Late last week, I shared news of Tucows’ acquisition of eNom. This is big news for a number of reasons, especially because Tucows will reportedly become the “second largest domain registrar in the world,” trailing GoDaddy.
One unfortunate side effect of this deal is layoffs. I ran into Bari Meyerson at NamesCon, and she shared the news that she was let go. I worked with Bari for a number of years at Moniker, and I continued to work with her when she went to work at eNom. On the infrequent occasions that I had an account management issue at eNom, she would either help solve it or connect me with the person who could.
I reached out to Rightside CEO Taryn Naidu to ask about the layoffs, and he told me the company made about 35 layoffs as a result of the deal. The company now has approximately 125 employees following the conclusion of the deal. Taryn felt it was important to note to me that “the 35 layoffs were not a result of performance or ability, but the ugly side of deals of this nature.”
It is unfortunate that layoffs resulted, and I would imagine it can be attributed to some job redundancy at the two companies. The good thing, I would think, is that there are now some experience domain industry veterans who may be looking for work in the domain space. Hopefully they land on their feet soon.
I just received some breaking news from Enom that I want to share with you. According to the email I received, Tucows has acquired Enom from Rightside. Both Tucows (TCX on NASDAQ) and Rightside (NAME on NASDAQ) are publicly traded companies. A press release published by Tucows