Security firm buys DNS company with domainer roots.
Congratulations are in order for two people close to the domain name industry — Dan Kimball and Sean Stafford.
The pair have sold their company DNS.com to Comodo, a large online security firm.
DNS is a natural extension for Comodo’s product line.
DNS.com started as ComWired.com, a geodirectional DNS system. Once the company started offering authoritative DNS services it picked up the DNS.com domain name for an undisclosed price.
How important was the domain name DNS.com to the company’s success? I interviewed Stafford back in August and he told me:
While larger companies can afford massive branding and advertising to firebrand their name into the consumer’s psyche, that wasn’t an option for us launching our new service.
We did, however, have a fantastic alternative for advertising, and that was the DNS.com premium generic domain name. Instead of spending millions and millions trying to brand an inferior name, we saw the opportunity to invest the same resources into an asset that invokes automatic trust.
Gnanes says
Congrats to sellers.
Greg says
The service was unreliable, but the concept is great and the domain name sure is a gem. Congrats on the sale.
Domain 6 Star Ltd says
Congratulations – Accurate shot !!
mca says
nice grab. its a great domain and great sale 🙂
Joseph Slabaugh says
Not that I was a customer so I don’t know if they were reliable, but it says 99.999% Uptime, so I would like to know why you guys say it was unreliable?
Andrew Allemann says
Joseph – what are you responding to?
Chris Parente says
Ah, the generic vertical domain name. I was a very early hire at a company called Teknosurf.com. Then we rebranded as Advertising.com, and the rest is a very happy story.
Of course you need execution, not just a catchy domain! Unfortunately I wasn’t around in 2004 when AOL/TW paid $435M for the company. So I’m still struggling for the legal tender.