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For the past couple of weeks I’ve been reading about all of the incredible things happening at Oversee.Net and the Snap Names employee that bid up the auctions. When you think about it, the domain industry is less than transparent so this sort of event should have been expected by everyone. There is just too much money at stake.
 Employing people is always fraught with potentially dangerous outcomes especially when an employee in a trusted position fails to live up to their CV encrusted character references. When you purchase a business, as is the case with Oversee’s fairly recent purchase of Snap Names you end up inheriting a lot skeletons in a lot of closets. In fact, when you think about it it’s not surprising that this event became public just after Halloween.
Due diligence is supposed to expose all of these less than savoury characters but sadly in many cases that involve deliberate employee cover-ups the due diligence team never end up seeing what really needs to be seen. What should not be forgotten is when you buy anything that the rule is “buyer beware”, especially when buying companies.
What has surprised me is about the Oversee.Net/Snap Names story is some of the negative comments regarding Oversee. A number of people have cried foul and pointed the finger directly at Oversee and screamed at the top of their lungs.
In some respects I can understand this reaction. It’s only natural to assume the worst about an organisation and that somehow all of the senior management were rubbing their hands together with glee as the additional revenue poured through the door. The problem I have is that this type of behaviour just doesn’t stack up from a business sense or because from the character of the senior managers involved in sorting the mess out.
The problem with deliberately running a “scam” means that you’ve shut the door on your potential exit and realisation of capital value. Something like this will always eventually come out via a disgruntled employee or a complete trade sale due diligence conducted more thoroughly by someone else. Not to mention the rigour that a private company is put through prior to an IPO.
The fact that Oversee has a large equity partner would suggest that if the senior management wasn’t clean as a whistle than they would have been marched out the door by a security card by now.
Next, I would like to believe that I know many of the senior managers at Oversee reasonably well and I could categorically declare that collectively they wouldn’t be involved in this sort of activity. Like I said before, you can’t cover something like this up forever so it would be committing career suicide to take part in it. Besides, none of the senior people have been fired as yet.
I have also heard a number of people suggesting that they are not going to deal with Oversee ever again and they will pull their domains out of Domain Sponsor straight away. Can I suggest that this could potentially be like a run on a bank for our industry and that it wouldn’t help anyone. Oversee is actually one of the shining lights of our industry and to have them pulled down due to this sort of activity would ultimately be terrible for everyone. In my opinion the recently announced class action isn't going to help anyone other than lawyers and screaming for the heads of the people that actually exposed the problem isn't very productive either.
Externally, looking across the Pacific ocean from Australia I see Oversee is endeavouring to make the best of a really bad situation for everyone. They have publicly declared the mess and provided a route for compensation that seems reasonable. The challenge will be if it subsequently comes out that the problem was a lot bigger than they are declaring. I hope that this is not the case (inadvertent or otherwise) as a lot of people are giving Oversee the benefit of the doubt.
So what I suggest is something novel. In the millisecond driven world in which we all do business decide to show a little restraint. Give Oversee the time to sort through the mess and let’s all be supportive of the management that are trying to deal with it. The last thing we all need to the valuations of our domains is for the Oversee/Snap Names stumble to become a fall.
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ive lost all respect for this blog bec of this post.