Interland (INLD) Beefs Up Management Team

Yesterday, Interland (INLD) announced two new management appointments. The management additions add to and confirm the bullish case for Interland´s (INLD) stock.

Specifically, Interland (INLD) hired a new chief technology officer and a new chief marketing officer. Both people have excellent track records for creating significant value at other Internet companies. Judy Hackett, the new Chief Marketing Officer, was recently Chief Marketing Officer at CareerBuilder, an online and print recruitment company co-owned by Tribune (NYSE:TRB - News), Knight Ridder (NYSE:KRI - News) and Gannett (NYSE:GCI - News). Vikas Rijsinghani, the new Chief Technology Officer, was Chief Technology Officer and a founding member of VerticalOne Corporation which was sold to S1 Corporation (NasdaqNM:SONE - News) for about $160 million. He was also Chief Technology Officer at Proficient Systems, an Internet company founded by the same team that started S1.

Overall, a basic strategy that works in business is to hire smart people. Simply hire driven, entrepreneurial people and the company will grow. The same can be said for investing: Invest in smart people with good track records and who have an incentive to get the stock up. You almost can´t lose, as long as the stock is not wildly overvalued (which Interland is not) when you invest. In fact, balance sheets, income statements etc. should be merely secondary when considering an investment. It´s the people that count.  It is almost impossible to value or predict the  potential growth of a well capitalized business once a group of hard-working, driven individuals get together. Generally, the combined creative contributions of such  a team, will generate financial returns that will far surpass any initial expectations. I have seen this time and time again and have actually missed out on some great, great stocks, because I looked at the numbers before the people(e.g. NutriSystems(NTRI) is one stock that I found very early on, but didn´t buy and have watched it go up fortyfold).

It appears to me that Interland (INLD) has and is assembling a completely new team of experienced executives that will take this company to a new and vastly different level. Incidentally, my current prediction is that the company will soon rename itself, Web.com, and use that to begin a massive marketing campaign (that idea has been hinted at in recent press releases). Since the shares are still not at expensive by any means (still trading at less than 1X Revenue, based on Enterprise Value), I remain extremely bullish on the stock for 2006.