsoft deal was turned down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com