Xobni: Our Path from ‘Wrong Product’ to Killer App
gigaom.com
gigaom.com
1. There's not clear evidence yet that they've landed on the "killer app". Yes, it's likely more killer (killerer?) than what they started with, but it's too early too tell. Lots of things seem like the killer app, but few are. They may have a couple of iterations left before they hit the true killer app.
2. One of the the stated reasons for not supporting GMail yet is that "Outlook users are more likely to have business credit cards". Although that's true, my guess is that there are enough users on GMail that also have credit cards for it to be interesting.
On the other hand, the "are you happy" box is cool.
I'd much rather try to hack Gmail JS, which many people have done, btw (see Remember The Milk for a popular example).
Also, Gmail actually does have a number of documented and stable hooks for extensions to use.
However, I think Xobni's market is largely hypothetical, and it's not clear how Xobni can make money. The fact that I have a credit card doesn't mean I will use it in Xobni, especially because the app is free and it already solves my Outlook problems.
(Btw, I would be happy to pay $20 for Xobni if they charged me for it :) )
There is space for an outlook plugin, but xobni have just picked a weak product and are getting it installed by effective marketing.
Let me make this clear guys: Your product does nothing. It's not useful to me. It's not killer, it's very weak.
I second that,the first thing i do in Outlook, Visual Studio, Eclipse ... is reorganize the panes to maximize the editor area.
For oulook this would be the email body and email list
In a year these features will be developed in every email client.
But, it's true that a small company can deliver to the people who will upgrade or install new tools in ways that a large company generally cannot. But the slow adopters are going to be slow adopters no matter who builds the application.
Gmail search: fantastic, threaded conversations: fantastic, search for attachments etc: all works fine.
For me, Gmail just works great. I'm not really interested in seeing a graph/analytics for emails to be honest.
Obviously it makes sense for outlook, since that is a very very painful thing to use, but I'd be surprised if ms don't just fix search and add threaded conversations in the next version.
I don't understand why all focus on the statistics/analytics features. It might be smart of the company to either remove it or minimize its presence because I've seen so many take the route of "analytics? whoop dee doo."
Also, if Xobni would like to be a stand-alone email/CRM one day, integration with as many email applications is quite necessary.
This totals 1290 M , now if their market penetration is 0.5% (i.e. 0.05) and they sell the product for 1 dollar that's 60 million in revenue
Lets try another what if. What if they sell it for 20 dollars, how much market penetration to they need to make 100 Mil revenue!
~0.39% (0.0039)
I am guessing they played a math game. And the math says, unless they totally suck, they will pass that 20 million sooner than spending 20 million
Finally we meet some business men in the startup software market
pick your market, before you pick your product