In one of the more bizarre news stories we’ve seen this year, a start-up called SalesCrunch has made an unsolicited bid of $1 plus 15% equity to acquire online meeting platform WebEx from Cisco.

Although the move is unlikely to be anything more than a publicity stunt, SalesCrunch does make some interesting points about Cisco’s business. CEO Sean Black suggested that the web conferencing platform would be better suited to his business rather than remain as a part of Cisco, which has seen limited success in its efforts to move away from its networking roots.

"At SalesCrunch, we deliver a far superior technology platform – optimised for sales and meetings efficiency – at a fraction of the cost attainable by WebEx and its competitors who have massive legacy infrastructure costs," Black said in a statement.

"Although WebEx doesn’t fit into Cisco’s core business, it doesn’t have to suffer the same fate as Flip," he added.

Flip was Cisco’s video camera unit, acquired for $600m back in 2009 and shut down two years later, with the loss of 500 jobs. Its acquisition was part of Cisco’s push into the consumer space and the decision to shut it down was taken as part of a massive $1bn cost-cutting exercise that Cisco launched after the consumer push failed.

Black believes he can save WebEx from a similar end.

"While Flip faced intense competition from Apple’s iPhone and others, it had a solid brand that could have easily been refocused to a vertical market, like the action adventure market that has been seized by GoPro, had it not been paralyzed by classic innovators’ dilemma. SalesCrunch is free of the constraints that make it nearly impossible for large companies to innovate and take advantage of new, disruptive technology," Black’s statement added.

It is unlikely WebEx will go the same way as Flip. Cisco dismissed the SalesCrunch offer, telling Reuters: "This is a cute publicity stunt from SalesCrunch, and we appreciate that they like our technology, but we have no intention of selling WebEx."

SalesCrunch’s customers include Jive, CareerBuilder and Yelp.