There was a rumor recently that Xobni was to be acquired by MSFT. I could certainly see that happening, Xobni is an email inbox on crack… I saw it at TC40… right now, it’s compatible with MSFT Outlook alone.
While MSFT remains a likely company to buy it (as does Google, believe it or not), I think Facebook should use some of that $240M MSFT money and offer to acquire Xobni. How much would it cost? I don’t know. Xobni has raised about $5M so even though investors want 5, 10, 100x return, I think they would sell for Facebook equity, even if it means at an inflated $15B valuation.
Why? The backers are: First Round Capital, Atomico, Khosla Ventures and I think those funds would love to get their hands on Facebook stock. Had they invested $10-50M, I would not say this, but a fat multiple on $5M in financing won’t make a change on their balance sheet or fund performance… but getting some Facebook skin (you can thank me for avoiding the reference to ’skin on Mark Zuckerberg’) would be preferred, I think.
Let’s face it, it beats cold hard cash from MSFT. Did I just say that? Yeah, scrap that last line… you know what I mean, hopefully. Of course, the initial thinking on this is: MSFT would not welcome this… but if you look yonder - way yonder - MSFT will eventually buy Facebook (no one else will, especially with a $15B floor price) if it does not build a business to IPO… then MSFT might prefer to have Facebook handle integrating Xobni.
All of this is Ash talking smack, of course… but the more I pontificate about this, the more plausible it all becomes…
Especially as MSFT ingests and integrates Yahoo!
Note: Long YHOO.
Related:
- Facebook vs. Google - Clash of the Titans - aka. email is the ultimate social network
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