UltraDNS acquired by Neustar for $62M

The news just hit the wire: Managed DNS service provider UltraDNS has been acquired by Neustar for a total consideration approaching $62M in cash.

The fund I was a GP of, the Reuters Greenhouse Fund, invested in UltraDNS back in 2000, leading a $25M series B (at a 2000-style valuation - those were the days). The vision was the right one: the DNS is such a fundamental piece of the Internet infrastructure that there is a genuine business in providing a more secure and reliable service than the standard (Bind) implementation. The execution however was *a lot* harder than originally anticipated, and it took a lot of hard work and difficult decisions to get the company to grow profitably its business, and get to this exit. I sat on the board for almost four years, and enjoyed working through all the ups and downs of the company with CEO Ben Petro, CTO Rodney Joffe, fellow board member VantagePoint Venture Partners' Eric Ver Ploeg and the rest of the team.

Congratulations to them and to my former Partner, Martin Stapleton (who took over my board seat) for growing the business and reaching this positive outcome.

Tags: ultradns

Comments

[David]

This isn't such a success story if you do the math and you look at what UltraDNS has done and spent to get where they are. I just hope the founders got something to walk away with. I'd be surprised if the employees got much at all...

Neustar just wanted the .org contact -- the rest of UltraDNS, sadly, isn't worth much. Good folks over there though...

[Jeff Clavier]

David> Very self serving this comment of yours, isn't it ? I doubt that Neustar would have spent that kind of money just to get the .org contract.

[Dana]

Hey, is Ben Petro still with them and if not where did he move on to?

[Kevin]

Hi, does anyone know what has changed since Neustar took over? For the good...and for the bad

What are the intentions of Neustar going forward?