Paul Allen must be sick and tired of wading through email. First, the Microsoft co-founder incubated Gist, a Seattle startup that's trying to help people more effectively manage and consolidate personal messages flowing through Twitter, Facebook and email.
Now, the billionaire is launching Xiant, an add-on to Microsoft Outlook which is designed to help people better organize email messages. In fact, Xiant -- a unit of Vulcan Technologies -- was a direct outgrowth of Allen's frustration trying to keep up with email.
“Xiant Filer started as a personal project to help Paul keep up with heavy e‐mail traffic," said Chris Purcell, vice president of Vulcan Technologies in a release. "It worked so well we all started using it, which led us to take it to market.”
Other companies are trying to attack this arena as well, making people more productive as they spend an increasing amount of time organizing projects via email. The two offerings that most readily come to mind are Gist and Xobni, with 3-year-old Xobni being the most obvious competitor.
I asked Vulcan spokesman David Postman what the differences are between Gist and Xiant, since both are backed by Allen. Here's what he said:
"It is an add-on and it will allow you to single click to file e-mails into files and it will learn your filing preferences and offer you suggestions on where to file mail," said Postman, who has been using it to sort his personal emails. "You could combine it with Gist for a real powerful tool, but Xiant Filer is a thing you can add and then never have to worry about it again."
So, what's interesting here is that Gist and Xiant could team up to take on Xobni -- the early entrant in the space which raised $7 million in funding earlier this year from Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures and others. I have a call into the Xobni folks to get their reaction on things.
The Xiant product, which is free during the trial period, will go on sale in the next 60 days.
Vulcan also is touting Xiant as a return to the software business for Allen, noting in the release that this is one of his first serious forays into the market since leaving Microsoft in 1983.
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