Thursday, July 19, 2012:
Go Daddy, the world's largest Web hosting provider, is announcing its purchase of Outright, a cloud-based financial management application company based in Mountain View, Calif. Financial terms were not disclosed.
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Created to provide an alternative to the frustrating and hard-to-maintain spreadsheets currently used by most small businesses, Outright's mission is to provide small business owners simple, data-driven and community-enabled business management applications. Serving more than 200,000 customers, mostly small businesses and entrepreneurs, Outright provides a finance application that automates small-business accounting tasks by organizing them effectively and efficiently. The Web and mobile application imports data from popular marketplaces, such as PayPal, eBay, Amazon and Etsy, as well as bank accounts and credit cards.
"This is a great fit for our customer base," said Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman. "Outright.com has built easy-to-use software that streamlines the work involved with running a start-up or small business . the taxes, income, profits, expenses and other financial data that can be an administrative distraction for business owners. As an entrepreneur, if you're not worried about managing finances for hours every month, you can devote more time to building your business. We see this as an ideal extension for our suite of small business products, which are all geared toward helping businesses grow bigger."
For Outright customers, the acquisition means they will soon have the benefit of Go Daddy's rich suite of cloud-based services and world-class customer service.
"We believe our customers benefit because of the range of Go Daddy products and services designed explicitly for small business owners," said Steven Aldrich, who has led Outright over the last year as CEO. Aldrich is now Go Daddy's Senior Vice President of Applications. "Joining Go Daddy feels like a move that was just meant to be. We are combining forces with a company that has built a billion dollar business with the simple idea of providing great products and a brand of service that delights customers."
Aldrich along with all of his Outright colleagues, including co-founder Ben Curren, are joining Go Daddy and will remain anchored in Silicon Valley.
"We had a lot in common with Go Daddy from the start," said Curren. "We both prioritize customer support, value-rich technology and entrepreneurship. We are both committed to helping small businesses grow. We believe the small business financial management market is ripe for innovation because it has historically been underserved and overpriced."
Curren left his job at Intuit in 2006 to start his own business. He quickly discovered how time-consuming financial management was for a business owner and went to work to build the automated software application that became Outright.
"I have a pretty busy life and it was hard for me to always keep track of my income and expenses," said Outright customer Natalie Rustigian, who owns Superstar in Disguise, an online clothing store. "With Outright, I automatically know my profit and it has a list of all my transactions, along with charts, that allow me to see how much I spend on things."
Today's Outright acquisition is the latest development in Go Daddy's mission to help businesses thrive online. In late 2011, Go Daddy received an investment from KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures, an investment designed to build upon Go Daddy's commitment to providing high quality services to its customers. Since then, the company has also embarked on an international expansion, including expanding into India.
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