GoDaddy.com IPO

[REWahoo]

Sources: Go Daddy is going public
Domain-name registrar hires Lehman to arrange IPO
By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Go Daddy Group Inc., an Internet-domain registration company infamous for its risqué television ads, has hired Lehman Brothers to manage an initial stock offering, according to three people familiar with the firm's plans.

http://tinyurl.com/z5p75

Hmmmm. Might have some interesting looking stock certificates.

[Cool Dood]

Is Lehman Brothers the ones who aim to do all the Dutch and other auctions? Or is that someone else....

Count me out of the GoDaddy IPO (unless, I suppose, they do go with "interesting" stock certificates.....)

[BigMoneyJim]

I haven't used GoDaddy as I generally stay away from the cheapcheap stuff, but how does a low-price undifferentiated service in a field with oodles of competition and low barrier to entry hope to provide value for public stockholders? Okay, you have a name, but so did Pets.com and some others that I have forgotten. The most valuable part of Pets.com left around is the sock puppet which has gone on to do ads for other products.

Their best profit move lately was to take a (presumed) payoff from MS to use IIS to host their parked domains to significantly boost IIS's apparent webserver market share. (Even though a 2-line DOS batch file could serve those millions of parked domains adequately.)

Maybe that's their angle: like sports stadiums selling their name, GoDaddy will use the server of the highest bidder and get a boost on NetCraft's ratings. cybersquatted-domain-number-1240768.com served by IBM WebSphere®

[cute fuzzy bunny]

This thread is useless without pictures.

[REWahoo]

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim

The most valuable part of Pets.com left around is the sock puppet which has gone on to do ads for other products.

BMJ, the sentence above is about all I understood from your post, but I think I see where you're going with this: You're hoping the babe from the GoDaddy commercials shows up at your place and becomes your personal sock puppet.

I amaze myself sometimes with my ability to interpret the way techincal people think.

[wabmester]

FWIW, I use GoDaddy for most of my domains. The service is good and the price is low. They make their money on high volume and lots of upselling. The company was started by Bob Parsons, who many will remember as the dude who used to sell cheap mail-order software using the same sort of upsell scheme.

[Rich_in_Tampa]

Originally Posted by wab

FWIW, I use GoDaddy for most of my domains. The service is good and the price is low. They make their money on high volume and lots of upselling.

I use them for cheap domain parking, but when I looked at them for web hosting their chaotic admin pages, impossible phone support scheme, and secure SSL approach really scared me off. Something about their carnival-like interface and image just made me uneasy.

May be a good IPO to buy, but I don't know... feels adolescent to me.

[wabmester]

Originally Posted by Rich_in_Tampa

I use them for cheap domain parking, but when I looked at them for web hosting their chaotic admin pages, impossible phone support scheme, and secure SSL approach really scared me off. Something about their carnival-like interface and image just made me uneasy.

May be a good IPO to buy, but I don't know... feels adolescent to me.

Definitely. He's always been using lots of cheese in his marketing (I kind of like the old-fashioned goodness of cheesy marketing, myself). I only use them for domain registration -- nothing else.

[macdaddy]

I have about 200 domains with GoDaddy. They provide so-so service, but I choose them because they offer $6.95 .com and .net domains. If another reputable service offered me $6.45, I would move them all over. This will always be a very low margin business with little consumer loyalty. I wouldn't buy their stock.

[BigMoneyJim]

200 domains? I thought I was going nuts with 6. What are you doing with them?

[Nords]

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim

I haven't used GoDaddy as I generally stay away from the cheapcheap stuff, but how does a low-price undifferentiated service in a field with oodles of competition and low barrier to entry hope to provide value for public stockholders?

So, you're assuming that this IPO is for the benefit of the public stockholders?

Fidelity's website lists 10 years of their IPOs. Last year I spreadsheeted the 20 most recent (about five years' worth), which you think would have been uncontaminated by the hysterical excesses of the tech wreck. The cumulative result was a 6% total return.

Until you took out Google. The remainder racked up a -25% return.

I'm going to watch the IPO peak and then short it at about the five-month point-- just before the VC's lockups expire.

[BigMoneyJim]

I read an interesting anecdotal experience today, and I'm going to test this myself. The poster (on Slashdot) claimed he checked the availability of a domain on GoDaddy, added it to his shopping cart, then removed it. The next day the domain and been bought and offered for sale at a higher price.

So here goes: I'm going to check GoDaddy for worldwidedryersheets.com ... it's available. I'm leaving the default options (only $8.95/yr checked) and hit continue. It tries to offer me the same name *.net, *.biz, *.info...no thanks, continue to checkout. Hmm, my cart is still empty...I reluctantly enter my contact info to create an account. I try "save my registration info and shop for more domains." I'm going to stop the play-by-play now. My "cart" still shows empty. I'm going to see if I can put it in my cart.... Okay, got it in my cart, now removing it.

We'll check tomorrow and the next day to see if some opportunist squatted the name.

EDIT: The domain name in the anecdote I read was turbocow.com .

EDIT 2: GoDaddy is the only place I checked for worldwidedryersheets.com . I typed it nowhere else but here and there, so if someone squats it, it's either through GoDaddy, because somebody read this post and liked the domain or because somebody just happened to register the domain immediately after I did this test.

[macdaddy]

Originally Posted by BigMoneyJim

200 domains? I thought I was going nuts with 6. What are you doing with them?

I am part of a small social development/web 2.0 startup, we have written some web software that allows small internet communities (like this one) to raise funds online in various ways that don't cost their members any money (i.e. shopping, signing up for non-binding promotions, viewing advertisements). We aren't quite ready to launch our beta test yet (couple more weeks) but when we do I will contact one of the mods here and see if they are interested (it's free). As far as the 200 domains, suffice it to say that we went through a LOT of potential names and variations before we settled on a few we like.

[BigMoneyJim]

Well, worldwidedryersheets.com is still available after about 48 hours. Oddly I am dissapointed; I don't know why.

Originally Posted by macdaddy

I am part of a small social development/web 2.0 startup, we have written some web software that allows small internet communities (like this one) to raise funds online in various ways that don't cost their members any money (i.e. shopping, signing up for non-binding promotions, viewing advertisements). We aren't quite ready to launch our beta test yet (couple more weeks) but when we do I will contact one of the mods here and see if they are interested (it's free). As far as the 200 domains, suffice it to say that we went through a LOT of potential names and variations before we settled on a few we like.

I see.

dory36 is the site owner/operator and would be the one to check with for ads and such. Can you shop for dryer sheets, kayaks and wheat bread?

[Cool Dood]

home vasectomy kits...