Sedo

Type:	Public
Industry:	Domain Trading, Parking
Founded:	Germany, 1999
Founder(s):	Ulrich Priesner Ulrich Essmann Tim Schumacher Marius Würzner
Headquarters:	Cambridge, MA, USA Cologne, Germany
Employees:	150
Website:	sedo.com
Twitter:	@sedo
Key People
Tobias Flaitz, CEO Sedo Holding AG Liesbeth Mack-DeBoer, CSO Ulrich Priesner, CTO Marius Würzner, COO Ulrich Essmann, President Sedo.com LLC, USA Jeremiah Johnston, General Counsel Sedo.com LLC, USA Simonetta Batteiger, Product Manager Matthias Meyer-Schoenherr, Director of Business Development

Sedo, which stands for Search Engine for Domain Offers, is a domain name marketplace and domain parking provider. Sedo was founded in Germany in 2001, and has headquarters in both Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cologne, Germany. 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. The company is registered in the United States as Sedo.com LLC.

History

• Sedo began in Cologne, Germany in 1999 as a student project by Tim Schumacher, Ulrich Priesner, and Marius Würzner. They had a website names offensiv.de to distribute computer games, and when the business was phased out, they started thinking about selling the domain. Thus, they founded for Sedo. The company started out with 5 employees working in a small office in downtown Cologne. Sedo GmbH became an official entity in 2001.

• 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 own project helped the group significantly. Finally, the founders began negotiating with potential investors. In 2001, they found a major investor, United AG, which at the time was Germany's largest register for domain names. United AG initially purchased a minor stake in the newly-founded Sedo but later bought about 41% for approximately 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, were sold to AdLink Internet Media AG, a public and majority owned subsidary for United Internet AG.

• Sedo began planning a North American subsidiary as early as 2003; in 2005, Sedo.com LLC was opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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

• Sedo expanded to the United Kingdom market in 2008.

• In February, 2009, Sedo acquired RevenueDirect, a domain name parking service by run 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 the domain name Poker.org for US$1 million to PokerCompany.com, breaking the record for the highest .org domain name ever sold.

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

• In December, 2011, it was announced that Tim Schumacher, its co-founder and CEO, was stepping down from his position. He is still set to act on to the Board of Directors. He was the acting CEO of Sedo Holding, which was not only Sedo but also its marketing company affiliate, Affilinet. Mr. Schumacher expressed an interest in getting involved in start-ups.

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
• Sedo.com: Our Story