Soooooooo sorry for bumping this old thread, but I was cruising through Google, and noticed this thread, and thought I should add some comments, for the sake of history.
Simon said:
I guess the Voxtreme guys had opened communication channels with him quite a while before the deal, as it certainly didn't seem like a shotgun sale.
That's correct. Negotiations took place well before Christmas, and the deal was settled on Feb 14, 2004. Matt and myself have for a long time conversed on MSN, swapping notes etc, in aspects of running our respective businesses.
Then poor Matt got duped by his shareholders (so it seems anyway), and httpme was sold.
HTTPme was sold to Otago Internet, and not to Voxtreme. Matt earlier bought Otago in as partners, and Otago owned 50% of Voxtreme.
The Otago board (made up of Jason, 2 others and Matt) voted 3 to 1 to accept the offer from Steven (insiderhosting.com) for httpme. They just weren't happy with the direction httpme was heading, and wanted to free up a capital for a commercial real estate project. Steven's offer was sitting on the table, and in a vote of 3 - 1, the offer was accepted, and Otago sold httpme to Steven.
They were disillusioned with their investment (httpme revenues were sliding, and they got nervous), and Steven's offer gave them an out, with some profit, so they quickly took it. Matt voted against selling httpme to Steven, and pretty soon after that Matt split from Otago, buying back their shares in Voxtreme, but that's another story.
Steven then asked me to come back full-time, and help with that ownership transition. I made the official announcement to the httpme community, and guided Steven through as the new owner of httpme. I was also heavily involved in the migration of the clients to the new HTTPme billing platform. That was one heck of a job, and Steven myself and Nick completed the bulk of that migration in a month. It was a remarkably smooth ownership transition, and I stayed around for the next 12mths or so, ensuring things stayed on track.
Steven has great leadership qualities, and he's taking httpme to the next level. The HTTPme community is still buzzing along very nicely. I'm no longer involved there, behind the scenes or active in the community, as am 100% focussed on my current brand. I still chat with steven on a daily basis, and will be catching up in Vegas for hostingcon 2006, and then heading to LA for a week or so too.
Well that's it. Hope I'm not too far out of line in posting in this oldish thread, but I just wanted to add a few things, for history's sake.
Besides, I don't think Bob was selling, Voxtreme made a very serious offer.