Why Your Domain Is Your Credibility in the AI Era

0:00 Domains have really discontinued to go up and to the right in terms of their value

0:04 to a business. And because of that, that's driven the value in the aftermarket.

0:09 My guest today is Matt Overman, Chief Revenue Officer at Identity Digital, the company behind

0:15 the world's largest portfolio of top-level domains with roughly 300 TLDs and supporting more than

0:22 28 million domains. One of the topics that we brought up that I think is really relevant

0:30 to almost anyone is what you've called the trust recession with the noise and the volume of AI

0:40 generated everything. What do you think is happening there and how does that impact the

0:45 domain world? AI has proliferated all aspects of our life and you mentioned a bit in the intro,

0:52 but it's becoming indistinguishable often. You can literally just say, copy this website,

0:57 make it look exactly like that, same aesthetic everything, and just put like this content in it.

1:02 What you're trying to do that they trust you and you're building programs that are honestly

1:08 win-win programs for them, showing up in person really does one life. I've been seeing that trend

1:14 quite a bit with CROs, CMOs that I'm interviewing. The old school is the new school, in-person,

1:21 personal connections, relationships. I think there's been so much saturation. I don't think

1:27 it's all about comments about what industry you're in and being consistent.

1:39 Matt, you've been in domains for almost 15 years running auctions at name jets, premium sales to

1:46 a portfolio of 300 TLDs. What does the job look like today that would have been unrecognizable

1:53 to you five years ago? Yeah, a lot. Anthony, first, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

2:02 A lot is different and it's really changed dramatically in the last few years more than

2:07 anything. As with many, I think, that are on your podcast and just in sales in general,

2:14 AI has really transformed many aspects of our business. There's less busy work

2:22 than ever. We have AI automating a lot of the things behind the scenes, interactions with CRM.

2:28 Many companies are using that for prospecting. We have a lot more time to focus on the relationship

2:34 side of it. That strategy and relationship side matters more than ever. It always has,

2:39 but we're spending more and more time on that. That's been a big unlock, I would say.

2:45 The distribution channel that we have and go to market through is very different. Years ago,

2:52 it was only through traditional registrars and hosting companies. That's where you would go to

2:58 buy domains, where users buy domains today. It takes all shapes and sizes, vibe coding platforms,

3:04 cloud hosting. There's new platforms launching every day, SaaS platforms, where domains are

3:09 natively embedded into them. The go-to-market channels that we use and what we would consider

3:16 a channel partner are very, very different. Even who buys domains and how they navigate them.

3:23 We have agents now starting to go and make choices through prompts, through cloud code or

3:30 co-pilot. People are asking their agents to go navigate and recommend domain choices to them or

3:37 go actually take the step and buy them. It's not just humans buying it. It could be agents

3:42 doing it on their behalf. Those were all very unforeseen many, many years ago. Even why people

3:50 buy domains, fundamentally a big chunk of that people buy from an investment standpoint. When

3:57 I started 20 years ago, you would buy domains from a type in traffic keyword domains really mattered.

4:05 Flights.com, things that people would type in and expect to find results for that particular name.

4:11 Now it's all about brand and the type of domains that people buy. It's very, very different. It's

4:18 brand-centric. It's less about the type in traffic or the SEO or now AEO capabilities of that and

4:26 more about brand. Brand matters more than ever. One of the topics that we brought up that I

4:35 think is really relevant to almost anyone is what you've called the trust recession with the noise

4:45 and the volume of AI generated everything. What do you think is happening there and how does that

4:51 impact the domain world too? Yeah, I think AI has proliferated all aspects of our life. You

5:01 mentioned it a bit in the intro, but it's becoming indistinguishable often what is AI generated versus

5:07 what is human generated. I think we're going to see increasingly a movement towards people

5:15 gravitating towards things that are brands or communication styles or even ads that are a

5:23 little bit more authentic where they can actually understand and trust what the offer is. When

5:31 everyone has access to the same tools and the same, you know, Claude's doing a lot of the writing for

5:37 many companies, how do you distinguish between what is real or what is more authentic and then

5:44 taking it a step further to our industry, domain names are one of those points that you can control

5:52 where it is your brand. It is that sort of trust anchor where you establish a connection to your

5:59 user. It's the call to action. Ultimately, when you are sending people to your website, sending

6:05 people to your digital identity in email, that's something that you control and people take it very

