Go Daddy makes its first “business” buyout
Go Daddy purchases Outright. More to come?
Go Daddy today disclosed the buyout of Outright, a provider of online financial software for modest businesses.
This is only the firm’s third buyout in its history, and the first one that involves bringing over people from the purchased business. (It’s previous acquisitions were a technology buyout for a root certificate and taking over the RegisterFly client database when that registrar lost its accreditation.)
Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman told Reglike today that the two firm have business goals that match up almost perfectly.
“We’re two firms maniacally focused on helping modest businesses,” he explained.
Outright approaches modest business from the accounting side while Go Daddy comes at it from the web presence side. When the two firms first began discussions, Adelman stated they would frequently “finish each other’s sentences”.
Adelman stated Outright will continue to be a separate product and clients will use the service as usual going forward.
The buyout may be the first of many for the firm. When Go Daddy took a sizable investment from KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures in December it stated it it would use it to expand to fresh markets and make strategic acquisitions.
Although it’s just a coincidence, it’s interesting that Go Daddy’s first true buyout is of a financial software firm. Bob Parsons founded Go Daddy with the proceeds from selling his own financial software firm to Intuit.
Firms such as Intuit and Deluxe have moved into Go Daddy’s turf in recent years. They’ve purchased numerous businesses with a goal of offering everything a modest business needs, counting Go Daddy’s bread and butter of web sites and domain names. I would consider Intuit one of Go Daddy’s biggest competitors, and now Go Daddy can compete on a bit of Intuit’s home turf as well.
