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I am Todd Han, Founder of Dynadot, Ask Me Any Question

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APA will begin Friday, May 22 from 4-6pm PDT, but wanted to open the thread now in case you're unable to join me during that time. If you have questions or comments you would like to make, feel free to submit them here and I will try to address them during the interactive interview session.

I started Dynadot in 2002, in a spare bedroom at home. I still remember getting my first order for $7.99, and jumping up and down in excitement. Back then Verisign charged $6 per .com domain, and there was no ICANN fee yet. In those early days I did everything: customer service, website programming, accounting, and marketing. As the business grew I eventually rented an office and starting building the excellent team running the company today.

I have loved computers since I was a child. Writing code and solving technical problems always came naturally to me. I studied computer science in college, and spent many hours in the dark underground computer labs at UC Berkeley. Sadly I stopped coding about 2 years ago, to focus on strategy and management. But someday I plan to return to my first love, computer programming.

Why did I start Dynadot? I was building a website for my mother for her vacation house. I was using another registrar, and thought to myself I could write a better control panel. Being young and naive, I didn’t think that much and just jumped in and applied to be a registrar. It is a competitive and difficult industry, but I have enjoyed all these years, and am proud of what we have built.

Ask me anything.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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Hey Todd,

Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer questions from the domain community!

I have some questions for you regarding the scalability and growth behind the success of Dynadot:
  1. Who was your second and third hire and their positions?

  2. How large is your customer support team today?

  3. I remember when your developers handled customer support tickets; do they still handle them? Did you find that it was worthwhile to have developers handling customer support? If they no longer handle them, why the change?

  4. What's next for Dynadot in terms of a new service that you don't already have? For example, a CRM.

  5. How many times have you needed to rebuild your codebase from scratch, if at all?

  6. What's your typical pitch for prospective hires unfamiliar with this industry?
 
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Hi Mr. Todd, honored to meet you. Why the name, Dynadot?

Thank you for this question. Dynadot is a word I made up. Dyna is short for dynamic. Dot is short for domain name (dot-com, dot-org). So Dynadot is meant to imply a dynamic domain name platform. From the beginning I wanted to build a powerful, flexible, automated, well-designed system for domain buyers. So hopefully the “dyna” part of the name captures that feeling a little.

- Todd
 
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I'm in San Mateo.

I've heard Dynadot is in San Mateo.

When things get back to normal, could it be arranged to meet a Dynadot representative for coffee and/or a chat?

<<in the mean time, maybe a open video call for all Dynadot customers to meet the Dynadot team?>>

I met @Joe Styler at a domainer meet up outside of a namescon event, and to this day, I appreciate that single interaction. I'd recommend more person to person experiences with other registrar/industry representatives to other members.

Yes our headquarters is in San Mateo. I would be happy to meet with you when the lockdown ends. Additionally we have been attending more events the past few years. To see if we will be in your area check this page:

https://www.dynadot.com/community/events.html

I agree that having a personal connection makes it much easier to do business. That is a lesson that took me a while to learn. In the early years I was almost entirely focused on software and other technical issues.

- Todd
 
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I am really glad that you are doing this Ask Me Anything. Thank you! Congratulations on the success of your business, and the fine service you offer to domain investors.

The user interface for your service seems to me to work very smoothly. Nice User Experience(y). I wonder how large is your technical staff team?

I am glad that you offer marketplace and auction options on your site, as well as being partners for Afternic and Sedo, so lots of sale choice options for names registered there. Any plans for changes in your marketplace?

Thank you,

Bob

ps loved the story of your mother's vacation house website and why you started!

Yes staffing distribution is a very important question. You can tell a lot about a company based on who is on the payroll. We have 28 engineers, and 4 designers. Our product teams comprise the majority of our staff. The second largest team is the customer service team. Almost all the money we make is invested back into developing our products and supporting our customers.

Thank you for mentioning our Afternic and Sedo integrations. We did the complete integration for both (with fast-transfer). In fact we were amongst the earliest registrars to integrate Afternic and Sedo. Here is a photo of me getting an award from the Afternic team (scroll bottom):

https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2020/dailyposts/20200207.htm

In regards to changes in our marketplace, yes we have complete overhaul of our marketplace currently being coded up by our engineers. We will be implementing a brand new For-Sale landing page, an improved Make-Offer system, and historical sales data.

- Todd
 
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Thanks for sharing your Dynadot story! I see now why you have built a successful Registrar, because you have built it from the beginning!
If some day you leave the company because it becomes too big that you sell it to a group of investors that don't have a clue about coding or running a Registrar, that day will be the end of Dynadot. I hope that case never happens!
But you just have to see what happened with Yahoo (not a registrar ok, but it works here), NetSol... etc.

I agree with you that who owns the company is very important. I get emails every week from people trying to buy Dynadot, or people trying to lend us money. I have never responded to a single one of these emails. My priority is to serve our employees, and to serve our customers. I don’t want to be serving investors.

Dynadot was lucky in that it was slightly profitable from the early years. So each year we took that profit and hired a new person, or bought a new server. We could build the company the right way, with rock solid foundations. Each year we invested in ourselves and the success of our customers. Now our patience is starting to pay off, and I am grateful to say that we have seen impressive growth in the last few years.

Also long term we plan to become an employee owned company.

- Todd
 
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Hey Todd,

Thanks for taking the time out to Share your story here and Appreciate it. I'm a fan of DynaDot and absolutely love it. I've moved my Entire domains portfolio to Dyna and will do so in future.

