# Gaxxi (? – 2013)

- URL: https://girisimcikafasi.com/en/startup-graveyard/gaxxi/
- Sector: Enterprise software (SaaS)
- Country: Turkey
- Total funding: unknown
- Cause of closure: Acquired and shut down

## What did it do?

Gaxxi was a Turkish content management system developed by brothers Umut and Şafak Akyol while they were students at Ankara University, offering a paid blog and website building service through Gaxxi.com. It offered features such as multi-site support, photo albums, guest authors, scheduled posting, IP blocking and multilingual support. According to its later owner, Devrim Demirel, it was Turkey's first paid blogging service and it was profitable.

## Why did it shut down?

Gaxxi closed not because it was losing money but because its new owner could not develop it. According to Devrim Demirel, founder of Beriltech, the company failed to build a dedicated team for Gaxxi after the acquisition; blogging was not an attractive field for developers, and it was hard to work on a complex system written by someone else. While open-source platforms such as WordPress added new features every month, Gaxxi fell behind and its customer numbers dwindled over time. Demirel likened the product to the living dead and chose to close it in line with the company's decision to focus on its core areas. Selling it to another company, he said, would have been unfair to customers and to the buyer.

## The story

Gaxxi was a content management system developed by brothers Umut and Şafak Akyol while they were students at Ankara University. According to a 2006 write-up by Webrazzi, the Turkish tech news site, it offered people who wanted to set up a personal website or blog features such as generous disk space, technical support, multiple sites, photo albums, guest authors and scheduled posting, and competed as a paid service with domestic and foreign rivals. The brothers also ran other projects such as PetArkadas.com and SitelerHakkinda.com. In 2007 they had drawn attention by putting 10 per cent of their social network project, alanturka.com, up for sale in 1 per cent slices.

In early 2010 Gaxxi was sold to Beriltech, also based in Ankara. In fact, such an acquisition was not in Beriltech's plans. According to its founder, Devrim Demirel, the brothers wanted to hand Gaxxi over to a company that could take ownership of the business and grow it, and to devote time to their other projects. The non-compete agreement that Demirel, the founder of Blogcu.com, had signed with Nokta had also just expired. Beriltech bought the whole company. At the time Gaxxi had more than 10,000 registered users, and the modest investment paid for itself in nine months.

Growth, however, never came. Beriltech could not build a dedicated team for Gaxxi; blogging was no longer attractive to developers, and it was hard to work on a complex system written by someone else. While WordPress added new features every month, Gaxxi stood still and its customer numbers dwindled over time. Demirel wrote openly that he himself had been using WordPress rather than Gaxxi since 2010.

On 27 November 2012 Beriltech announced that it would close Gaxxi, which was still making money, on 1 February 2013. Customers would be able to export their data and move to Beriltech's WordPress service or any other platform they wished. Demirel said he considered selling the product to another company unfair, and that open-sourcing the code no longer made sense. On his own blog he described Gaxxi as "a perfect example of a zombie".

Gaxxi's story shows that even a profitable product may not survive if it stops developing. The first lesson Demirel drew was not to rush strategic decisions: they had lived for two and a half years with an acquisition decision made in two days.

## Lessons

- If you settle an acquisition that was never in your plan in two days, you will live with the consequences for years.
- A product that is profitable but not being developed slowly loses its value while competitors move fast.
- When you shut a product down, offering customers data export and a migration path protects the brand's reputation.

## Sources

- [Beriltech is closing its profitable project Gaxxi. But why?](https://webrazzi.com/2012/11/27/beril-tech-karli-projesi-gaxxiyi-kapatiyor-peki-neden/)
- [Why would you close a project that makes money?](http://web.archive.org/web/20240412110327/http://www.devrimdemirel.com/2012/11/27/para-kazanan-bir-proje-neden-kapatilir/)
- [Gaxxi acquired by Beril Tech - is Blog.com.tr on the way?](https://webrazzi.com/2010/02/26/gaxxi-beril-tech-tarafindan-satin-alindi-blog-com-tr-mi-geliyor/)
- [Your website ready in an instant with Gaxxi](https://webrazzi.com/2006/08/24/gaxxi-ile-web-siteniz-aninda-hazir/)