I remember laughing at them when they launched at and won TC50. "Twitter for the enterprise! What a dumb idea." I'm laughing all the way to their bank now.
The important takeaway I get from this is that they kept trying and managed to improve and deliver a service that actually works for their target market. If it had stayed like it was I don't think it would have gone anywhere. Hats off to them for pushing through and executing well!
I am not sure what data it is you want me to put in my data bank, as I do not buy your premise that getting bought by Microsoft is any kind of validation. Quite the contrary.
You can get rich by playing the lottery, just as you can get rich by making a crappy product that you manage to get enough hype around to get sold to Microsoft. It does not mean you should bet on the lottery as a viable business strategy.
Getting the world to think your crappy product is the newest silver bullet might be a viable way of making money (see Zynga, Madoff, et al), but it does not lend itself very well to reproduction.
If you have some specific details on what makes Yammer objectively superior to alternatives (and not just a fad) I am all ears though.
When a colleague of mine heard that Yammer was bought for 1 billion he exclaimed : "Oh, so THAT is what we should be doing - create a crappy product and get bought by Microsoft!". My point is that other factors than creating the crappy product is what gets you bought by Microsoft. There is no causal relationship between the quality of the product and the money received. Another similarity to Zynga/Madoff btw.
So the conclusion is that you are better off creating a quality product, despite such evidence to the contrary. Likewise you are better off providing real value to the world, despite some people getting rich by winning the lottery.
We've also found it a great way to let everyone know that you'll be out of the office, working from home, etc.
We probably aren't perfect in our execution, but it's been a fantastic tool so far.