Company continues to hire as it prepares for launch this year.
A new wholesale/reseller registrar is making a big splash in the industry even though it hasn’t launched its product yet.
OpusDNS sponsored last year’s NamesCon in Austin and this month’s CloudFest. It has also been hiring lots of industry professionals.
I caught up with some of the company’s leadership at ICANN82 earlier this month for an update.
Robbie Birkner and Hakan Ali cofounded the company with the goal of modernizing the domain reselling business. The two have spent decades in the domain name business.
Birkner cofounded domain reseller platform Hexonet, which was acquired by Team Internet (then known as CentralNic) in 2019. Birkner is CEO of North America for OpusDNS.
Ali cofounded InterNetX and was later Managing Director of Sedo. Ali is CEO of Europe for OpusDNS.
Birkner and Ali believe current reseller platforms lack good support and run on outdated platforms.
With that in mind, the company is building its platform from scratch and plans to differentiate itself through better domain management tools and strong support. This should appeal to both companies wishing to sell domains without becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar, and large domain portfolio holders.
Domain resellers can have sticky customers because it takes effort to move platforms, so OpusDNS is also putting a lot of effort into making it easier for companies to make the move.
While the OpusDNS platform won’t launch until later this year, it continues to market at industry events and has been on a hiring spree.
Last month, the company announced it hired Marco Hoffmann as COO. Hoffmann left InterNetX this year after nearly two decades at the company.
Marie Lanyon, formerly of Hexonet, rounds out the C-suite as Chief Marketing Officer.
Other key hires include Timo Reitnauer, who sold his Hexonet reseller business to Team Internet, and Del Putnam, who previously worked for Automattic’s (WordPress.com) registrar. OpusDNS’ website currently lists 14 employees.
The company is trying to fill other open roles, and stressed that it would like to hear from people interested in working for OpusDNS even if the listed roles don’t currently match their backgrounds.
Entering the domain reseller market is no small task, but it’s clear OpusDNS is putting a large effort into staking a claim in the business. It will be interesting to see the product it launches later this year.
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