GoDaddy is officially coming to the Boston-area. After scooping up not one but three local startups in the past 12 months, the domain-selling giant is opening up an office at One Main Street in Kendall Square at the end of July. To celebrate GoDaddy “going Boston,” the company is throwing a big bash on Wednesday, July 30th, free to all.
GoDaddy, which is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, is the latest large and mature tech company to snag space in the Hub. Google has long since had an outpost in the heart of Cambridge. Amazon and Apple are also known to be in town, specifically at the Cambridge Innovation Center, yet are notoriously stealthy. More recently, Facebook announced that it was bringing to Social Network back to its birthplace last fall. Then, in March, Twitter officially unveiled its nest and East Coast headquarters. Data analytics company Teradata announced on Tuesday that it will make Cambridge its research and development “center of excellence.”
GoDaddy is following a path perhaps most similar to that of Twitter’s. The social media company decided on a Boston office in the wake of acquiring three local startups – Crashlytics, Spindle and Bluefin Labs. Back Bay-based Spark Capital was also an early investor. Though GoDaddy doesn’t have venture dollars, it has made three acquisitions of early-stage companies born in the Boston-area.
Locu
In August 2013, GoDaddy acquired Locu, an MIT-spun company that helps small businesses and restaurants get listed on search engines like Google and apps like Yelp. The startup had received $4.6 million in financial backing from investors General Catalyst and HubSpot's very own Dharmesh Shah, among others.
The deal went down for a rumored $70 million in stock and cash. At the time of the transaction, Locu had 30,000 businesses, including restaurants, spas, salons, accountants, photographers and home-remodeling companies, and more than 200-million using consumers per month; the startup fit snugly into GoDaddy’s future plans to build its online offerings for local businesses. In the wake of the acquisition, it was said that Locu would maintain its offices in Cambridge and San Francisco.
Afternic
On the heels of the Locu acquisition, GoDaddy announced in early September that it had acquired Afternic, a domain name after-market company. At the time of the deal, the Waltham, Mass.-based business was selling around $1 million-worth of after-market domain names a week. By bringing Afternic into its portfolio, GoDaddy stood to benefit from an influx of new business. The acquisition enabled primary registrars – 18 of GoDaddy's top 20 – to offer an aftermarket domain name through more than 100 accredited domain name sellers, therefore boosting the performance of GoDaddy's Top Level Domain's program.
The Arizona company shared in September that Afternic, and all of its staff, would remain in its original offices in Waltham. Considering that the parent firm is opening shop in Kendall Square, Afternic might be moving into Cambridge to work alongside GoDaddy's other local acquisitions sometime soon.
Canary
Nearly a year later, in July, GoDaddy picked up another Boston-born startup: Canary, a smart calendar app and former Techstars Boston company. However, this acquisition was less about the technology, and more about the talent. The startup had only taken the typical $10,000 check from the Techstars program at the time of the acqui-hire.
TechCrunch reported that GoDaddy had “no intentions” of adding the application into its current product offerings. However, the local startup consoled its more than 100,000 customers that the Canary app would “not be shut down in the immediate future.”
Post-acquisition, Canary Co-founders [and ex-Googlers] Shaun Seo and Varun Chirravuri moved to join GoDaddy’s West Coast presence and commerce team.
The other two members of the startup declined an offer to head to California, siding to stay in Cambridge and help break ground on GoDaddy’s new office.
We don’t know yet how big GoDaddy’s Cambridge team aims to grow, but the entrance of another established tech company in the area is positive. The company currently has a singular engineering position posted on its website, but show up to the event next Wednesday and see what the domain provider has cooking yourself.
BostInno reached out to GoDaddy, but a representative was not available to comment.
Editor's Note: The post has been edited since its original publication to include Afternic.
