Tim Schumacher announces departure from Sedo

Longtime domain industry vet Tim Schumacher is moving on.

Sedo announced today that co-founder and CEO Tim Schumacher will be stepping down from the company at the end of January. He will transition to the company’s Board of Directors.

Schumacher founded Sedo with three others in 2001 and grew it into a domain sales and parking powerhouse with 1.3 million registered users. In 2007, he was named “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst & Young Germany. In 2009 he became CEO of Sedo Holding, which includes both Sedo.com and affiliate marketing company Affilinet.

I remember first learning about Sedo shortly after its launch and doubting that an upstart domain marketplace could get traction. The company persevered, taking advantage of its German roots to quickly establish itself as the leader in the country code domain name market. It still has that lock today, although .com is its top seller.

Schumacher will be replaced by Tobias Flaitz, who was most recently director of business development at Burda Digital GmbH. Schumacher will attend DOMAINfest with Flaitz at the end of January.

After that he plans to get more involved in the startup world.

“I have been actively involved as a Business Angel for quite a while, and I might increase investments there and/or dive in deeper into one of my startups, once I have found ‘the next big thing’,” Schumacher told me via email today.