Sedo

ICANNWiki Bronze Sponsor
Type:	Public
Industry:	Domain Trading, Parking
Founded:	Germany, 2001
Founder(s):	Ulrich Priesner Ulrich Essmann Tim Schumacher Marius Würzner
Ownership:	United Internet AG
Headquarters:	Cologne, Germany Cambridge, MA, USA London, UK
Products:	SedoMLS
Employees:	332 (2013)
Revenue:	€140m (2013)
Website:	sedo.com
Facebook:	Sedo
LinkedIn:	Sedo
Twitter:	@sedo
Key People
Tobias Flaitz CEO Sedo GmbH,MB member Sedo Holding AG Axel Hamann CFO Sedo GmbH,MB member Sedo Holding AG Dima Beitzke CSO Sedo GmbH Paul Martin Fawell General Manager Simonetta Batteiger Head of Product Management Matthias Meyer-Schoenherr Director of Business Development Dirk Ochotzki Head of Operations Joel Ghebaly Head of Product Management,Traffic Monetization Solomon Amoako Chief Sales Officer Christian Voß Director of Marketing Kathy Nielsen Head of Business Development, New gTLDs

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 2 million customers with 17 million domain names for sale. Five million domains are parked via Sedo's parking program

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.

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.

New gTLD Services

In October, 2012, Sedo announced that it was launching a number of services for the registries to be created through ICANN's New gTLD Program:

• String Contention Private Auctions - a neutral, safe platform for multiple applicants for the same string to resolve the contention. ICANN is offering its own services, but has encouraged applicants to resolve contention on their own. Innovative Auctions is currently the only active provider of private auctions. Right of the Dot is also private auction services.
• Premium List Identification and Pricing Assistance - Sedo will help applicants identify which domains are going to be the most attractive to the target audience and price them appropriately. Sedo uses more than 11 years of sales data covering all traded TLDs, as well as multiple external sources, to create a premium reserve list of domains likely to command the highest sales values.
• Sunrise, Landrush and Premium Auctions - Sedo provides multiple-language auction services for both premium auctions and those related to the Sunrise Periods and Landrush Periods.
• Exclusive Premium Name Distribution in the SedoMLS Network
• Premium Brokerage and Pre-Brokerage

Sales Figures & Prominent Sales

Sedo's top 10 highest selling domain names were:

1. Sex.com, $13,000,000 (Guinness World Records record)
2. Vodka.com, $3,000,000
3. Shopping.de, $2,858,945
4. Gambling.com, $2,500,000
5. Pizza.com, $2,600,000
6. Fly.com, $1,800,000
7. Russia.com, $1,500,000
8. Games.co.uk, $1,300,000
9. Kredit.de, $1,169,175
10. Chinese.com, $1,120,000

SedoMLS

In January, 2012, Sedo announced that it was adding GoDaddy to its MLS service. The service allows those searching GoDaddy's databases to see domains that are currently not available, but are being offered by their registrants for a minimum sale price. Sedo had about 15 million such domains in its system at the time of the deal.

.info Premiums

In May 2013, Sedo announced a forthcoming auction of .info domains, done in conjunction with the .info registry, Afilias. .info was originally launched in 2001 and so the .info auction of 100 assorted names is notable.

Partnerships

In November 2012, it was announced that Sedo would be providing its services at a discounted rate to the gTLD applicant for .hiv, dotHIV. The applicant aims to donate 70-80% of revenue to HIV research. Some of the services it will be providing include: appraising and auctioning premium .hiv domains, supporting preregistrations for people and organizations wishing to reserve names before the official launch, and evaluating the entire .hiv namespace to ensure that important .hiv domain names reach the best end users. The announcement was made to coincide with World AIDS day, which occurs on Dec. 1 every year.

History

• Sedo began in Cologne, Germany in 1999 as a student project by Tim Schumacher, Ulrich Priesner, and Marius Würzner. They had a website named offensiv.de to distribute computer games, and when the business was phased out, they started thinking about selling the domain. Thus, they founded 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 explained that, at the beginning of 2000, Sedo's founders 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 registrar 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 an additional 10% of Sedo's share for $575,000, 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 subsidiary of United Internet.

• 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.

• In 2001, CEO, Tim Schumacher, was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young Germany.

• Sedo expanded to the United Kingdom 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 $1 million USD 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 subsidiary 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.

Awards

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

• In 2010 & 2014, Sedo was a finalist for the "World Trademark Review Industry Award: Internet & Online Services Team of the Year".

• Traffic Awards for:

 Best Overall Domain Solution (2009, 2010, 20111, 2012, 2013)
  Broker of the Year 2012 (Dave Evanson)
  Broker of the Year 2013 (Negar Hajikhani)

• Domain Name Wire Awards for: Most Innovative Company for Selling Secondary Domain Names (2010, 2011, 2012)

                              Best Domain Name Parking Company (2010, 2011, 2012)
                              Best Online Domain Sales Venue (2010)

• Eco Internet Award: Domains & DNS (2013)

• Domainer's Choice Award: Best Industry Costumer Rep (2008)

• Domainer's Choice Award: Best Domain Marketplace (2014)

External Links and Resources

• SEDO.com
• Sedo Holding AG
• United Internet AG
• Sedo.com: Our Story
• Success Stories
• Case studies and White Papers