Oversee.net

Founder(s):	Lawrence Ng and Fred Hsu
Headquarters:	Los Angeles, California
Country:	USA
Businesses:	DomainSponsor
Employees:	120
Website:	Oversee.net
Twitter:	@OverseeNet
Key People
Debra Domeyer, Co-CEO Scott Morrow, Co-CEO Lawrence Ng, Chairman Chris Welton, Director of Business Development

Oversee.net is an online internet-solutions provider company in the business of domain name registration, besides offering services in buying & selling of used domain names, SEO/SEM optimization, landing web page design, and a revenue generation model through ad clicks for owners of undeveloped websites.

The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, USA. Its offices are located in Portland, Oregon, San Mateo, California and Pompano Beach, Florida. The company has around 120 employees.

History

Oversee.net was founded in 2000 by Lawrence Ng and Fred Hsu. While Hsu is no longer associated with the company, Ng is the current Chairman of the Board of Directors. A graduate from the University of Southern California (USC), Ng was employed with Startpath.com, Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney, before he pooled resources and expertise with Hsu in the domains of online advertising, internet traffic pattern analysis and search engine optimization, to create Oversee.net.

In 2007, Oversee acquired SnapNames, an expired domain reseller. In 2008, Oversee acquired Moniker, a domain auctioning site, for $65 million.

In January 2008, the company sold USD 150 million worth of equity to Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private equity (PE) firm. As part of the deal, William J. Pade, a partner at the PE firm joined oversee.net board as Director.

Oversee.net has been named to the Inc. 500, followed by a third rank in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 of Los Angeles, and an eighteenth rank in the list of the nation's fastest growing internet companies. It was also named "Internet and New Media Company of the Year" by the Technology Council of Southern California.

In 2012, Key-Systems acquired SnapNames and Moniker from Oversee in order to expand its global market.

Business Operations

Oversee.net currently owns a portfolio of over a million domain names. The company's core brands include DomainSponsor.com, DOMAINFest and LowFares.com. They once owned SnapNames, Moniker.com, though both businesses were sold to KeyDrive SA in January, 2012.

The company's Aftermarket and Registrar Division comprises the two units of Moniker.com and SnapNames, and together the two offer an array of services including domain name registration, acquisition, management, appraisal, brokerage and sales. According to an interview given by CEO Kupietzky to CNN.Com, the company has overseen auctions that run into six figures.

Monte Cahn, Oversee, and Moniker

In 2008, Moniker was purchased by Oversee.net for $35 million USD. It had previously been acquired by Seevast in 2005. Part of the acquisition of Moniker by Oversee stipulated that its Founder and CEO, Monte Cahn, come along as the President of Moniker for 3 years. During this time he also filled other roles within the company, such as President of SnapNames. He left in December, 2010; in May, 2011, he filed a lawsuit against his former employer, naming Oversee CEO, Jeff Kupietzky, and its founder, Lawrence Ng; the suit was over alleged non-payment of a $13 million USD incentive plan.

In September, 2011, Mr. Cahn updated his claims of breach of contract and fraud after a judge tossed out his original claim. The new claim now contains specific language on how Oversee.net allegedly affected Moniker's revenue. He stated that the original acquisition was in violation of an agreement between Google and Oversee, and that Oversee improperly deflated Moniker's revenue and performance numbers.

In November, 2011, Oversee requested summary judgement on matters pertaining to Monte Cahn's allegations over his Management Incentive Plan. This action did not affect all parts of their standing legal battle, specifically Mr. Cahn's potential breach of contract for selling restaurants.com. However, Oversee claimed that no targets were met in Monte's Management Incentive Plan, and thus that they owed him none of the $13 million guaranteed as a bonus under the MIP. Mr. Cahn expectedly countered this claim. In December, 2011, it was decided that their legal battle over the MIP would not be a jury trial and the case will thus be argued in front of the court. In January, 2012, the judge threw out two of Mr. Cahn's claims against Oversee and a claim of fraud by Oversee.