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What’s Next for Jaxtr?

Source: www.voip-news.com

We mentioned the sale of Jaxtr briefly in this blog yesterday, but what is the new owner, SabSe planning to do with the company? That is the question of the hour … and one that is answered in a new VoIP-News feature.

The Silicon Valley start-up had matured from a click-to-call service to a full VoIP service offering low-cost international calling. However its performance had displeased some of the company’s investors … And now comes the sale.

According to the article:

Investor concerns aside, though, jaxtr had done a good job of building users and momentum, according to SabSe co-founder and CEO Yogesh Patel (HotMail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is also a co-founder). And that made it a good fit for SabSe’s larger plan, which is to offer a variety of cloud telephony services around the world, mainly in partnership with traditional carriers on a revenue-sharing basis. SabSe has its own call processing platform that handles both traditional TDM and VoIP calls. That versatility is necessary because the company is focusing on developing countries, where VoIP is less widely available than in developed markets. Other services in the mix include free and paid conference calling, which it is already offering in India under the SabSeBolo name. Hosted IP PBX services are coming soon, first in Malaysia and later in the U.S.

More here.

Published on June 11th, 2009 under , ,

Wednesday Links: Jaxtr Sold, Skype Mishandled

Source: www.voip-news.com

ZipDX supposedly helps you make very clear VoIP calls. Read about it on VoIP News of the UK.

Andy Abramson has some strong words about a press release on the acquition of Jaxtr by another company … interesting. Read it on VoIP Watch.

Smith on VoIP talks about eBay’s mishandling of Skype.

Published on June 10th, 2009 under Object id #89

Friday Links: eComm, SmartSIP, Jaxtr

Source: www.voip-news.com

SmartSIP has launched, VoIP and Gadget Blog reports.

Jaxtr and TynTec are in an SMS deal, reports the other VoIP News.

eComm went off swimmingly, reports VoIP Watch.

Published on March 6th, 2009 under , , , , , ,

Free Worldwide Calling with Jaxtr

Source: www.voip-news.com

Jaxtr has launched a new service that offers free, unlimited member-to-member calling worldwide called FreeConnect.

“Launching a free international calling service that works on any phone is a dream come true, and something the jaxtr team has been working toward for many years,” said Touraj Parang, jaxtr Co-founder & COO. “Although smart phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry and Google’s Android have received widespread accolades, the vast majority of people worldwide do not have access to such phones. Our mission at jaxtr has been to create innovative services that are accessible to anyone, anywhere. We’re extremely proud that FreeConnect delivers on this promise, and can be used on any of the more than 3 billion mobile handsets worldwide, and the even larger volume of landline phones in use today.”

According to Jaxtr:

FreeConnect is easy-to-use. Jaxtr members simply enter the number of the jaxtr member they wish to call. Jaxtr will then give them a local number to reach that person. Once they initiate the call, jaxtr notifies the person they are calling, and will give that person a local number to call, too – allowing the parties to connect directly. They can then talk for as long as they like, free of any charge from jaxtr. These assigned local phone numbers can also be used again by the same parties on an ongoing basis.

“We’re in the business of offering exceptional value to our userss, and are very pleased to provide them with FreeConnect, our member-to-member free calling service that offers phone device and wifi independence for maximum flexibility,” added Bahman Koohestani, president and CEO of jaxtr.

Published on December 26th, 2008 under , ,

Trouble for Jaxtr

Source: www.voip-news.com

The economy is hitting businesses hard. VoIP startup Jaxtr learned that today. The company has laid off 13 employees and the CEO is stepping down, the San Jose Business Journal reports.

I can’t imagine the moral there now that the staff has been trimmed to just 30 employees. Oy.

According to the Business Journal:

On the company’s blog, interim CEO Bahman Koohestani said Konstantin Guericke is stepping down to spend more time with his wife and two young daughters. “I like to thank Konstantin for his leadership, marketing insights, and social networking know-how to get jaxtr past its initial phase,” Koohestani said. “I’m also glad that Konstantin will remain with us as chairman, and I am very excited and look forward to working with the stellar team here to deliver all the enhancements our members have been asking for…”

Earlier this year Guericke said the service has registered more than 10 million users in 220 countries and spent no money on advertising.

Guericke is also cofounder of LinkedIn.

Published on November 4th, 2008 under ,

Jaxtr Gets $10 Million, Offers Out of Network Calls

Source: gigaom.com

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The business of providing voice services to users of social networks is a tough one – you need huge volume to basically make money off what is essentially a new age call-back/calling card business. That is why many companies that aimed at this market have either retrenched or gone out of business.

Jaxtr, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, on the other hand, is ready to double down and stay in the game. Helping it do so is $10 million in Series B funding from Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, announced this morning.

The funding announcement is contrary to the rumor I had heard about Jaxtr hiring Lehman Brothers to sell the company. Good thing, I didn’t post that one ;-)  Jaxtr plan includes making money to selling minutes for outbound calls to non-network members and ad-supported calls. “Combo of viral growth, ad revenue and paid services is a promising model,” Konstantin Guericke wrote in an email this morning. Jaxtr says it has 10 million users, a number they have been using since early 2008, though I would prefer if they start telling us about active users per month.