6:12 seriously how you protect that. You know, obviously there's the whole doubt, the negative security

6:18 side of it and how bad links and phishing and different sort of bad actors use that lack of

6:28 trust I think that people have or the inability to distinguish rather to fool you into clicking

6:35 on links and from our standpoint, like having like a very clear brand and using that, using the

6:41 domain name clearly in your advertising and your materials and being consistent is really key in

6:48 terms of building that trust. There's all sorts of scams that are run where, you know, you can't see

6:53 what you're clicking on and people get fooled. The toll road scams I think are a really common one

6:58 that people are aware of over the last year. Yeah, and I think what it used to be, so I started

7:06 LeanScale in 2021 and something that was very important was to get a website that was designed

7:12 really well. If I'm showing up with a deck or a PDF or anything, like we had to make an investment

7:19 to make sure that things looked and felt professional. Like this company was real.

7:24 Now you can vibe code that in two seconds and you can make it look, you can literally just say,

7:30 copy this website, make it look exactly like that, same aesthetic everything and just put like

7:34 this content in it. So some of those barriers aren't there anymore, but you can't fake a domain,

7:40 right? You can't. I mean, there's a lot of different choice, but everyone has those

7:47 sort of same tools in terms of being able to do that. As you mentioned, I over a weekend, I'm not

7:54 technical. I've been on the commercial side, operational side for a long time, never an engineer,

7:58 never in product. I can vibe code a business over a weekend and you can take it to market in any

8:05 number of ways, but a domain name, every domain name is unique and how you actually want to

8:12 convey yourself is really attached to that name. It never ceases to amaze me how many people will

8:22 launch initially on a third level domain or someone else's brand or link to a Facebook page,

8:29 or even if they're building a website, you know, in the early days with Squarespace or Wix using

8:36 their name dot Squarespace dot com or dot Wix dot com where you're actually not,

8:41 you might have part of your brand there, but you're really building brand equity

8:45 for that other platform and it's not the actual domain name that you control. It's not tied to

8:50 your email. It might be that's the site and then you're sending from a totally different email,

8:54 a Gmail, and there's no consistency. It doesn't build trust when you're talking to someone from

9:00 a Gmail address and you can't actually tie back that that person is associated with this website.

9:05 So the domain name is really the the connective point where you can have your website sent on it.

9:11 It can be tied to your email when you're driving traffic from an advertisement. It lands on that

9:16 site. It's the way that the users that show up there can trust that it is who we thought it was,

9:22 said it was, whether you're a big company, a small company. Yeah, so it's really central to

9:28 sort of all aspects of that. I'm curious your perspective. What part matters? Is it,

9:34 hey, the dot com is still like the park avenue of domains or is it more important to be

9:42 consistent and just have a brand that lives in the same place? In terms of building trust with

9:50 your market, are there certain things that signal more trust than others? Yeah, it's a great question.

9:56 I mean, certainly dot com is still the most well known and if you go to most of the fortune 500

10:04 companies, you're going to find that their primary site lives on a dot com. But most

10:10 companies that are starting out small businesses, they don't have the luxury of being able to go

10:15 get a one word dot com. Those have been taken for a long time and they cost often millions of dollars

10:20 and some will raise money and eventually do that. But what has transformed over the last 2015 to

10:28 20 years is there's an incredible amount of different naming choices and you can get the

10:34 one word name that perfectly describes your brand name with something meaningful to the right of the

10:40 dot that conveys either what you do, lean scale dot team. I mean, that is the business that you guys

10:46 are in in terms of helping to go and work with companies and be part of their team and extension

10:53 of their team. It conveys sort of an extension, your business model as an extension of their team.

11:00 Dot AI is another one that has become incredibly popular. It is a trust signal or very much a

11:09 both building trust that we are a legit AI focused company and tells you clearly what

11:16 type of company it is. That is a domain. It's actually a country code. We run the technology

11:22 for it. It's for the country of Anguilla. It is really blown up over the last couple of years

11:30 with the emergence of AI. But it's absolutely a trust signal for companies in that space.

11:36 There's many companies that gravitate to that over a dot com. They want to signify we are an AI

11:42 company. I don't think it's all about com. It's about what industry you're in and being consistent.

