Whois data service takes outside investment.
File this in the category of “happened a while ago, but no one knew about it”.
During yesterday’s DomainTools Open House, DomainTools CEO Tim Chen said that the company had taken on outside investment and formed an advisory board. Here’s an official statement from the company:
As part of Thought Convergence’s goal to expand the DomainTools brand, products and services globally, we have taken on a group of strategic investors, including EuroDNS and a European investment fund. In addition to moving Tim Chen into the role of CEO, DomainTools has created an Advisory Board comprised of prominent domain industry professionals, including Xavier Buck, Slavik Viner, Richard Lau, Paul Keating, Ray Bero, Kevin Vo and Ammar Kubba.
The investment was made last year. Thought Convergence remains the majority shareholder of DomainTools.
wed. am says
As I recall, TC received funding a while back from an outside source.
Why did they have to bring in more money from a bunch of domainers?
I always thought the domaintools div. was a cash cow.
Has the ppc category fallen that far that TC had to sell off partial ownership of DomainTools?
Andrew Allemann says
@ wed. am – it makes cash, but it wasn’t making enough cash to cover the annual payments. They may have wanted to take the investment to cover that.