Yahoo acquires Xobni | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo acquires Xobni

allthingsd.com

80 pointsposharma40 comments

Way back when we were just starting to think about Baydin, Xobni was one of the models for how we could build a company based on an email plugin.

Their tech was so cool -- we'd never seen anything like it. Then Bill Gates demoed Xobni on stage, they had so many downloads, and rumors about acquisitions swirled in the press. It sounded so glamorous and so exciting. And, honestly, so fast and easy.

We didn't know that Xobni had been at it for two years already when they were featured in that keynote. And we certainly weren't thinking at all about a story of 7 years of grind, improvements, and putting one foot in front of the other every day. Helicopter rides, keynotes, WSJ profiles, and closing fundraising deals get the headlines, but behind the scenes, it's releases, updates, support, and hard work.

Now that we're a few years into our own story of grind, improvements, and putting one foot in front of the other every day, we have a ton of respect for what Xobni put together over the past 7 years. Obviously, this isn't the outcome that everyone was hoping for, but it's easy to look at the numbers and forget 2008-2009, when Xobni was at the top of the world.

Thanks, Adam, Matt, and the rest of you who were early in Xobni for building something magical and inspiring us to build something of our own. And congratulations on the end of a long journey.

It has become rare to see such genuine meaningul positive comments on HN but it's gratifying to see it still happens. Bravo BaydinAlex!

for those who don't recognize the Baydin[0] brand (I didn't), they're the folks behind Boomerang[1] - which is pretty awesome.

[0]: http://www.baydin.com/

[1]: http://www.boomeranggmail.com/ http://www.baydin.com/boomerang/index.html

I would ask who they're going to acquire tomorrow, but that would be ridiculous and silly. Tomorrow's a federal holiday in the States.

Oh, I don't know -- desperate money never sleeps.

Seems like they would have been better off just taking the rumored 20m from microsoft in 2008 (before they raised FIVE additional rounds of funding to the tune of nearly 40m).

I followed Xobni since their inception since my company did similar things for other companies that have a shorter life or were acquired for other services like MX Logic.

Following their last investing rounds I realized that they were looking for investment when the previous investment was exhausted. I calculated approximately their expenses and the number of employees from LinkedIn.

That's for sure. But hindsight is 20/20, and when you are growing like a weed, like they were at the time, it's easy to be caught in the "I want more" mindset, especially when you are a younger founder.

The big assumption here of course is they had the choice.

Good point.

Funny no one mentions that the founders left the company long ago.

According to Techcrunch, the price was "somewhere in the $60 million-plus range" (http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/03/source-xobni-was-acquired-f...). That makes it look a little better, considering they raised nearly $42 million over the years.

I imagine they raised that $42m at a higher valuation... giving investors preferred stock, meaning normal stock for employees was worth nothing.

Proof of why, as jwz says, stock options are a stupid tax and a lottery.

It's not fair to call them a lottery because as a class they have a positive expectation. (At worst they are worth $0, but clearly some make money.) They're not a tax either.

They're just a riskier form of compensation. Like any investment, you get a premium based on the level of risk. Their expected value is still pretty good though if you're working for a good startup.

Correction Matt, if you purchase them (as an employee) their cost is definitely not zero, therefore you can lose money.

Agreed. Also, when you choose options over salary then their cost is greater than $0 because thats money you otherwise would have received had you chosen salary. When the options cannot be exercised because they have little to no value (which, in my experience, is nearly always the case) then you actually lose money.

I think the stupid tax part comes from the daydreamers who believe if they work their ass off (more hours than a 9-5 job), they will get there millions. Hopefully after doing that once they realize it takes more than putting tons of hours in and you should focus on doing things you enjoy, both in and out of the office.

I think the point he (jwz) was trying to make when he used the words "tax" and "lottery" is that they are, on average, not things you want to spend money on. Not that options are an ACTUAL tax or lottery. "Stupid tax" meaning (quoting Urban Dictionary) the price you pay for ignorance.

"Lottery" in the sense that, yes, someone is going to win it. Its just not going to be you, statistically.

Don't forget the founders, which likely had common. If current management has no desire to do right by early employees, common can be set to $0.

All these acquisitions by Yahoo is making it feel like 2005.

That's pretty funny, Xobni's CEO is Jeff Bonforte who used to be a yahoo running IM and eventually part of the business where delicious was. Now he's been brought back in.

I haven't encountered Xobni since I quit Outlook a few years back, but at the time I remember it being a very innovative and interesting layer that I actually got value from.

Pairing the Xobni brains w/the Yahoo Mail product could create a compelling reason to give something other than GMAIL a look.

If Y! Mail wants to pull a ton of users from Gmail they should offer NSA-free, snooping-free email similar to how DDG does search.

Your searches don't need to persist. Your mail kinda does. And since US law compels US companies to comply with warrants, this isn't possible to do.

How do you propose that Yahoo (a US-based company, subject to US laws, just like Google) do this?

I've always been curious if is it possible for a US C-Corp to be able to change it's country of incorporation from the US to another country? If they do, how is equity handled? Would public companies be able to replace common and preferred stock with ADRs?

This question seems even more pertinent now that there is a Presidential Executive Order that was issued that state that a even the assets of a US company abroad are subject to laws in the US, which strangely puts US companies in a really touch position of not being able to comply with both US and European laws simultaneously.

Start a shell corp in Country B, sell Company A to Company B for cheap!!! Voila, you've just moved your company out of Country A.

Create a service where they are unable to view the unencrypted data themselves.

If they were slightly cheaper I was considering these guys for my personal use.

http://luxsci.com/blog/encrypting-sent-email-an-often-overlo...

Does not seem to be a problem for tax laws...

Somehow, I doubt very much they would pull a ton of users from Gmail with that claim.

Yeah, 99% of the users out there couldn't care less.

Are we pretending that Yahoo wasn't part of PRISM as well?

Still have Xobni installed, it's been very useful. Hope it gets better - congrats to these guys.

A word of advice: stay clear of Jeff Bonforte. Cronyism defines his career and nothing more.

So true: stay away from Jeff Bonforte. Wait...I'm Jeff Bonforte. Dammit, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Yahoo it seems is acquiring a startup a day. Are they going to buy entire Internet?

I hope so.

Well done Xobni

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