Former Napster CFO joins top level domain name company.
Top level domain name company Donuts has hired Randy Haas as its new Chief Financial Officer.
Haas was previously CFO of Napster (Rhapsody). Prior to that, he spent 19 years in finance roles at Microsoft.
Donuts is owned by private equity company Abry Partners, which acquired the company in 2018.
Haas will have his work cut out for him. I expect Donuts to continue to work on acquisitions, and don’t be surprised if Public Interest Registry acquires Donuts once (and if) Ethos Capital completes its takeover of the company. Ethos Capital is led by Erik Brooks, who led Abry Partners’ acquisition of Donuts and who, at least until recently, sat on Donuts’ board. The two companies could save a lot of money by combining forces.
It looks like a good move for both Donuts and Randy. I think it signals staying private for at least few years while dramatically increasing the operating emphasis on ecosystems and platforms.
The word on the street is that Abry paid $580 million for Donuts. The path to material ROI is turning strings into platforms. The stage is being set for creating a $10+ billion enterprise. They have have the land to do it.
As for PIR.org, once fully in the hands of private equity, it matters a bit less who owns it. As for who acquires Donuts, my money is still on Amazon though Google’s registrar/registry/cloud footprint is become massive in Seattle too.
And with Aman also hailing from Seattle, and a number of major tech teams converging in Seattle, it would appear that the domain industry innovation epicenter is officially Seattle for the foreseeable future.
Seattle has great domain history with Name.com, and Marchex, some great domains reside there also, even within Infospace’s old portfolio.
Donuts is not the same company it used to be, just like Uniregistry will never be the same either. Same thing goes for GoDaddy.
Once the original founder(s) leave a company, their golden ideas leave with them.
Private equity firms buy these types of businesses and all they care about is making money off of them by raising prices, wanting more revenue, demanding higher profits, shafting customers and cutting jobs.
The American Dream.