The out-of-network calling is a new service from Jaxtr, and is ultra cheap. For instance calls to China cost a mere penny a minute, while calls to India are 6 cents a minute. That’s low price, and I am not sure how they are going to make a ton of money doing that. Advertising-supported business is not an easy one either – as we have noticed in the past. To sum it up, I channel Brian McConnell, a former phone guy, and an occasional columnist for us.

The liquidity and exit opportunities for small telecom companies are also not good. You either need massive amounts of capital, or you need to be bought by a phone company (the stereotypes about phone companies exist for a reason). There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare.

Good thing, Konstantin has the money to soldier on!

Published on June 24th, 2008 under Object id #89

Like Jangl, TalkPlus Losing Its Voice As Well

Source: gigaom.com

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Jangl, a Pleasanton, Calif-based start-up that launched with much fanfare and lot of promise ran out of time, and is headed towards an ignominious end. Venturebeat had first reported that Jangl was looking to sell itself earlier this week.

Jangl is not the only VoIP company to nosedive. We have heard from reliable sources that TalkPlus, San Mateo, Calif. Company is going nowhere fast. Michael Toepel, who was the CEO recently left, after the company failed to get new investment to keep going.

Jeff Black, founder is overseeing the operations but there is little hope for this company, which wants to sell its intellectual property. The company had raised about $5.5 million from Menlo Ventures back in 2006. I left Jeff a voice mail but so far no word from him. John Todd, CTO of the company is still with the company.

Back to Jangl! Cerda along with Jangl cofounder, Ben Dean and three other Jangl employees is joining Jajah, one company that seems to be defying the odds, mostly because it changed its overall strategy. “Jangl will sell its assets and there are people who are interested in this,” Cerda said. “The company was finding its grove in the marketplace, but our investors though it wasn’t enough for us to keep going, and decided not to fund us.” Jangl had raised about $9 million in VC funding from Storm Ventures, Labrador Ventures and Cardinal Ventures.

Jangl had started out by creating a bidirectional number that kept the privacy of the caller and call recipient intact. It later changed their tactics and tried to use social networking widgets to grow its customer base, in hope that it could make up the cost of free calling on advertising. The only place where it found success was amongst the online dating sites where it allowed people to make anonymous voice calls to each other.

Cerda explains the rise and fall of Jangl on his blog.

And in our opinion it needed another 18-24 months worth of runway to realize its fullest potential; but at the end of the day every venture capitalist has their own coefficient of venture. To that end, we took company forward into an M&A process. Unfortunately with much bigger things happening in the marketplace it turned out to be the worst time in a few years to be selling.

That last line should send a shudder down the spine of Web 2.0/Voice 2.0 entrepreneurs who are looking to sell and get out of Dodge.

Published on May 8th, 2008 under Object id #46

That Jangl You Hear is Sales

Source: gigaom.com

The web-to-mobile calling efforts are starting to get interesting. Last week Jaxtr talked about how it planned to make money by selling ads, and today Jangl launches its own ad efforts tied to a partnership with Pudding Media. The plan is to target pre-roll ads on Jangl’s existing voice calls and SMS messages by using location and demographic information provided in the profiles on various social media sites.

Jangl has already made money by selling the ability to receive calls without giving out a phone number on dating web sites, but the ad efforts are targeting bigger money. Jangl’s CEO Michael Cerda estimates the CPMs are around $30 to $60 for SMS messages ads, and around $10 for voice. Now that revenue is entering the equation, we should soon have less subjective ways to judge who is successful in this crowded market. Sales are a better metric than user numbers when it comes to figuring out which services will succeed.

Published on March 6th, 2008 under , , , , ,

Jaxtr Ends Beta, Begins Selling Ads

Source: gigaom.com

Social voice startup Jaxtr has reached 10 million users, doubling its user base in less than three months. The company has also announced the end of its beta and the beginning of revenue, with ads running on the Jaxtr Cafe site. The site essentially turns Jaxtr from an widget-based mobile VoIP platform into a one-stop shop for social voice and text messaging that can be delivered to a mobile phone without the user giving out his or her phone number.

Published on February 25th, 2008 under , , ,

Jaxtr Signs Up 5 Millionth VoIP Customer

Source: www.voip-news.com

All new companies should be lucky enough to have a launch story like this one.  Jaxtr, which only became public this March, has announced that their membership base has grown 10-fold since this summer, going from 500,000 users to hitting the 5 million mark this month.  That type of growth puts them ahead of juggernauts like Skype, believe it or not.  Jaxtr’s service can be used for calls in over 220 countries now, allowing subscribers to make and receive calls without being subjected to enormous international calling fees.

From their recent press release, “Jaxtr is poised to benefit from the coming VoIP shakeout. The new wave of VoIP services allow users to enjoy the benefits and simplicity of placing phone calls through their existing phones by selecting a name from the contact list and hitting the green “send” button, said Rebecca Swensen, research analyst, VoIP Services for IDC. Jaxtr has demonstrated that ease-of-use is a critical factor to bringing VoIP into the mainstream. Mobile VoIP calls no longer require a PC or an Internet connection.”

