Two Australian tech entrepreneurs have bagged the lion's share of a $118.5 million payday, after selling their domain name company Bombora Technologies to US rival Neustar.
Bombora Technologies, which is the parent company of ARI Registry Services, AusRegistry and ZOAK Solutions, will maintain its presence in Australia, with all the staff staying.
The company was founded 15 years ago by Adrian Kinderis and Simon Delzoppo with one computer, operating out of the front room of Mr Delzoppo's house.
The acquisition means a handsome payday for the co-founders, who own just over 69 per cent of the business.
"It's the culmination of what's been 16 years of hard work," Mr Kinderis said.
"None of these things happen quickly. Neustar is a public company and I wasn't even close to being able to predict the amount of time and hard work that would go into it. It was an order of a different magnitude."
WEB REGISTRY BUSINESS
Through ARI Registry, Bombora provides registry services to a number of top-level domains, including .au, .melbourne, .sydney and several in the Fortune 500.
Neustar provides a number of services, including real-time data analytics, media intelligence and domain name registry.
Mr Kinderis said the next few months would involve a process of working out what capabilities Bombora and Neustar could bring together jointly.
"Neustar bought us because we have some capabilities that they don't … and they have a couple of hundred brands on their platform. It's working out the best way to take it to market," he said.
"We think we'll get some pretty quick wins."
Neustar's domain name server infrastructure is also expected to give Bombora a boost.
"It's the sheer robustness of the technology," Mr Kinderis said.
"When you bring the two companies together there's a whole lot of intellectual property too. We've been competing against each other for a while."
MIXED EMOTIONS
For Neustar, the acquisition spearheads its move into the Asia Pacific.
The deal is expected to contribute $10 million of revenue to Neustar in 2015 and $US1.1 million in operating income.
Mr Kinderis said the reality of his success in selling the business had still not hit him properly, and even with the money came mixed emotions.
"I used to have a bullshit rhetoric that we were a small company punching above our weight and then recently I stopped saying that. We were being noticed by the big players in the industry," he said.
"It hasn't quite sunk in yet. There's been a mixture of emotions – from sadness because I built Bombora and its culture myself and that will be hard to let go of, to excitement because it's a new frontier."
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