{"id":100308,"date":"2009-12-25T09:00:56","date_gmt":"2009-12-25T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=87242"},"modified":"2009-12-25T09:00:56","modified_gmt":"2009-12-25T14:00:56","slug":"when-google-attacks-toktumi%e2%80%99s-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/100308","title":{"rendered":"When Google Attacks: Toktumi\u2019s Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Toktumi's original product<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It’s a nightmare that startups and big businesses alike fear — Google suddenly getting into their market and sucking away users and profits<\/a>. With hundreds of product launches, it’s a legitimate concern, but it doesn’t have to be the end. For San Francisco-based Toktumi<\/a>, its trial-by-Google began earlier this summer about a year and half after the startup debuted with the wrong product which it then revamped, <\/em>only to later have it come head-to-head with the search giant.<\/p>\n

Toktumi launched a business-based softphone<\/a> at DEMO 2008 in January. CEO Peter Sisson said he quickly realized the company had launched with an unsuitable product when it signed up few users and those people immediately began to complain.<\/p>\n

“We got it wrong and launched a softphone-based service that was like Skype with business calling features built into it,” Sisson said. “We had no traction and maybe 100 customers. So we asked them what they wanted.”<\/p>\n

It turns out they wanted mobility, rather than a phone that tied them to a computer (see device pictured above).\u00a0 Toktumi listened, and began to provide a web-based client and hosted telephone system that reaches users on their PC, mobile or desk for $14.95 a month. It’s a similar enough service to Google Voice that when the search giant released its telephone product in July<\/a>, Sisson told his board that he expected the company would lose 25 percent of its customers. Instead the company’s paid subscribers grew 56 percent each of the three months following the Google Voice launch.<\/p>\n