I find it sort of interesting that I had a post about Jaxtr sitting in my drafts, from back in December 2008. Back then, the one-time darling of VoIP whose investors included some of those investing in Skype before it, had reported that it had laid off 13 workers (about 30% of its workforce) and that the much heralded CEO, Konstantin Guericke, had stepped down.
That draft was titled “Jaxtr revisited” and referred to the company’s burn rate:
Jaxtr raised $10 million in their Series A in August 2007. In September 2007, I said they would burn through that within a year, and it looks like they did, because they had to take another $10 million in June 2008.
In that post, I was highlighting some potential trouble spots ahead for Jaxtr, including the fact that they’d soon need even more capital and there would be challenges raising it in this climate, especially with a continued “burn cash now for some future unspecified opportunity later” business model. I also discussed little details like the potential for rampant fraud, once they start charging. I never got around to publishing that draft.
Of course we don’t know if these things contributed to the sale of Jaxtr to SabSe Technologies, Inc. (www.SabSeBolo.com) announced yesterday, for an undisclosed sum, but it seems like they could have.
SabSe was co-founded by Sabeer Bhatia, an original co-founder of Hotmail. They are in the free conference calling business. All the access numbers listed on the website are in India. A large percentage of Jaxtr users are also in India and in Pakistan. I’m guessing SabSe makes money on termination and are hoping to use Jaxtr’s local numbers, in some related manner, perhaps expanding their conference calling services beyond India.
