Cohuman, creator of a task management and team collaboration system, announced Wednesday that it has been acquired. The buyer has not yet been identified and terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed, as Cohuman CEO Matthew Work says the two parties have “not yet [signed] a definitive agreement.”
(Note: Cohuman was one of 10 companies that competed as a finalist in the September 2010 edition of Vator Splash San Francisco, a competition that brings startups onstage to present pitches in front of more than 300 entrepreneurs and investors from the Bay Area and beyond. If you’re an entrepreneur interested in presenting at this year’s Splash in September on Sept. 29, join the competition.)
The way the news is being presented to Cohuman users, however, signifies that the deal is all but done. That’s because Work says the service will be shutting down on August 31, giving users a little over a month to retrieve any data they’d like that’s currently being stored on the system.
Since it developed an intelligent task-centric collaboration service, it would be a shame to see Cohuman simply zapped away into nonexistence. That’s not happening though. Whatever company acquires Cohuman will be integrating the product into their own system, a nice win for employees there.
Another task and team management system, Manymoon, was acquired by Salesforce back in February for an undisclosed sum. In that deal, however, Manymoon was left to operate as a separate business. Cohuman does not have that privilege.
For Cohuman, deciding whether to keep chugging along as a private business or to sell seemed simply a matter of funding. In its two-year life, the company had raised $900,000 and $600,000 seed rounds from angel investors, but could never secure more from institutional investors.
The full message from Cohuman CEO Matthew Work is posted below. Cohuman customers that want detailed instructions on exporting their data should go to Work’s blog post and scroll down a bit.
Dear Fellow Cohumans,
It is with mixed feelings that I need to inform you that I have just executed a Letter of Intent to sell Cohuman. This is not yet a definitive agreement, but as it affects everyone connected to Cohuman, I feel it is important you know sooner rather than later what is going on.
By way of background, I have been working hard to secure funding for Cohuman for the better part of a year now – really since our September 2010 launch. Finding institutional investors that share our passion for the problem and who are willing to sign on at this early stage of our development has been challenging.
We are fortunate, however, in our efforts to come across our potential acquirer, who has recognized the value of our software and of our team. So, while total world collaboration will not be realized under the Cohuman flag, the vision of networked task lists, organized in automatic priority order should live on within the products of the acquiring company.
Regrettably, in the short term, (this is the bad news) we will be shutting down the Cohuman service on August 31, 2011. Please retrieve your data before then, as we will actively delete all user data on this date. Full instructions on how to export your information may be found at the end of this post. We are here to help you at support@cohuman.com and on getsatisfaction.com/cohuman.
This is a very bittersweet moment for us here at Cohuman. Please accept my deepest thanks for having chosen to make Cohuman part of your routine. All of us here firmly believe that Cohuman is an amazing application without precedent and without peer. What we will miss the most though is our community of faithful and active users who have praised us and encouraged us more times than not.
Should you wish to express any words to us or the Cohuman community, you may do so via Facebook and Twitter, but also on our home page where we will be hosting a message board.
We will miss you. Most sincerely,
Matthew Work
CEO, Cohuman
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Cohuman is the simplest most powerful way to keep your team in sync. Easily delegate, prioritize and track tasks with all your teams.
It is an intelligent workspace for coordinating people and managing projects. It promotes transparency and accountability in communications allowing teams to get things done more efficiently.
PERFECT INFORMATION
Cohuman delivers immediate insight into the status of projects, coworkers and the tasks you need to focus on.
1. We provide unprecedented visibility into a team's collective and individual responsibilities.
2. Projects and people are presented with lists of tasks that are ranked in order of priority. We utilize metadata to dynamically rank a task's importance relative to the needs of the team.
BENEFITS
- Focus: Tasks are organized so people can focus on doing the most important things first.
- Transparency: Team members have visibility into the shared actions and needs of the group.
- Accountability: By compelling individual ownership, we reduce business ambiguity.
- Accessibility: Files, conversations and deadlines are centralized, secure and always accessible.
- Email Integration: We work seamlessly with email, so those who don't want to login to Cohuman don't need to.
GOOGLE INTEGRATION
- Attach Google Docs to Cohuman tasks, and we'll handle the permissions
- Sync your tasks to your Google Calendar
- Invite your Google Contacts
- Login and Signup with your Google Account
- Find us in the Google Marketplace and Chrome Store
The long version of our Story:
The challenge we all face in today’s multitasking world is that we are inundated with emails, tweets, social media statuses, collaboration tool notifications, IM’s, buzzes, waves and more. Submerged somewhere in this digital torrent are the tasks we need to act upon as well as the true status of the things we have shared with, or assigned to, others.
The truth is, we feel productive when we merely click on what’s unread in our inbox (a textbook Pavlovian response). We feel a sense of accomplishment when we stay abreast of the chatter. All the energy and time we invest in doing these things is creating a false sense of “doing” and eating into the time we have to get stuff done. We’re on a diet of electronic junk food. The day goes by and despite having been connected and collaborative, we’ve accomplished less than we thought. What’s worse, we experience that nagging feeling that we’ve forgotten to do something.
Cohuman is an online application that cuts through this digital clutter and gives you the power to make, share and track tasks with anyone.
We fundamentally believe that the only way to simplify our lives is to know what our priorities are and to be able to focus on what matters. Cohuman is a social network for all your work and personal tasks. When you share tasks with other people, Cohuman is aware of how all your tasks are related. That’s what Cohuman is – a Task Network. In the same way you keep track of your colleagues and friends via Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, we empower you to get status updates on all the tasks you’re connected to.
Based on an algorithm that takes into account the network value of a task, Cohuman is able to optimize your priorities and those of everyone in your network by assigning each task a score.
Cohuman lets you:
1. See everything you need to do in one place
2. Prioritize your day, your week, your life
3. Share tasks with others and follow their status
4. Trust you are not forgetting to do anything
The market for Cohuman encompasses everyone who is tired of depending on email to coordinate their life or is simply struggling to manage their priorities.
