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As
just about all of you
have
heard by now, a domain industry
institution, Escrow.com,
has been purchased by Australia's
Freelancer.com
(the world’s largest freelancing,
outsourcing and crowd sourcing
marketplace) in a $7.5 million
cash deal that was announced
Sunday. Freelancer is a
public company (FLN:Australian Stock
Exchange Ltd) with 15 million
users in 247 countries and a market cap of more
than $460 million.
Today
Freelancer.com's Sydney based
CEO & Chairman Matt
Barrie was at Escrow.com
headquarters in Orange County,
California, meeting with
employees and laying out his vision
for the company - one that includes
a major expansion in every
area including new services, more
staff, marketing and technical
innovation.
Matt
is no stranger to the U.S.,
especially California. The brilliant
young executive (SmartCompany
magazine named him one of the top
10 Australian entrepreneurs to
watch), holds a Masters
Degree in Electrical Engineering
from Stanford University at Palo
Alto and is also a graduate of
the prestigious Stanford Executive
Program at the Graduate School of
Business.
During
a break in his rounds today, I had a
chance to chat with Matt and
Escrow.com
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Matt
Barrie
CEO & Chairman, Freelancer.com
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First
(and foremost in the minds of many
current Escrow.com customers) Matt
and Brandon said it will be business
as usual at Escrow.com with no
changes in the widely respected
staff other than adding more
employees as Freelancer's
resources are thrown into growing
the business and using it to take
advantage of new
opportunities.
Barrie
is especially excited about the
potential Escrow.com has to help the
company become a major player in the
payments space. While millions
of Internet transactions are made
every day Barrie pointed out that
one thing is lacking from the vast
majority of them - something very
highly valued by buyers and sellers
alike - security. If
Escrow.com is synonymous with
anything it is security. When you
pay by credit card your data can be stolen, a seller who accepts PayPal
can get hit with a chargeback,
losing both the money and their
merchandise, etc. At this stage
Barrie doesn't want to reveal the
payments strategy he has in mind but based on
his track record of turning small
companies into major corporations
with market caps in the hundreds of
millions of dollars, anything is
possible.
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Matt
Barrie (left) and Brandon
Abbey at Escrow.com
headquarters in California. |
Payments
are just one of many synergies
Barrie expects to take
advantage of with Escrow.com
now on board and that has
long time company Escrow.com
President Brandon Abbey and
his team members excited too.
Asked how he thought having
Freelancer as its new parent
would help Escrow.com, Abbey
said, "The amount of resources
behind us now is tremendous
and will fuel growth and
improvement in everything
we do."
Barrie
concurred and said he saw his job as handling resource
allocation - meeting with
the Escrow team to find out
what they need and give them
the tools they need to grow.
I
also had to ask Barrie about
the widespread perception that
the price Freelancer paid for
Escrow.com was "a
steal". He said that he
was certainly excited to
acquire the company but felt a
fair price had been paid
(something Australian blogger Michael
Gilmour concurred
with after analyzing
the Escrow.com
financials). |
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Abbey
said that some of that
perception of a low sales
price stemmed from the fact
that even though Escrow.com
has a major presence on
the Internet it was actually
still a small company.
The fact that they have
achieved the remarkable
visibility they have with
limited resources is a
testament to the job Abbey and
his team have done over the
years - a job that has now
created an opportunity to soar
to new heights they are just
beginning to imagine. |
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