Sedo

Type:	Public
Industry:	Domain Trading, Parking
Founded:	Germany (1999)
Founder(s):	Ulrich Priesner , Ulrich Essmann, Tim Schumacher, Marius Würzner
Headquarters:	Cambridge, Massachusetts, UK and Cologne, Germany
Employees:	150
Website:	http://www.sedo.com/
Key People
Tim Schumacher, CEO Liesbeth Mack-DeBoer, CSO Jeremiah Johnston, COO and GC Ulrich Priesner, CTO Marius Würzner, COO Ulrich Essmann, President Sedo.com LLC, USA

SEDO, which stands for Search Engine for Domain Offers, is a domain name marketplace and domain parking provider. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cologne, Germany this company was founded in Germany in 1999.

According to its official website, the company has 150 employees from more than 25 countries at offices located in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, and 1 million customers with 16 million domain names.

Sedo is a subsidiary company of the Sedo Holding AG under the German company United Internet AG.

History

• According to Tim Schumacher, CEO of Sedo.com, Sedo was founded in Cologne, Germany in 1999 as a student project by Ulrich Priesner, and Marius Würzner, and himself. They had a website names offensiv.de to distributed computer games, and when the business was phased out, they started thinking about selling the domain. Thus, the foundation for Sedo was made. Tim Schumacher also mentioned that Sedo started out with 5 employees working in a small office in downtown Cologne, Germany.

• In his book "International Entrepreneurship: Starting, Developing, and Managing a Global Venture", Robert D. Hisrich described that at the beginning of 2000, the founders of Sedo began to advertise by purchasing banners in various websites and developing press relationships. Ulrich Essmann, a medical student working on a project similar to Sedo, joined the team and his project helped the group significantly. Finally, the founders began negotiating with potential investors. In 2001, they found a major investor, United AG, which at that time was Germany's largest register for domain names. United AG initially purchased a minor stake in newly founded Sedo but later bought about 41% for about 400,000 EUR. The rest of the shares were held by the four owners. In 2004, United bought additional 10% of SEDO's share for $575,000; thus, making the four founders minority shareholders of the business. In 2005, 51% of shares for United AG, including Sedo, was sold to AdLink Internet Media AG, a public and majority owned subsidary for United Internet.

• On May 21, 2010, AdLINK Internet Media AG, was renamed as Sedo Holding AG and the company Sedo became a subsidary thereof.

• In June, 2007, Sedo bought GreatDomains, its former competitor, from VeriSign for about $2 Million.

• In February, 2009, Sedo acquired RevenueDirect, a domain name parking service by Dotster. Sedo also announced a strategic long-term partnership with Dotster through which Sedo would benefit from Dotster's inventory and registrar service, and RevenueDirect customers would be helped by Sedo’s monetization engines and its secondary market for buying and selling domain names.

• In March, 2009, Sedo invested seed funding for Bloson.com, a new social charity website.

• In February 2010, SEDO sold domain name poker.org for US$1 million to PokerCompany.com, breaking the record for the highest .org domain name ever sold.

Products and Services

According to its official website, SEDO provides domain name buying and selling services through search, auction, catalog, brokerage, etc. It also provides domain parking, domain appraisal, domain transfer, domain escrow, and partner programs, etc.

Awards

• In 2007, Sedo was selected as "Entrepreneur of the Year 2007" in Germany by Ernst & Young.

• In 2010, Sedo was nominated "2010 World Trademark Review Industry Award for Internet".

External links

• SEDO.com
• Sedo Holding AG
• United Internet AG