Software, e-mail, startups

Xiant, a New Paul Allen Startup, Rolls Out E-Mail Organizer Tool

Gregory T. Huang 6/22/09

Paul Allen has still got it. The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist announced today the launch of a new Seattle company, Xiant, and the public beta version of its software tools for organizing your e-mail inbox. Xiant (pronounced “Zi-ant,” which rhymes with “giant”) is being run in-house at Vulcan Technologies, the company that handles all of Allen’s tech work. Chris Purcell, the vice president of Vulcan Technologies, is in charge of the startup, which is apparently Allen’s first foray into consumer software since he left Microsoft back in 1983.

The Xiant software being released today (Xiant Filer) is a Microsoft Office Outlook add-on designed to make e-mail systems more efficient by learning your filing preferences, making filing recommendations automatically, and filing long threads of related e-mails all at once. Other software tools are currently under development. The startup currently has no outside employees or additional funding.

The project began as a personal project for Allen, who grew tired of manually filing huge volumes of e-mails in his Outlook inbox. According to Vulcan Technologies, it worked so well for Allen that the whole organization started using it.

Xiant will sell the software online only (”no sales force or packaged product”), according to Vulcan spokesman David Postman, and version 1.0 should be on sale in about 60 days. In the meantime, you can download the beta version for free at http://www.xiant.com.

Gregory T. Huang is the Editor of Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail him at gthuang@xconomy.com or call 206-624-2249.