startup experience. Performance Substantially as a result of being capital-poor, the company could not hire a large number of employees, and sales and the company eventually settled into the number 3 spot in the industry behind Acme Packet and Kagoor Networks, as repeatedly reported by market research firm Infonetics. Nevertheless, by 2005, the company was firmly established as a leading technical player in the field and was generally recognized as having consistently advanced the state of the art in SBC technology during that period. Partnership with Microsoft A mutual customer of Jasomi and Microsoft asked the two companies to work together to make Jasomi's PeerPoint product line work with Microsoft's Live Communications Server. Although the relationship suffered from typical big company / small company issues, Jasomi was successful in modifying its product to support Microsoft's non-standards-based extensions to the SIP protocol. The result was successful deployments for both companies that would not have occurred without the integration. Acquisition A combination of Jasomi's technical successes together with its small size and small amount of raised capital resulted in the company becoming attractive to a number of potential acquirers and investors by early 2005. Ultimately, the company sold to Ditech Communications (now itself acquired by Nuance Communications), a US public company based in Silicon Valley in mid-2005 in a deal valued at $24.55m. The acquisition brought benefit to Jasomi's investors and employees, and gave Ditech a credible toehold in the VoIP marketplace. Jasomi's then-CEO, Todd Simpson, went on to become Ditech's CEO a year later. While the size of the acquisition was well into 8 digits, the returns to investors (many of whom were employees) were at a comparable percentage to those of the largest company in the SBC arena, Acme Packet. The top three pure-play companies in the SBC space at that time, Acme Packet, Kagoor Networks, and Jasomi, have all provided positive returns to their stakeholders. However, many others in the SBC space have not, and several companies succumbed to pressures of the market. Ultimately, as was the case with several other acquired SBC companies, the attempts to integrate Jasomi's product lines into those of its acquirer were not successful. Ditech continued to market Jasomi's PeerPoint SBC platform, but while under the leadership of CEO Tim Montgomery, neglected to invest in its technical or market development. In the first two years after acquisition, a number of key employees resigned. Ditech