Published on December 17th, 2007 under ,

Jaxtr’s Challenge: Turn Try It Into Buy It

Source: gigaom.com

VoIP startup Jaxtr said today that it has attracted 5 million registered members, up from 500,000 users 140 day ago, making the company “the fastest-growing Internet communications service in history — ahead of Skype, Hotmail and ICQ,” according to its press release.

But where is the money?

Jaxtr logoYou might think that scaling to meet the needs of these millions of users represents Jaxtr’s biggest challenge. Indeed, Jaxtr expresses concern in its announcement over its ability to meet user demand. To that end, it recently hired Taneli Otala, former CTO of MySQL, as VP of engineering.

But Jaxtr has bigger problems than scaling and tuning their systems for millions of users. To make Jaxtr a real business, they need to convert sign-ups into satisfied users, and from there, transform those users into customers who pay.

Even then, there are no guarantees Jaxtr will succeed. If the promise is cheap calling, it’s just the same old VoIP thing.

How Jaxtr works

Jaxtr widgetJaxtr offers free international calls via a web-based widget. To use it, you sign up for an account then publish your Jaxtr widget on your blog, web site, or social networking profile page. You can also email callers a link to your Jaxtr page, which shows the widget. Callers click on the widget, enter their phone numbers, then Jaxtr rings the caller phone and your phone to connect you with one another.

If the caller is located in one of 50 supported countries, they will be given a local phone number they can use to call you next time — without paying long-distance charges. Otherwise, they will be provided with a U.S. number.

Each Jaxtr user gets 100 “jax” a month. Jax represent a Jaxtr-specific currency that is exchanged for minutes at different rates in different countries. Currently, once you run out of jax you have to wait until the next month to get more. In the future, you’ll be able to buy jax — and that, along with web and mobile advertising, is where Jaxtr plans to get its revenue.

The big challenge for Jaxtr: Turning try it into buy it

It’s no surprise that Jaxtr is seeing so many sign-ups: the promise of free international calls, mobile-to-mobile, is compelling. And compared to Skype, Jaxtr doesn’t require any special client software. A caller simply uses the widget once, then subsequently dials the number the widget gave them for future calls. But turning registered members into ongoing users — and paying customers — won’t be quite as easy.

First, the Jaxtr service is somewhat complicated, as a quick glance at the frequently-asked questions list proves. Plus, though it does provide for mobile-to-mobile calls, the first time a caller uses it, he or she must use that web widget.

Second and more importantly, there are doubts as to whether the Jaxtr money-making math adds up. The company must be spending some serious cash on those local numbers it gives out, as well as on connecting phone calls. Will they be able to come up with a pricing scheme for jax that makes the business economically feasible?

Five million users is impressive, but how hard can it be to find 5 million people that want mobile-to-mobile international calls for free?

Published on December 11th, 2007 under , , , , , ,

Voxalot’s Facebook application for really free phone calls

Source: goebel.net

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You know that I bashed Facebook very hard for being a terrible time sucker. Many Web 2.0 applications need too much attention, compared to their value. But there are some utilizations that make me smile, because the unleash the potential of Web 2.0 without wasting my precious time and money. Like Voxalot’s latest Facebook application, VoxCall for Facebook, that really disrupts telecommunications. It let’s me make free phone calls without touching the PSTN. Read the announcement:

On Monday 19th Nov 2007 Voxalot will be officially launching our new social communications application for Facebook called VoxCall.

VoxCall is an exciting new initiative from Voxalot that allows Facebook users to click on their friends and initiate phone calls. The beauty of VoxCall is that it is self-organising in that if your VoxCall friend changes their contact phone number, you don’t even have to be notified… VoxCall will use whatever number they have registered.

VoxCall also offers both public and private chat rooms where VoxCall friends can get together for a group discussion.

The underlying technology that VoxCall uses to connect calls is Voice over IP addresses (often known as SIP URIs). When you add the VoxCall application, you will be prompted to enter your SIP URI. To ensure that you are the rightful owner of that number, VoxCall will display a PIN number on the screen and then call the number you entered. Your phone will ring and you will be prompted to enter the PIN, which is validated.

As such, VoxCall supports calls between friends that belong to *any* "open" voice network (not just Voxalot).

The beauty is that VoxCall uses VoIP without touching the PSTN. My buddies just enter their SIP URI and I can call them with just one click in Facebook. When they change their SIP address I don’t have to bother to update my data since their Facebook button stays the same. We stay connected for free from SIP to SIP.

I find this much more nifty than the Facebook apps from Jajah, Jangl, Jaxtr, Rebtel, IVR Technologies, iotum, Sitfono or Grandcentral. They also connect people on Facebook and let them call me for free, in most cases. But there is always a telephone number involved, so that someone has to pay an incumbent telco which provides them.

Published on November 19th, 2007 under , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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