strategy What's in store for Escrow.com?

[Arpit131]

Freelancer.com recently acquired Escrow.com for $7.5 million.
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.

Ron Jackson of DNJournal.com had a chance to interact with Freelancer's CEO and Chairman Matt Barrie and Escrow.com President Brandon Abbey.

Here is an excerpt from the article published on DNJournal:

" 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 be credit card your data can be stolen, a seller who accepts PayPal can get hit with a charge back, 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."

The complete article may be found on DNJournal

Related NamePros Thread:
Escrow.com purchased for $7.5 million

 

[domainerfella]

Arpit, there is already a thread on this.

 

[Name Trader]

Not having any facts, but $7.5M seams cheap to me, for the #1 business in this escrow space. I'm sure most of the other escrow companies would have loved to have gobbled up escrow.com for $7.5M.

 

[Arpit131]

Not having any facts, but $7.5M seams cheap to me, for the #1 business in this escrow space. I'm sure most of the other escrow companies would have loved to have gobbled up escrow.com for $7.5M.

Michael Gilmour of WhizzbangsBlog has done an analysis of the pricing of Escrow.com and finds it right.
@stub I think you would love to read this article:

http://whizzbangsblog.com/index.php...reelancer-com-acquires-escrow-com#comment-141

 

[Name Trader]

Yes a very interesting article. The price was a multiple of 6.25. To me this seems low. No premium was paid for a very stable business which is by far the #1 dominant company in it's niche space. I think Freelancer got a very good acquisition at a very good price. Well done to them.

 

[DNVantage]

Yes a very interesting article. The price was a multiple of 6.25. To me this seems low. No premium was paid for a very stable business which is by far the #1 dominant company in it's niche space. I think Freelancer got a very good acquisition at a very good price. Well done to them.

Have to agree with @stub, $7.5M seems low for a premium established company, considering 'Escrow.com has conducted over US$2.2 billion in transactions to date!' from the link provided by @Arpit131. Guess maybe the owner wanted to invest or move on to other ventures? Considering startups are popping up everywhere!

 

[FPForum]

Personally, I don't think they will be the "industry leader" in domain Escrow payments any longer.

 

[vivaldi]

Personally, I don't think they will be the "industry leader" in domain Escrow payments any longer.

Yeah it feels like the nr.1 spot are up for grabs now. They have done almost everything wrong with Freemarket.

 

[FPForum]

Yeah it feels like the nr.1 spot are up for grabs now. They have done almost everything wrong with Freemarket.

If they run Escrow.com anything like FreeMarket/Freelancer it will be a disaster. I've heard so many horror stories about those two places I wouldn't trust them at all. Lots of people having problems with scams on both sites. Not to mention, they launched FreeMarket way to early and it was full of bugs. Even to this day, there is no way to "Close" or "End" a listing.. I actually had to email them just to get my listings removed because some of the names I had sold a while ago...

 

[Name Trader]

Personally, I don't think they will be the "industry leader" in domain Escrow payments any longer.

Why not?

 

[FPForum]

Why not?

I think the news thread alone answers that question. I think I counted 4-5 posts on just the first page with everything from "yuck" to "I wouldn't use anything that Freelancer owns"

Looking at the number of people who have had problems or bad experiences with them in the past (I would be one of them) it doesn't look good. I mean, I've seen way more negative talk than positive talk across all forums I visit (unlike Flippa or Sedo, for example)..

Seams like you have to really be messing things up for so many people to have issues or problems with your service. Obviously they are still making money and will likely still get domain Escrow requests, but I would say this could be a game changer for anyone like DN.com wanting to increase profits. Some of these other companies should take this as an opportunity in front of their eyes

 

[Name Trader]

@FPForum - Escrow.com is a business which stands on it own. Just because the owner has a bad reputation on their other sites doesn't mean they will do their utmost to ruin their acquisition. In fact it could do just the opposite and improve the situations at those other sites I think it's way too soon to say Escrow.com is dying. I for one, will continue to use them until such time as they start screwing things up, or a better offer comes along. DN.com has a long way to go in their usability and trust stakes. eg: Are they even licensed?

 

[FPForum]

@stub - If they have a bad track record with Freelancer AND they have a bad track record with FreeMarket then I think most people can see where things are going... It kinda goes like the saying, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..well, you know the rest.

Wouldn't you think it would make more sense to fix what you have before trying to add more? Seams a little backwards to me.

You can keep using Escrow they would love to have your business, just note that allot of other people around the forums won't be using them anymore. In fact, one company (EscrowHill.com) has already started getting their marketing going within the same thread I already sent you. I wonder if they haven't already picked up a few customers from it..

You've got DN.com, eCop, EscrowHill, plus escrow through traditional sites like Sedo and Flippa now... Since Freelancer.com is also publicly traded (FLN:ASE) we should be able to monitor what Escrow.com profits are come the end of this year (or quarter).. I guess only time will tell if numbers go up or down.

 

[johname]

Freelancer and FreeMarket have lots of buttons to push and to push wrong. Escrow more just banking.

Like owning a trucking fleet and buying the gas station across the street. Easy to send the trucks to the wrong destination/ or mess up their loads. But the gas station just pumps gas for a price a little more than they paid for it.

Plus no matter what Freelancer does with Escrow.com, Escrow.com has to continue to meet all the escrow regulations in the well know, highly regulated place they are licensed from.

 

[forge]

@stubYou can keep using Escrow they would love to have your business, just note that allot of other people around the forums won't be using them anymore. In fact, one company (EscrowHill.com) has already started getting their marketing going within the same thread I already sent you. I wonder if they haven't already picked up a few customers from it..

I'll take it a step further to say that the fact Escrow com has never upped their game to actually manage the domain transfer (a key transaction assurance factor IMO) does not help their stature any. I think their track record has been fairly stellar, but I agree that this shift -- these kinds of business acquisitions -- are rarely a good thing for the consumer in the long run.

When the Mother Ship has such trust issues with its customers, it can't help but trickle down in some fashion to eventually affect the companies under its helm, IMHO.

 

[Name Trader]

@FPForum - None of those companies you mention can hold a candle to Escrow.com. I prefer the statement, if it ain't broke don't fix it I don't see them importing the incompetence of Freelancer/Freemarket into Escrow.com. I just don't see it. Sorry.

 

[Brandon Abbey]

With the acquisition of Escrow.com by Freelancer.com comes change, and from my standpoint it will be all good for our customers. I have been meeting with the Freelancer executive team for the past three weeks and they are committed to creating a better customer experience for our users. Where before we had limited technical resource we are now part of a company that has over 200 software engineers. So what might you see in the future - expanded customer support hours, additional currencies, multiple language support, improved products - to name a few.

One thing you may not know about our company is we spend more on compliance than we do on marketing. That involves not only licensing, insurance and bonding, but paying for government regulators to come audit us, which by the way we have passed them all. When choosing an escrow company I suggest you do your due diligence.