US-based online meeting company SalesCrunch, backed by AOL Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the US-based technology company, tabled a $1 unsolicited bid, plus 15% equity in Sales Crunch, for Cisco Systems’ WebEx.
Cisco bought WebEx for $3.2bn in 2007. A Cisco spokesman said: "This is a cute publicity stunt from SalesCrunch, and we appreciate that they like our technology, but we have no intention of selling Webex."
Sean Black, chief executive of SalesCrunch, said his company was a natural successor to WebEx, which it would like to close down to incorporate its customers into its technology platform. He said: "At SalesCrunch, we deliver a far superior technology platform-optimized for sales and meetings efficiency-at a fraction of the cost attainable by WebEx and its competitors who have massive legacy infrastructure costs. Although WebEx doesn’t fit into Cisco’s core business, it doesn’t have to suffer the same fate as Flip [a camera business which Cisco closed last year]. While Flip faced intense competition from Apple’s iPhone and others, it had a solid brand that could have easily been refocused to a vertical market, like the action adventure market that has been seized by GoPro, had it not been paralysed by classic innovators’ dilemma. SalesCrunch is free of the constraints that make it nearly impossible for large companies to innovate and take advantage of new, disruptive technology."
SalesCrunch raised $1.4m in seed funding in January 2011 from the venture firms Accel Partners, First Round Capital, Nextview Ventures, as well as Alfred Lin, most recently chairman of on-line shoe company Zappos.com and Janet Kraus, co-founder & former CEO of Circles.com, a personal assistance hiring company, and senior lecturer of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School.
It is unclear when AOL Ventures backed SalesCrunch.