Monster pares CEO roles down to one.
Rob Monster has resigned as CEO of DigitalTown, a company that provides community building platforms. The company owns a large portfolio of domain names, including 11,000 .city domain names.
Monster told Domain name Wire that the move has been planned for a while. In an email, he said that new CEO George Nagy, who was the COO, “brings significant experience with running and selling public companies and with working with institutional investors, both which will be highly relevant for the next phase.”
He was CEO of both DigitalTown and domain name company Epik. He will now have more time to focus on Epik and other endeavors.
He noted:
As a general statement, my competency leans more toward vision, strategy and corporate development. Over the last 2.5 years, we completed 7 acquisitions with which we assembled the technology and team that has allowed us to start rollout of DigitalTown around the world as well as secure deals with both private developers and government clients.
Blockchain, Crypto and Decentralized Apps are a logical response to the pattern of winner-take-all and the policies that allow it. Timing-wise, I believe the world is on the cusp of a major catalyzing event that will make DigitalTown a lot more relevant. The economic situations that are unfolding in Puerto Rico, Turkey, Venezuela and Argentina are not isolated events.
Looking ahead, I continue to be a significant DigitalTown shareholder with 18 million shares and to be an informal advisor. I have high hopes for George and the team we built. Epik continues to manage DigitalTown’s domain portfolio and will help accelerate progress on selling domains into the hands of end-users, an area that was lower priority while I was running both companies.
On the personal side, after 3 years of working 100 hour weeks while running 2 companies, I am looking forward to devoting more time to equipping Epik for the next phase. I also plan to devote more time to Christian ministry and philanthropy. My family doubts that I will slow down. Regardless I am taking a measured and Spirit-led approach to what comes next.
No doubt….Rob Monster is the greatest guy I’ve “never” met. I met Rob online this time last year while registering names for my domain portfolio, and he welcomed me to the domain industry like no one else. I’m not sure why, but he seemed to take a liking to me and my style. At the time I was accumulating .com names for a brand I was working on, “Life’s Happenings” with a similar business model to the tee shirt company “Life is Good”. Rob crewed at Cornell, and I even bought the domain, CrewHappens(.)com to compliment my other Life’s Happening domains. While that business was put on hold because I wasn’t able to attract the necessary financing, it was about that time I discovered the domain industry, and especially the new nTLDS that I just fell in luv with. Today, about 60% of my 1,500 name portfolio consists of nTLD’s and about 40% .coms. While I’m 25% Jewish, and very proud of it, I practice the Christian faith. Rob is a good Christian, and if I were to “score” his faith like DomainScoring(.)com that I own and would like to develop someday, I’d score Rob Monster a “10”, while giving myself maybe a “3.5” at best.
Rob…I do hope to meet you someday, and I wish you all the best in the world. Thank you for being a friend and may God Bless you.
Richard
aka
Bulloney
Thanks Richard. Appreciate the kind words.
Always happy to help someone learn this industry. By now you know that when it comes to feedback on name selection, I serve it up straight. If I think you are wasting your money, I will tell you. I am not sure that is the industry norm, but it passes the “do unto others” test and that is what matters more.
And I am pretty sure that I have never met a more determined guy in the domain industry than “Bulloney”. If you can crack the code on name selection, i.e. being right about names others will eventually want to own, then indeed you might surprise some folks. In the meantime, keep learning and adjusting!
i’d rather own a great one-word .com than 11,000 .city domain names
I see that DigitalTown is a public-traded company, probably reversed-merged from some bankrupt biotech or holding company since data shows it’s been publicly-traded since the 90’s.
After doing some research, not sure I believe in the future very much. Entire company has roughly a $9/million market cap (for all domains and assets), zero institutional ownership and down roughly 75% YTD.
New CEO seems to a be a sign of Rome is on fire and looking for a quick exit without disruption. Exiting CEO (never met the man – although well known in circles) states ownership of 18/million shares of DigitalTown.
Latest available 10Q public filings shows the exiting CEO owns 4,617,978, nowhere near 18/million shares. That’s roughly $350,000, perhaps not an overwhelmingly enticing number to get future investors excited about.
Any good .com domains in their portfolio? Market cap keeps heading south, someone might attempt to publicly acquire shares to take majority of the company on the cheap for their portfolio holdings.
The company cash-burned through 10+ million in the last 52/weeks, but glad to at least see some employees pulling in $1 million plus annual salaries. Poor investors. I’d rather play lotto, personally.
Best of luck to the inbound CEO, you’re going to need it.
How is this nonsense even news?
How is it NOT NEWS unless you don’t understand the definition of “News”….why, are you jealous? nCredible™
Rob got his pay, a trip to the far East and then split. Good gig for him and bye bye suckers.