To start, how did you discover and get involved in the domain industry?
After the sale of my media company in 2007, I started angel investing in Seattle-based startups. I met a ton of great, motivated founders with fantastic ideas, but what struck me was that these talented people all had subpar domain names.
Often their domain names had hyphens, extra words, or extra letters. These negative characteristics made their companies appear less professional at a minimum. As an investor, it gave me pause because if they couldn’t get a decent domain name, how were they going to overcome the many hurdles involved in starting a business?
When I asked them about why they chose their domain name, I would hear stories about how hard it was to contact the person who owned the domain name they wanted, how high the asking price was, or that the entire process was opaque and hard to understand.
Having purchased a couple of domain names in my publishing career, I decided to investigate the domain name industry so that I could help startup founders navigate these waters...
read more
After the sale of my media company in 2007, I started angel investing in Seattle-based startups. I met a ton of great, motivated founders with fantastic ideas, but what struck me was that these talented people all had subpar domain names.
Often their domain names had hyphens, extra words, or extra letters. These negative characteristics made their companies appear less professional at a minimum. As an investor, it gave me pause because if they couldn’t get a decent domain name, how were they going to overcome the many hurdles involved in starting a business?
When I asked them about why they chose their domain name, I would hear stories about how hard it was to contact the person who owned the domain name they wanted, how high the asking price was, or that the entire process was opaque and hard to understand.
Having purchased a couple of domain names in my publishing career, I decided to investigate the domain name industry so that I could help startup founders navigate these waters...
read more
