We are pleased to announce that one of our GeniusNet portfolio companies ideegeo Group Limited was acquired in August 2019 by London AIM listed registrar group CentralNic PLC. Founded by Paul Spence, Timo Reitnauer and Lenz Gschwendtner, ideegeo began in 2008 in Wellington, New Zealand with the goal of bringing much needed change to the domain name registrar industry.
Our retail registrar platform iwantmyname was regarded as one of the most innovative and customer centric in the industry globally. This reputation ultimately drove interest from a number of parties and will ensure that the brand and associated technology will endure. An important feature of the company culture was a commitment to community building, which often saw the founders out engaging at startup events and mentoring other entrepreneurs. That’s a habit that we hope to continue.
Special thanks must go to Dave Moskovitz who provided advice at key points in our journey and also Simmonds Stewart and Avid Legal who supported us through the acquisition process.
Paul Spence is a commentator and serial entrepreneur, formerly a co-founder of New Zealand based technology venture iwantmyname, a co-founder and director of Creative Forest and principal at GeniusNet Research. You can follow Paul on Twitter @GeniusNet or sign up for a free weekly digest of startup, tech and innovation related events curated by him through New Zealand Startup Digest.
It has been nothing but downhill, worst registrar on the plane: constantly increasing fees, broken auth codes, unresponsive support, terrible company. Hope the founders enjoyed selling out, because now their names are forever associated to a pile of feces.
Thanks for your feedback.
Unfortunately you are about 7 years too late to complain about it to me.
I agree with you the service levels have dropped considerably. Unfortunately that is a function of an industry that is becoming increasingly aggregated. Do you seriously think we agreed to or had any control over what happened after the acquisition?
Our names are in fact attached to building and delivering a great product for customers. But after 11 years of running the company it was overdue for the founders to move on to other projects.