Xobni: Our Path from ‘Wrong Product’ to Killer App

http://gigaom.com/2008/05/11/xobni-our-path-from-wrong-product-to-killer-app/

by pbnaidu • 18 years ago

51 29 18 years ago

dshah• 18 years ago

I'm a big fan of Xobni (the company), but a couple of the points in this article bugged me:

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.

utnick• 18 years ago

Its also alot easier to write a plugin for outlook ( a desktop program )... than it is to modify the functionality of an existing website that is not yours in a nonbuggy crossplatform way.

paul3• 18 years ago

I bet that you've never written an Outlook plugin :)

I'd much rather try to hack Gmail JS, which many people have done, btw (see Remember The Milk for a popular example).

vlad2• 18 years ago

Desktop software has the benefit of perceived privacy and being easily scalable, as you pay for a filehost and installations are done on each user's computer. However, the problem with this is that once any user sees a bug, screws up their registry, deletes a file, upgrades or installs a Firewall that starts blocking ports or an Anti-Virus program that's over sensitive or slows your application down, installs a new or different Service Pack, then you will receive questions that you now have to answer and debug that have nothing to do with your program. Then you have to create and release an update, making the customer wait, instead of being able to change things on the fly, as is possible with many web app frameworks.

yariv2• 18 years ago

I really like Xobni too. I use it at work and it does make Outlook much better -- primary because of the better search and threaded conversations (the social networking and analytics features are less useful for me, though).

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 :) )

skmurphy• 18 years ago

It's tough to keep your own success in perspective. I agree it's not clear that they have a killer app (yet).

Fuca• 18 years ago

I think these guys will make money, but not as much as the 20m they just turn down.

In a year these features will be developed in every email client.

axod• 18 years ago

I'm not sure of what can be added to something like gmail to be honest,

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.

wumi• 18 years ago

Xobni search for Outlook is much better than Gmail's native search, and they have no native platform for managing attachments well, which is, imho, one of the value props Xobni has.

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.

paul3• 18 years ago

You are dramatically overestimating the speed with which large products develop (especially Outlook). Even if they started last year, it still wouldn't ship for years.

yariv2• 18 years ago

In addition, after it ships, it will take years for the new version to be deployed to a significant portion of existing users.

systems2• 18 years ago

From the article I found this graph interesting http://gigaom.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/xobni_mail_client_.... Outlook 400 M - Lotus 250 M - Yahoo Mail 260 M - Hotmail 200 - Gmail 100 - Apple Mail 50 M - Thunderbird 30 M

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

matth2• 18 years ago

Matt is friends with Natalie Portman? Is this an Easter Egg? ;-)

aneesh• 18 years ago

He also has Will Gates' resume in his recent attachments :)

matth2• 18 years ago

I noticed that as well... And yet, I remain more concerned about Natalie.

vlad2• 18 years ago

I like and have always congratulated Xobni ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6477 ) but I don't think the product is killer yet (though they might be referring to the stuff they have in development that they can't show to anybody yet.)

maxklein2• 18 years ago

This is just silly. I install xobni, and just like the comments on that site, after a couple of days I was thinking - huh? What does this app do? And how come it swallows so much of my screen real estate.

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.

systems2• 18 years ago

"how come it swallows so much of my screen real estate"

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

johnyzee• 18 years ago

I guess with this strategy it helps to have a name that means absolutely nothing ;-)

maxklein2• 18 years ago

Inbox backwards.

dmose• 18 years ago

I don't understand how Xobni helps me? I installed it, I let it index my entire inbox... and .. what now? They should have taken the $20 million.

tak111• 18 years ago

They had to take the 20 millions. why? 20 millions for an eye candy, that's a lot of money already. IMHO.

Xobni: Our Path from ‘Wrong Product’ to Killer App

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