Thoughts

You Shouldn’t Always be a Silly Goose

I spent some time Saturday chatting domain names with a friend who has been a very successful entrepreneur, building a “unicorn” online business for which he acquired both the category and exact match domain name. We were discussing the clear delineation between founders/CEOs who intuitively understand the exponential value and strategic importance of owning their exact match or category domain name and those that do not. He gave a fantastic analogy; If you see two geese, side by side, and they look somewhat alike but one is the “golden goose” who keeps laying “golden eggs” and the other is the ordinary goose that lays ordinary eggs, which would you choose? The answer is obvious. Having your domain that defines your industry and matches your product or brand name is the gift that keeps giving, across every facet of the business. After recent transactions for Icon*com, Fuse*com, Odyssey*com, we will have several more deals closing in the next several days and weeks that showcase management that “gets it”. This week, I heard from the CEO of a company that “got it” but did not move fast enough, only to get an email from me informing them in good faith that their domain had been sold, and the CEO was “devastated”. We often tell clients that once these assets transact, it is often forever.

Good Disruptions

I got a fascinating email this morning from my golf club, addressing an “extraordinary natural phenomenon”. After 17 years underground, Brood Cicadas are set to emerge, which won’t happen again until 2042. It went on to talk about the potential disruption to the club that could occur. I immediately thought 3 things; 1) how cool Cicada’s and their loud sounds are; 2) of one of my favorite Grateful Dead lines from Terrapin Station, “crickets and cicadas’ sing, a rare and different tune”; and 3) how this was an analogy to the current climate we are in for the most premium domain names. The birth of AI and the transformation that it is leading to, at levels I have only seen with the Internet and Iphone, plus the emergence of Bitcoin and crypto as a credible complement if not replacement to world currency, are both as rare economic driving events as the cicadas are to nature. We are just beginning to enter a loud and disruptive time for the importance of the most valuable domain name assets.