I had the opportunity to go by MFG.com’s offices and meet Mitch Free yesterday. I’d heard great things about Mitch from Scott Burkett and the opportunity to meet Mitch arose after the recent fund raising announcement.
MFG.com’s office are pretty swanky. Nicer than anything I ever had in my Digital Envoy days. I didn’t take any pictures of the inside of the office but when you walk in you’re greeted with hardwood floors and nice wall hangings. There was a display in the lobby with rotating quotations about entrepreneurship, leadership, and selling.
I sat with Mitch for a bit as we chatted about our backgrounds as well as his company and my old one. The immediate comparison I saw between MFG.com and Digital Envoy was the nice, hefty recurring revenue stream that has been built. MFG.com’s service helps manufacturers find buyers (and vice versa) for whatever they need built. The beauty of what MFG.com has is that it helps manage the entire requisition, manufacturing, and logistics process of getting manufactured goods. Otherwise, once buyers found manufacturers, MFG.com could get cut out of the equation. Given the pricing model (annual membership fee paid by manufacturers) and the scale (both in terms of buyers and manufacturers), MFG.com has a natural monopoly position just like eBay.
One of the most interesting topics (at least for me) was the discussion on the MFG.com domain name. MFG.com originally started as MFGQuote.com (in fact, MFG.com redirects to MFGQuote.com to this day). MFG.com was owned by Microfield Graphics but Mitch noticed that they were acquired in 2005 and offered to buy the domain name. Like I’ve mentioned before, three letter domain names are highly coveted. Mitch got a hold of the technical contact and offered… wait for it… $2,000 for the domain name. And they accepted! Mitch agrees that this was a ridiculously low sum for this domain and has even been offered $1 million for the name. Clearly, he isn’t selling.
The other amazing thing about Mitch and his business is that it was totally bootstrapped. When Jeff Bezos invested and during this most recent funding round, the company has been profitable and didn’t really need the money. But through these connections, Mitch has built a company that now spans three continents and 11 different countries.
So what does the future hold? MFG.com has engaged a recruiting firm to help them fill one open executive position. Mitch is looking for a CTO who has the chops to build a next generation platform that will integrate a lot of new ideas and services that they want to provide to their client base. This isn’t a ground floor opportunity given the two fairly sizable funding rounds but it hasn’t been acquired or gone public yet. So if you think you have the background to provide them with some great developmental vision, reach out to them and see what happens.
