Mac Nagaswami is the founder of Carvertise, Carvertise is an advertising company that pays everyday drivers to place removable advertisements on their cars. Mac did a Ted talk in Wilmington back in December of 2015, the talk is about buying the domain name Carvertise.
It is a cool story if you do what we do or you are a startup founder. In an age of new gtlds and more choice, .com domain investors will be thrilled that a college kid was only going to go with the .com. He had changed the name of his company from Penguin Ads, to Carvertise, he registered others extensions but noted to the audience that he would not make the change unless he could get the “Golden Domain.”
Mac talked about how .com was the seal of credibility and he had to have it. The problem was that someone else owned Carvertise.com and they were not replying to emails.
Tip of the cap to BrandingTheWeb.com
Volkswagon.com should register volkswagon.green to mitigate credibility damage sustained in the recent diesel emissions scandal. When you’ve grenaded your .com’s reputation, a new gtld offers a path forward.
Volkswagon ???
please pay attention
this is Volkswagen !!!
this video is borng like .com
When you spell it wrong it’s the least of their problems. They’re in big trouble.
That is absolutely extraordinary! Thanks for posting.
Persistence is the key. This entrepreneur will do well. Not only did he realize getting the .com would add credibility to his company, he made the trip to secure it.
Similar stories, with Levin making the trip to get TMZ.com., which he knew he needed in order to create a big brand. Levie getting Box.com as was losing traffic and investors kept telling him box.net wouldn’t fly.
Amen Amen.
Golden Domain, nice put.
Like AM Radio… my Arse.
A lot momentum wasted over a paltry $2,500. Turned on him, equity wanted.
He got the Domain plus 50k Investment… for just 5% of the company.. Do you think that’s bad.?
He procrastinated over the domain for months. Personally I wouldn’t give up equity, when it was only a $2,500 difference.
Well he did get a great deal in the end, 50k for some relatively new start up for 5% and domain name is pretty good. All in all, Dave was really nice and smart guy. Good for both of them. I had my experience with start up, and it can be rough. If it wasn’t for him mom, he wouldn’t get any of that deal. I guess morale is, bring your mom to negotiations!
Good dot com is the seal of credibility.
Good left.Right domain is also the seal of credibility.
Good Left.Right such as Coffee.Club is also a seal of credibility.
How is that a seal of credibility? Most people would never have heard of the extension.
I agree: a Club is a “.club”.
The lesson learned is to own a “golden name” that provides a seal of credibility for your business.
And here we still see some folks throwing their 2nd class domain extension. Please watch the video over and over to get the message.
Bottom line is you need to have the dot com.
Thanks, just convinced me to keep Holotise/Com
I watched the video until the end and this – REALLY – never happens to me in general. I would have entitled your post differently because it is not what I understand from this video. What I understand is that domainers sometimes don’t answer emails because they receive too many: it is not because they don’t want to sell a domain name. The same kind of story happened to a client of mine (with a difference is that he had to pay for his domain name). Excellent video here: a must watch.
.Com stands for “commercial” which encompasses everything that the internet is about. Also, .com offers a “firewall” of sorts against squatters and impersonators. .Com is not a patent or a trademark. However, it does offer many of the same benefits.(i.e. discourages infringement).
True. Your IP lawyer will be fattening up on your blood until the day you get the .com. Also, no thinking-feller’s-company launches without the intuitive domain because you’re always at risk of losing your marketing investments to whomever is operating at .com. If they decide to post an AshleyMadison.com affiliate page or a Calvin and Hobbes fansite, boom, you’re hemorrhaging cash…
Steve
It’s Volkswagen
This is true, making VW.green the most important domain acquisition in their near future.
Lesson learned (for the billionth time):
When people think of the best, most valuable and most desirable thing they can about any topic under the sun, the metaphor/analogy/comparison they instinctively think of is “gold”; in this case the “golden” domain. Hence the reason why “.gold” stands out with only a few as a “golden domain” among the new TLDs, with limitless application, versatility and positive connotation. Were it not for the high pricing, it would probably have many more regs now and be among the most popular. And yes, of course I still also totally support and recognize the value of .com no question about it.
