Interview with Lawrence Ng, Founder of Oversee.net
socalTECH.com has an interesting interview with Lawrence Ng, the co-founder and CEO of Oversee.net.
Below are a few abbreviated excerpts from the interview.
About Oversee.net:
The business focus is on two areas–one in domain services, the other in what we call marketing services, which is much more the lead generation businesses.
In domain services, getting into some detail, there are three main components. There's our monetization platform, the DomainSponsor business; the second is our own portfolio which we acquire in the primary market–so that consists of something north of 600,000 domain names; and we also buy in the secondary market directly from domain owners.
In the marketing services area we are in mortgage–that was started in 2005–another highly competitive time, and have successfully managing being recognized as number one in terms of quality.
We also have our travel business in LowFares.com, which is a travel comparison shopping site, which has main top relationships in that space - Cendent companies, IAC travel companies, so and so forth.
Abot the competition:
We don't have a single direct competitor, I would say. We're diversified enough and are in a leading position in enough areas to where it's not so much of a concern. I'll give you an example, in our domain acquisition and secondary markets, we have relationships in this space and a presence in this space that money can't buy. That's one area where it doesn't matter how much money a company has. Domainers are perceived as "selling out" when they sell to one of the newer financial guys. But for them to sell to use they're leaving it "in the family".
About Demand Media:
Smart guys — Richard did a great job at MySpace, and will continue to do a great job at Demand–but I just think we're traveling two different routes. We see ourselves as between prime time and late night television, and I think Richard's company sees themselves much more in the prime time television market, where the effort is much more in repeat users and eyeballs–which is great. That's just an area we don't focus in.
About the domaining boom:
I'd say that traffic has always been there, and it's grown obviously. What has changed is that there is an influx of advertisers, and paid search has really helped the industry. A domain name is very much like a search in the address bar. Paid search has been pivotal in its growth. No one is going to buy that land if they can't monetize it, though sometimes people do, mainly speculators. What we did when we entered the space in 2001, we gave the domain owners the ability to monetize that land, which had the effect that they bought more land.
Read the full interview here.
I'd like him to address allegations that Oversee is involved in arbitrage. (Read article and comments):
Good interview, Lawrence is very self-confident and has a high opinion of himself. I like that in an entrepreneur. But I'm not so sure about the "selling out" part. Does any domainer really care whether he sells to the self-proclaimed "family" or to the newer "financial guys"?