How GoDaddy Acquired and Dismantled a Successful Startup

http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/what-happened-to-virb-after-godaddy-acquired-it

39 24 11 years ago

gesman• 11 years ago

Did you|anyone expect anything else from GoDaddy?

I do occasional WEB consulting and I warn clients that I have to charge extra if they are hosting any of their resources at Godaddy.

Every time i need to interact with their resources to do anything productive - it is a minefield of upsells at every step and wasted time trying to find simple things.

teevio4• 11 years ago

I had the opportunity to interact with some of the new execs at GoDaddy and the culture was definitely shifting. But Virb's numbers just couldn't compare to GoDaddy's own site builder. Virb was a drop in the bucket compared to the user base they already had.

megatroll• 11 years ago

After my favourite invoicing solution roninapp.com got bought out by GoDaddy, I was forced to use their inferior Bookkeeping product!!! Never again!!!

teevio4• 11 years ago

What is infuriating is that Virb still lives under the MediaTemple umbrella. I'm sure MediaTemple loves having a good as dead product in their product lineup.

ryangittins• 11 years ago

Not that this isn't abhorrent behavior, and not that GoDaddy isn't a terrible company anyway, but this isn't exactly uncommon. It happens every day, with the prototypical example of this sort of thing is General Motors:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...

bsimpson• 11 years ago

I had no idea Media Temple was now owned by GoDaddy. Makes me glad I never used them.

Random sidenote: wasn't Virb originally a side project from PureVolume?

teevio4• 11 years ago

Yup! I used to work for PureVolume, then Virb, and then Media Temple via acquisitions. Crazy world.

nugget2• 11 years ago

Not directly related but one of the happiest days of my life was the day I transferred my last domain away from GoDaddy.

justboxing• 11 years ago

Who did you transfer out to? When SOPA was the rage, I looked into transferring my domains out from Godaddy, but was unable to find a better domain registrar.

soperj• 11 years ago

Really? Nearly everyone I've dealt with has been better. Name.com is my go to right now.

nugget2• 11 years ago

Namecheap. No frills, simple interface. No upsells. Customer service has been excellent so far.

bovermyer• 11 years ago

Far and away Namecheap. They've been fantastic to work with.

Dynadot was also pretty good, though it doesn't have the community goodwill that Namecheap has been actively cultivating.

driverdan• 11 years ago

GoDaddy is one of the worst. My current go to is Namecheap but I've also recently used MyDomain and Hover, all are much better.

chrisbennet• 11 years ago

I've been happy with EasyDNS for domain registration and I use a couple of other places for my hosting.

I believe the general view is that better to have your domain registrar separate from your hosting provider. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than myself can speak to that.

matheweis• 11 years ago

Another vote from a happy customer of Namecheap.

I wish they supported DNSSEC, but it's not that big of a deal. I've been super happy with all of the rest of their services.

KaiserPro3• 11 years ago

Surely this should be why GoDaddy acquired and killed....

The mechanics are simple, and obvious. GoDaddy buys an upstart with money, kills it be starving it of resources.

Whats more interesting is why it would do such a thing. To acquire a company and kill it takes a lot of time and effort. It must have been either a great threat, or have assets worth spending money on.

This isn't an uncommon practice. However its less common in the world of startups, mainly because no one runs at a profit, they can't afford to spend valuable run time capital killing a competitor.

Autodesk and Avid are the masters of the buy and kill.

steve-benjamins2• 11 years ago

Did you read the article?

GoDaddy never set out to acquire Virb. It just happened to. This is more of a story about the messiness of acquisitions than any kind of dark, malicious intentions by GoDaddy.

KaiserPro3• 11 years ago

Yes,

but sorry, no one spunks out millions of dollars to get a happy accident. There are months of wranglings, negotiations, covenants drawn up, targets created.

Granted Virb might have been collateral, but thats the point of my question. Why, was it lack of interest, did it cost to much to develop?

teevio4• 11 years ago

I work for Autodesk via a buyout of Creative Market, and Autodesk has been amazing. Creative Market has existed within Autodesk and is thriving.

KaiserPro3• 11 years ago

Softimage & naiad would beg to differ.

Plus Max isn't fairing to well either...

andrewguenther• 11 years ago

Sure, GoDaddy is evil, but how is this different than any startup that Google/Facebook/Twitter etc. acquires and kills?

fixxer• 11 years ago

So, any idea of how much Virb was sold for to Media Temple?

steve-benjamins2• 11 years ago

I don't think that's publicly known. This was an article written around the time of the acquisition but it doesn't state any prices: http://www.businessinsider.com/virbcom-the-myspace-killer-th...

How GoDaddy Acquired and Dismantled a Successful Startup

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