My only issue is that the site keeps going in Maintenance mode more frequently because of which i have lost some of the Auctions.

Thanks
 
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There was a time i used to have 100's of domains on dynadot,
Really nice to have you open-up on Namepros and tell your story.

I still have few domains with you guys..

Sorry we lost most of your business.

Domain transfers is the great equalizer in our industry. Adding transfers to the domain name system was probably the best decision ICANN ever made. It forces registrars to compete to keep the customer. It gives new registrars a chance to compete against the existing registrars.

- Todd
 
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Nice to know the dynadot story Todd, congratulations !!

Here is my question:
Revenue-wise, how much has the company grown in all these years?

Thank you for your question about our revenue growth. In 2018 we grew 33% and in 2019 we grew 69%.

- Todd
 
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Are you currently a debt-free company?

After transition to employee-owned company,

Any considerations take Dynadot public?

Samer
 
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Hi Todd,

Thanks for this AMA. If you were to start a new business, what would you work on?
 
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Best & worst business decision you have made as Dynadot CEO?

The best decision I ever made is to not take any investor money. Our headquarters is based in San Mateo, which is right next to Silicon Valley. There are about 100 venture capital and private equity firms within a 30 minute drive of us. Let’s just say that it would have been extremely easy for us to get investor money. But then we would have lost control of the company. My goal is not to grow as fast as possible. More than anything I want to build a long term business with solid fundamentals.

My worst decision is to continue writing code for as long as I did. I am an excellent coder, so this seems counterintuitive. However by spending time coding, I was not spending time building our team, and writing our strategy. I finally stopped coding around 2017. Since I stopped is when we have seen the most dramatic growth.

- Todd
 
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Hi Todd, for a long time I have received a virtual barrage of very low ball domain offers as low as $2 or $20 on good quality names. I have asked many times to let us establish minimum offer prices to no avail. Why can't you do that?

P.S. I think your user interface and system is the best of the best. My only issue is all the low-ballers on Dynadot.

Thank you for this valuable feedback. We depend on our customers to tell us how to improve our system. Pretty much every feature in our control panel is the result of a customer suggestion or complaint.

Yes a minimum offer amount is scheduled to be deployed very soon.

- Todd
 
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Hi, Todd glad to know another inspiring story that you have started the business from a room at home. Wow! That's really amazing. My case is also quite familiar to yours. I was 20 when I started domaining, I don't have money to buy a domain so I borrowed money from a friend's credit card. I bought an NLN.com domain for around 150 and sold for $350 after a week and the story begins...

I just want to ask about your marketing strategies, where do you most advertise your products and services.

Thanks
Raj

Glad you had to courage to make that first domain investment. Congratulations!

Most of our marketing is through referrals from existing customers (word of mouth marketing). That is why we invest so much in our product and customer service teams. If we give customers a good experience, they will tell their family and friends.

Outside of that, we also run Google and Facebook ads. For our domain investor segment we attend NamesCon every year. For our retail segment we attend conferences like Techcrunch Disrupt and Start-up Grind.

- Todd
 
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Also, what was your age when you started Dynadot?

Dynadot was started in 2002. At the time I was 29 years old. For the first year it was just me at home, reading technical APIs and coding up the website. I launched the website in 2003.

- Todd
 
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What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?

My favorite “meaning of life” message is from Steve Jobs:


I show this video to my daughters every few years.

- Todd
 
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I love dynadot, I am moving all my domains there as they come up for expiration. The interface, ease of use, pricing are all with the domainer in mind.

I don't have any questions, but wanted to let you know we appreciate your efforts!
 
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Does Covid-19 increased your new registrations?

Thank you for the very relevant question. We did see some weakness in our March numbers, but it was not substantial. April and May are consistent with our pre Covid-19 projections.

- Todd
 
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Hi Todd.

Thank you for this AMA. And thank you for founding and leading one of the best registrars out there.

Some of the questions I had have already been asked, but I still have two.


1. Have you considered opening a Dynadot office in Europe?

2. How tall are you?


Thanks again!
 
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Hi Todd, great to see you here...

Do you have any plan for India, since you have a loyal customer base here?
 
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Hey, Thanks for AMA. I loved your story.

1) I sold a domain in Dynadot but it took 10 days to credit fund in my acocunt. Why so much time ?
2) any plan on decreasing grace delete charges ?

Thank you for your questions. Yes there is often a delay in the credit to your account for marketplace sales. The reason is that we have some fraud checks that we have to perform before we can release the funds. I understand this delay can be frustrating. I can say that the delay used to be even longer. I can also say that we are actively looking for ways to shorten the delay even more.

Regarding grace deletion charges, ICANN requires us to keep our grace deletion volume under 10% of our registration volume. For example if we register 1000 .club domains in a month, we are only allowed to delete 100 of them. Otherwise we will be charged additional fees by the registry. To to keep the volume of grace deletes down, we are forced to charge a fee. Before ICANN added the grace delete quota, we offered free grace deletions.

- Todd
 
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Dynadot has been my favorite registrar since I started domaining last year. It's very easy to navigate and everything on dynadot is swift.

But they did something that surprised recently. Can you please explain why ??

I backordered a domain name using your service, the name was caught but it stated under it that the backorder failed only for the domain to be auctioned as backorder auction.


If it failed as it was stated, why did you guys auction it ???

I apologize for the bad experience you had with our backorders. If you PM me the domain name we can investigate further.

- Todd
 
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Inspiring background story Todd.

Just one question, are we getting a promo soon for .com registrations?
 
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