Apps have stolen some of the thunder from .com domains. But I was speaking with one the top VCs in Silicon Valley yesterday. He, as well as Google, Apple, Microsoft, & FB feel apps may be reaching their peaks, as people use only about 1/10 of the ones on their smartphones.
The forecast: apps will be integrated with the mobile web, and great domains will reach higher valuations.
If I built a site or app using drone.club, I’d do everything possible to acquire and lock up droneclub.com to prevent leakage or confusion.
One of the great paradoxes — you launch a site or app with a non .com and it becomes very popular via Facebook, an article on Tech Crunch, etc — and now you have to pay the premium price (at least 6 figures) to get the .com.
I love .me — and I’ve launched many apps with .me. But .com is the gold standard — the “golden domain”.
The golden domain is really the Yellow Pages. Using .com to place an order is much riskier, less secure than picking up the phone and speaking with a live representative of businesses one seeks to transact with.
My 90-year old grandmother has no idea what .com is, my 70-year old mother has never used it. As permanent as .com may seem, the fact that most 3-year olds are a decade away from accessing/identifying with URLS, says the era of .com dominance has reached end-to-end fragmentation.
Not easy to get the .com every time, but it’s still the best kind of domain name you can have.
What Dave wanted is facebook like money. He might have enough for his present lifestyle so any 5 figure amount would not excite him. He’s thinking 5% of Uber or Facebook or Twitter, now that would really change things for me.
I’m a lawyer and I think this kid really failed in negotiations. One, the opening ask was 5% and he didn’t even try offering 2%. Two he asked for far too little cash, evidenced by the other party giving him 5X as much unprompted. Dave had money and he was thinking of possibly becoming really rich.
I used to do structured finance of small growing companies – 99% need more money shortly along the road and the investors gobble up more equity or the owner watches his dream end totally.
Without the two domain names (including the -ing version), there is no “dream,” or there is a dream that is only a dream. The brand name is the foundation, and is the difference between a struggling idea that may be struggling for a very long time and fizzle out or be outpaced by competition vs. being king of the road from the start. So the domain names here alone “deserve” 5% equity.
The “kid” was bold and smart to ask for $10,000 even though the domains alone were worth the 5%, and Dave Butler was being rather nice and generous to say he would give him $50k instead, even though he probably was thinking of the possibility of another Facebook or Uber. That was not an “offer” by Butler, except perhaps in the strictest legal sense of the term that lawyers discuss – that was a gift when he could have accepted the kid’s offer instead.
It’s not for nothing people have to pay both $$ and equity for a domain name – like Candy.com for instance – because the domain name is worth it. If you have the best domain, they are not doing you a favor, you are doing them a favor. Even Facebook.com itself is such a domain. I was in “Facebook” years before the Web and domain names, and no doubt Zuckerberg encountered the same kind of “Facebook” I did before he embarked upon it online. When they only had “TheFacebook.com,” you can be sure the domain owner would have doing them the favor by letting them buy it for 5% equity or more. I’ll bet they got it cheap, though (anyone know?).
Just do a search for any topic and see how many com sites come up, and then compare to net, or any other and it is obvious you want a com url if you want to be found through a search.
Here you go:
Rick Schwartz: linkedin . com/in/rischwartz
Candy.com $3MM plus royalty and 12.5% equity
Property.com $4MM plus 5% equity
Punchbowl.com to MyPunchbowl.com Cash plus stock.
It’s not that these buyers were bad negotiators, it’s that these domains were worth that and Rick was doing them the favor by letting them buy it for reasonable compensation. If you own the prime land the oil or the gold is on, you don’t pay someone else for the privilege of letting them exploit and profit from it, they pay you.
https://youtu.be/BMESlAClXqE
more than anything im surprised a millionaire domainer would use their actual home address in whois. i wouldn’t ever do that and im no millionaire.