A company founded in
1994 in the small town of
Arroyo Grande by a crazy
Jewish guy with a big
afro and
thick glasses named
Howard Gordon who likes
robots. Original offices consisted of Howard's spare bedroom which then expanded to a few storefronts in a
K-mart shopping center.
Created the first software JPEG decoder that was subsequently licensed to Microsoft for inclusion in their operating systems. Also created the first software only MPEG video encoder and the first realtime hardware MPEG video capture card for PCs that was available for under $600 in the mid 90s. (Others were 5-10k) Also during the mid-90s, Xing created the first private, IP multicast based private television network for NBC financial. Shortly thereafter created the first software only realtime MPEG decoder/player for then-new Pentium class PCs.
Also developed StreamWorks, one of the first commercially available streaming audio/video products for the internet in 1995 which utilized open-standards (MPEG). Unfortunately, then-technologically-inferior RealAudio won the market due to huge marketing muscle powered by VC funny money.
As a result, Xing fell into a decline. Only to be reasonably saved by finding a market for their MP3 encoder/decoder technology.
During Xing's decline, Howard Gordon was removed and replaced by some slimey Hollywood exec named Hassan Miah who bloated the company beyond belief only to Hassan Chop them shortly thereafter.
After Hassan Miah ran the company into the ground. It was sold to Real Networks making himself and all of the useless executives that he hired a shitload of cash.
Before StreamWorks, Xing was actually a profitable company that had paid it's own way to growth. Over the course of it's lifespan, it's total outside funding was less than was most shitty dot-coms recieve in their first angel round.