Gawker: valleywag, xobni

Slate explores the strange and fascinating world of your cubicle

Paul Boutin — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:20:00 EDT

Someone should make a Bingo card for startup office videos. Slate's tour of Xobni in downtown San Francisco would cover most of the squares:

Dog
Disco ball
Pirate flag
Exercise spheres
Free eat-in lunch
Costco snacks and drinks
Ikea desks and Aeron chairs
Founder who says "cool" nine times in three minutes
Conspicuous daytime drinking

This clip is the first in a series, called Cubez, that attempts to make programmers' offices seem as hip and interesting as rappers' mansions. I hope they find a more outlandish workplace for the next episode. For now here's the news: Our cushy, free-snack workplaces may be boring and nearly identical to us, but they're still the envy of people who work at banks.

Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte's job on the line?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:00:00 EDT

After the abrupt departure of Gabor Cselle, the talented VP of engineering at Xobni, a San Francisco email startup, talk is that CEO Jeff Bonforte might soon be out, too. At a startup, one of a CEO's main tasks is to attract and retain talent. In a comment on TechCrunch, Bonforte said Cselle wanted to run his own startup. Despite his rationalizations, there's no sugarcoating this fact: Bonforte just failed his most important test as a CEO.

"A quarter of the company's value walked out the door," a tipster says, and suggests that Cselle might take some of Xobni's engineering talent, including one of the founders, with him. Bonforte, formerly an executive at Yahoo, had a reputation there for being either loved or hated. At a large company, management can shuffle employees and executives around to make up for personality mismatches. At a startup, there's no room for such errors of judgment.

Email startup Xobni walks away from $20 million offer

Owen Thomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 20:20:00 EDT

Xobni, led by ex-Yahoo Jeff Bonforte, has declined a buyout offer from Microsoft, finding the software giant's plans for the startup too unformed. This from a team whose product is still in private beta. [TechCrunch]

Email startup tries to hurry Microsoft-Yahoo merger

Owen Thomas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:40:00 EDT

Former Yahoo executive Jeff Bonforte, now CEO of Xobni, has come up with possibly the most cynical yet useful product ever launched by a startup. Xobni, whose software tracks and analyzes email usage in Outlook, is rumored to be in acquisition talks with Microsoft. Microsoft is, to its dismay, not in acquisition talks with Yahoo. But Xobni's latest product, TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld reports, bridges Microsoft Outlook, desktop email software widely used in corporations, with Yahoo's Web-based email. "That's the kind of demo that gets deals done," Schonfeld observes. Indeed, it may make Microsoft wonder whether they need to buy Yahoo at all.

Report: Microsoft acquires Outlook plugin maker Xobni

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Microsoft has acquired Xobni, likely for more than its original $20 million offer to buy the company, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington reports. Xobni — "inbox" spelled backward — adds features to Outlook, Microsoft's desktop email application. As VC blogger Fred Wilson notes, the acquisition is "sort of proof that Microsoft doesn't know how to improve its own software. So they buy those that do." If Arrington's report proves more accurate than previous rumors of a sale, Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte would join Microsoft well before his former colleagues at Yahoo, where Bonforte worked just long enough to be paid to leave.

Has Microsoft bought email startup Xobni? No, but its CEO is getting used to paperwork

Owen Thomas — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:40:00 EDT

At 10 a.m., Jeff Bonforte, the ex-Yahoo who's now CEO of Xobni, described his status on LinkedIn as "legal documents up to my ears." What could have him so submerged? Microsoft has long been rumored to be interested in Xobni, which makes a plugin for its Outlook software. Not long ago, Microsoft startup scout Don Dodge took the startup's small team to dinner, but Xobni's said to have balked at a sub-$20 million offer they viewed as lowball. If Bonforte has actually persuaded Microsoft to raise it, he'll have earned his pay. The irony, if a deal happens: Bonforte will likely end up working for Microsoft long before his former colleagues. Update: Xobni cofounder Matt Brezina tells me the legal documents are for intellectual-property licenses, not a sale. Sounds dreadfully boring — and good training for a career at Microsoft if the widely expected purchase goes through.

Jeff Bonforte's startup subsidy

Owen Thomas — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:52:52 EST

Yahoo laid off more than a thousand people last week, including Jeff Bonforte, a vice president whose job was rendered superfluous long before he was made redundant. Now we learn that he's taken the job of CEO at Xobni, a promising email startup. Curious: Did Xobni make a snap decision to hire Bonforte? Unlikely. Instead of quitting to take the job at Xobni, he waited to extract a package from Yahoo. Yahoo's shareholders and his ex-colleagues might not share our view, but we applaud Bonforte's cynical opportunism.

Email startup takes on filmmaking

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:38:45 EDT

A note to venture capitalist Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. Remember the cash you plunked down on Xobni, the party-throwing email startup? This is where your money's going.

Email startup Xobni ("inbox" spelled backwards) has released a short film aimed at recruiting new engineers to join their team. Filmed with a clear nod towards Reservoir Dogs and Office Space, the clip includes an efficient German manager, gratuitous toilet humor (the bathroom stall is labeled "Outbox"), an Indian-accented sock puppet, and an appearance by Y Combinator guru Paul Graham, who bought the cameo, in a sense, by providing Xobni's seed round.

I'm too sexy for my install script

Owen Thomas — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:47:20 EDT

It's traditional for software developers to put their names on a product. When you launch Photoshop, for example, a long list of small-type names flashes on the screen while the product loads. But pictures? That's an innovation, as far as I know. Engineers at Xobni, the email-software startup which just presented at the TechCrunch40 conference and launched its first product in beta, pasted in photos of themselves that display when their software finishes installing. Perhaps they'll get some dates for their trouble. If not users.

Crystal Tower, the startup dorm, loses elevator service

Owen Thomas — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 11:01:35 EDT

Ever since Justin.tv moved in, Crystal Tower Apartments in San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood has gotten the reputation as a dorm for 20something startuppers. A recent elevator breakdown, now fixed, left some residents to hoof it all the way up the 12-story building. Justin.tv has moved out, but current residents include the entire staff of email startup Xobni and Web-page builder Weebly, as well as employees of Snipshot and Scribd. The connection? All four companies were backed by entrepreneur Paul Graham's Y Combinator incubator. And more are moving in soon, Weebly CEO David Rusenko says. The proximity is a bonus for the tightly networked group of companies — but the elevator episode should be a sobering reminder to all of them of what happens when your startup has a single point of failure.

Bow down and worship Xobni's party-throwing skills

Megan McCarthy — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:11:11 EDT

On the left, beatific investor Rob Hayes of First Round Capital. On the right, worshipful Xobni cofounder Adam Smith, genuflecting before the man who graced his startup with the tall dollars, and helped fund a night of excess last Friday.

Xobni, an email-organization startup launched by Paul Graham’s Y Combinator incubator, has not yet come out with an actual product. But no matter! They threw a party last Friday to celebrate their new office in San Francisco’s Financial District. I, alas, skipped the affair, which, in retrospect, was a bad decision (no kidding -Ed.), because judging from the pictures, they had a hell of a time. So, what is Xobni, exactly? From the tipster who alerted us to the photos:

They’ve been around forever, have raised tons of money, rented a ginormous office in a historic building in the financial district, but have yet to release a product.

Sounds like the perfect reason to throw a bash.