Almost a decade ago, I hand-registered a two-word .com related to web browsing and the Internet.
It’s a cool, brandable name that can be used in other industries as well.
A few days ago, I found out that a start-up in the domain industry registered two other TLDs and after a little research I found out that they launched a product by that name.
Incidentally, the company’s CEO happened to be one hop away in terms of business acquaintances, thanks to LinkedIn.
I had nothing to lose but ask to be introduced, so I did. The initial communication was short but quickly expanded into lengthy exchanges.
The CEO has been around the block for a while but didn’t seem to share my opinion that they need the dot com and said that they will do ok with what they have.
The truth is, that any TLD will do the job but only the dot com will do it right.
My asking price was in accordance to my investment: I don’t flip domains for change and I’m very experienced in identifying a domain’s potential.
Despite my offer to exchange the domain for interest in the company, I was turned down. It seems that the CEO is confident that there will be no traffic trickling to my dot com once their product is adopted by millions of people on the Internet.
At that point, I knew that any further attempt to pitch my domain to the company would be a waste of time. So I thanked him and we parted ways.
One thing is certain: he lost the opportunity to get the domain at a reasonable, “friendly” price, because in the future – once the traffic arrives to the dot com – my price will more than double.
That’s fine for an insulated, small business, but if he is looking forward to startup capital, venture investment firms are savvy these days . . . it is essential to own the non-hyphen dot com, imo.
Louise – I agree, the decision is solely based on the personal “ego” of the CEO and not using widely accepted norms and procedures. The company wants to eventually sell out to the big guys.
This is good information for new domainers.
I just commented on another blog:
The lock investors have on domains has affected the market, according to my observation. People would rather register crazy hyphen domains with hack extensions than cave in to what they view as “the domain syndicate.”
It’s a tough market.
the same thing happened to me, this year I was going to launch a product called “Reejoy” so I was looking for dot com of this domain but it was unavailable that time So I contacted domain owner of Reejoy dot com to acquire that domain but he was not interested to sell that domain, I was prepared to pay $x,xxx (mid range) but he didn’t reply to my offers,
after searching I found that Reebok is doing some commercial with Reejoy, So I think the domain owner is somehow connected with Reebok and a huge company like Reebok is not going to sell a domain for $x,xxx.
that day I learnt a lesson “before launching your product secure your domain”
Being a smart guy like u I don’t understand why you bother to contact the CEO. I guess you were curious. 🙂
Here’s my advice, the traffic to their urls will likely create a trickle to the .com, but you should also set up an email account on the .com you have. Make a catchall where anyword@thedomain.com gets forwarded to your regular email. If they are using the .net or .org for their emailing too, you will likely get some emails by people who just use the .com. Then you can forward the emails to the company and let them know what’s happening. If they weren’t interested in the domain before, this might change things.
Poor Uncle – When you can start at the top, that’s where you should inquire at. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time (no HR, BizDev, IT departments).
Domain Report – That’s cool. Currently the domain is parked but this will change soon 😉