NameSilo is being acquired by investment firm Brisio Innovations Inc. for $9.5 million plus earnouts.
The company makes investments in both public and private markets and focuses on opportunities in a wide variety of industries excluding the resource and resource service sectors. Brisio does not invest on behalf of any third party and it does not offer investment advice.
Brisio Innovations trades publicly on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol BZI, it also trades on the Pink Sheets.
After completion of the Transaction, the Company intends to spin-out NameSilo as a separately listed entity on a Canadian stock exchange. The board of directors of the Company will provide further details on the proposed spin-out on closing of the Transaction.
NameSilo posted the following on Namepros:
Hi Everyone,
Just saw this thread and wanted to reply…
The most important takeaways for our customers are that there are no changes in management or operations of the business. This is more of a financial and organizational move than anything else. Our owner/operators are staying in place and there are no changes to our management, support, systems or anything else that should be “felt” by our customers. In the longer run, the additional resources from this move should help to accelerate new development and possibly other ancillary service offerings. Our founders posted a message on our site here:
https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Brisio-Acquisition
We know that news like this can be worrisome for our customers and partners, especially given the history of some other acquisitions/mergers in the registrar space, but we are keenly aware of the things that have made us successful and plan only to continue building upon those strategies of consistently low pricing, customer-friendly policies, ongoing product/service enhancements, no hidden fees and excellent customer support.
Again, our focus is on ensuring that this move to take the company public not only has none of the negative ramifications associated with changes of ownership from other registrars, but that the benefits of additional resources help only to create an even better service for our customers. We are committed to these things and are sure we will not let anyone down!
Thanks as always to everyone who participates at NamePros. We look forward to continue engaging with everyone here and to continually improving upon our services.
I fear the worst, especially from an investment firm with little to no experience in running a domain registrar. I really like Namesilo, they have some of the best prices around, are domainer friendly and have a quick fast system.
I have just started using them more and was planning to move over 100+ domains to get a bigger discount but I’m gonna hold off and wait and see.
Hi Dale and thanks for your feedback. We certainly understand the concerns people have when they hear about acquisition – especially in the registrar space. Please note that our situation is a little different than others in that the owner/operators are staying in place, the support team is staying in place, there are no changes to platform/technology and no plans to change any policies. We address these topics even more on the NamePros page linked to above.
Still, we of course also understand that the real proof will be in our actions moving forward, and we hope you keep an eye on us and that we will continue to earn your business.
Thanks again
What is this “bigger discount” Dale referred to that one is supposed to receive when one has over a 100 domains at NameSilo? 🙂
Hi @John. He was referring to our Discount Program which offers escalating discounts on registrations and renewals based on the number of domains in your account. More info here:
https://www.namesilo.com/Support/Discount-Program
Feel free to drop an email to support@namesilo.com with any other questions. Our average response time during business hours is just 6 minutes.
Thanks!
Discount is ten cents relax
Sure, staying in place for now but in a couple years that will most likely change. The owner wanted to “cash out” more or less and I don’t blame them but the proof will be in the long term. We can only wait and see what happens.
Thanks – appreciate to giving us the chance to retain your business, and I’m sure we’ll work to do just that.
Why have you not answered my question about the “bigger discount”? 🙂
John, your query was already answered
Jane, reply was not showing and was invisible “awaiting moderation” for a while. See related comments at TheDomains. All is well.
Correction – at DNW*
Disappointing news. This kind of thing never goes over well.
Of course the company being acquired is going to offer assurances and promises that everything is going to work out perfectly. And the buyer too, of course, says everything is going to stay the same (or get better).
But of all the registrars I’ve seen acquired in the domain industry I know this is not going to go over well. There is a precedent for this sort of thing by now. And anyone who’s paid attention to what happens to acquired registrars (or have the unfortunate experience of being their customers), know that this is not looking good for NameSilo. I’ve been a NameSilo customer for four years and they are now my “main” registrar. Surprised they would take this path. They worked hard to build something great. Why would they just throw it all away like this? (Okay that’s rhetorical, they get a big payday, I get it. But they just never struck me as wanting the vaunted startup exit deal arrangement). First it’s the founders that are getting paid. Then it’s the investment company that’ll want to see a decent return… and when they become publicly traded, more profits have to be generated for those who buy in there. So corners have to be cut and value for users will go down as they’ll have to gear their model towards extracting maximum profit from their service. And all this money, all this profit that has to be made from this “investment” has to come from users.
Regret transferring almost my entire portfolio over to them now. This kind of uncertainty is not welcome, and clearly not a move in the interest of users (though again, big payday for founders, etc. I get it). They were about the only company left in the industry I thought would continue to do the “right thing” and work in the interest of their happy and loyal users. Frustrating to see this happen.
Hi @Andre,
Thanks for the post and we certainly understand your feedback. I cannot argue with any of the concerns you stated as the history of such events in our industry has been less than impressive. To be honest, I’d feel the same as you.
The best we can really offer is to try to reassure that as we’ve done in responses on this site and others. However, we also know our words are entirely meaningless without action. We know we will be under increased scrutiny, and we would not expect it any other way. We simply ask that you try to hold off on forming your opinion regarding the acquisition until you see anything on our end indicating a problem or reason for concern.
We do feel like we’ve done the “right thing” as this move will allow us to expand our services and support more rapidly than we could have done otherwise. We are partnering with a company with similar philosophies and goals who we firmly believe will help improve our business and the experience for our customers and partners.
We of course know that changes on our end resulting in a negative experience (pricing changes, policy changes, support going downhill, technical problems, etc.) will result in a reversal of the hard-fought success we’ve enjoyed to-date. We would not blame anybody but ourselves should this occur, and, again, we simply ask that you try to withhold judgment as much as possible until we give you a reason otherwise.
Thanks again for your feedback and concerns.
is is clear the intention of the buyer: to “spin-off” Namesilo and list it on the stock exchange to get some bucks from the fools
Looks like my comment is still awaiting moderation…. I answered you on DNW as well. Not sure if it is because I posted a URL, but the additional discounts are based on our Discount Program. I will not supply a link here, but you can find on our site.
Ok, will check it out.
I’m disappointed that you still use green and red as your colors on your bulk domain search results page. These two colors are the number one color blindness and it affects almost 10% of males. I can’t even tell you how many more domains I would have bought from you guys if I could simply see the results on your screen. I’ve written into support about this before and they said they would do something but they obviously have not.
https://nei.nih.gov/health/color_blindness/facts_about
It’s already bad news.
–> They used to answer support tickets almost instantly. Now it can take hours and hours. It was the only service I could stand using email support, because they were just so darn fast.
EMAIL support that is slow is not OK. I miss slow emails, as many do. They need to transition to a centralized ticket communication if they’re going to sit on their hands when it comes to mail.
–> They used to fix bugs reported within hours. Almost always same day. Now they just say things are “normal’ or “only you are having that problem”. Only an irresponsible oaf answers someone who took time to file a bug report that way.
In short…
Yep — switched from Boy Scouts to full loser mode. Not cool. At this rate, they’ll be a pile of bugs like GoDaddy’s spaghetti code shortly.
There have been no changes to our support. I believe I know the issue you are referring to and all of your emails were replied to in under 3 hours – most in under 1 hour. Also, the “bug” you reported is not a bug as we let you know in your last reply. You asked why no results were shown when looking for expired domain auction domains between 0-1 years old, and, within 27 minutes, someone from our team replied that this was not a bug since expired domains cannot be less than 1 year old by definition, hence no results would be expected. Sorry again you feel our support has changed, but there have been no changes.