About Mike Mann
CEO, Founder, Author
Mike Mann is the founder and manager of Make Change! Trust, a charitable fund that supports select 501(c)(3) organizations. He was also the founder and chairman of Grassroots.org for ten years, which was a 501(c)(3) global network providing free services to non-profits and promoting social action.
Mike is also the founder of several successful, active, for-profit corporations. Three of these corporations were listed among the 2012 Inc 500 fastest growing small companies in America: Phone.com, DomainMarket.com and SEO.com. Plus he founded and operates AccurateAppraisals.com. These companies exchange resources, talent and technologies in their never-ending quest to deliver innovative, profitable digital products and services.
Mike is also the author of Make Millions and Make Change! (www.MakeMillions.com) a book focused on making money in small business so we can better serve society.
In 1994 he founded Internet Interstate, which he sold to Verio Inc. in 1997, then becoming President of VerioDC. After Mike left, Verio went public, and then sold to NTT of Japan in a multi-billion dollar transaction. (Years before Verio, Mike gave Internet training sessions to top NTT executives visiting the US.)
In 1998, he founded BuyDomains.com (now NameMedia), the world’s largest secondary market for domain names, and sold majority interest to Highland Capital and Summit Partners in 2005, along with the “Seeq.com” search engine portal.
Between 1998 and 2001, Mike served as the founding Chairman of the non-profit ByteBack.org, which is an innovator in operating free computer and job training centers serving inner-city communities.
In 2007, Mike and WashingtonVC.com founded Yield Software, a company which delivers cutting-edge online marketing software. Within two years the majority of Yield was sold to venture capitalists Draper Fisher and international marketing conglomerate WPP. In 2011 Yield Software was acquired by Autonomy Corporation, an HP company.
Mike was one of the first investors, advisors and promoters of the .Co (Colombia) domain name space and still owns some of its best domains including Bank.co, CreditCards.co, Advertising.co, Movies.co, Office.co, Investing.co, and Health.co. Mike’s .Co client cashed out for over $100M accordingly.
Mike was the Founder and Chairman of Grassroots.org (501c3) nonprofit which provided free services to over 10,000 other charities over a ten-year period, and built many topical charity oriented web sites.
Mike and Grassroots.org were the cofounders of ChangeTheWorld.org charity in partnership with University of Maryland and a dozen leading universities which builds mentorship programs between business students and nonprofit organizations around the US.
As an early Internet pioneer, Mike has received a patent for his groundbreaking domain name technology.
The Domain Name Suggestion Patent “WhoisPlus/NameFind” (Mike’s February 11, 2003 invention) is used or copied by virtually every domain name company, which ultimately represents the majority of end user registrations ever since, many millions of domains.