11:50 Having a shorter domain, there's a lot of different types of domains. A domain that

11:55 fits whether you're an individual or a business that fits your personality. There's a lot of

12:01 creativity that comes, but it really comes back to that brand consistency. You mentioned a few

12:08 earlier, and that's super helpful of hey, here's some things to do. You have some options. Are

12:13 there any major red flags that might not be as obvious to people when they're thinking about

12:21 the domain to choose or how they're leveraging their domain? In terms of red flags, I think it's

12:28 more like when you have a domain, how you put it out in the wild, or when you choose not to.

12:37 Certainly one of the things that we've seen, and I know that you've probably experienced this as

12:42 well, many individuals, small businesses, events, brands have a hard time making that offline to

12:50 online connection. I've received wedding invitations or seen out-of-home advertising where there's a

12:59 bit.ly link, or there's a the not forward slash a bunch of stuff forward slash the wedding name,

13:07 and it might be a hundred character URL, and it's on a piece of paper, and I'm expected to

13:15 type that in and somehow get it right to get to the site. People don't always make the connection

13:21 that a short, concise, memorable domain name is often your best gateway to take someone

13:28 from offline to online. Imagine on a billboard, or I always drive by them in the Seattle area,

13:35 I drive by the sign as I'm leaving the parking garage at SeaTac and it's the airport, and it's

13:40 this bit.ly link is the call to action. If you have any questions or comments here,

13:44 go to bit.ly forward slash a bunch of stuff. That's just a generic short link. I'm supposed

13:51 to remember that as the place that I'm driving by here. It's the offline to online bridge. Certainly

13:58 QR codes play a role in that, but that requires you to put your phone up and scan it, and as you

14:04 actually scan the QR code, you can only see sort of the root domain, and if it's going to a Facebook

14:09 page, you're only going to see facebook.com. That doesn't tell you where you're actually going to end

14:13 up, so that doesn't build trust in terms of I want to click on this and go forward. If you're sitting

14:21 and looking at a restaurant menu, maybe you can trust that they're putting the right one here

14:24 because I'm about to go on, but if it's just out in the wild, how do you actually know where you're

14:29 going to end up? So being really consistent and purposeful about how you present your brand and

14:34 make it easy for users to see it, to know what they're clicking on, and to again use that sort

14:41 of branding opportunity as someone's seen the domain name and clicking on it to re-establish,

14:47 build consistency there. I think it's critical. That is absolutely hilarious that there is a

14:54 billboard with a bitly link on it. Next time in Seattle, I'm going to be looking out for that

14:58 because I can't believe that. If you pay attention to it, it happens far more often than you would

15:06 believe, far more often than not. One thing that I've been seeing quite a bit recently,

15:14 I've fallen a little bit victim to this too, so everybody's powered with Claude now. It's

15:20 pretty easy to build web pages, landing pages, blog posts, and anything. You can build things

15:26 really, really quickly. One of the most popular ways to share them is to deploy it on Netlify

15:33 or Vercel. You take the asset, deploy it there, and go share it with people. What I think

15:39 people really miss is if you're doing that, you're really compromising quite a bit of your

15:47 AEO and SEO when you're sending so many assets and materials out that way.

15:54 Can you share the magnitude of how detrimental that could be?

16:00 Essentially, in terms of going to market on just a third-party platform as opposed to putting it out.

16:08 Yeah, if you're sending materials out, yeah, exactly.

16:12 Yeah, I think you hit it right there just in terms of your ability to be found in search,

16:20 whether it's AEO or traditional SEO, publishing anything that's not on your own domain name,

16:28 you're not going to necessarily rank as well. It's harder to be discovered.

16:34 From that trust standpoint, being able to put it on a domain name, "This is my business. This

16:39 is where my content lives," and have that be one of the signals that the LLMs are looking for,

16:47 all sorts of stuff. A trusted URL is a component of it. Obviously, the content matters as well.

16:55 What we're seeing within that, companies, you mentioned a few, Netlify, Vercel,

17:01 Replit, Lovable, those are a lot of the platforms that I talked about in the beginning that have

17:07 sort of come closer to our industry. Those are distribution channels for us now. When they

17:13 started a handful of years ago, they allowed through a few different steps that you could

17:17 connect a domain to it. Currently, they are actual domain resellers. They make it very easy.

17:24 Some of the easiest ways to buy a domain actually in our industry are now through two clicks. You

17:28 can go to Vercel, rapid search, buy a domain, two clicks, attach it to your project and you're

17:34 published. They recognized on their end that their customers want that and that they don't need to

17:40 necessarily monetize domain names to a meaningful degree. It's sort of an adjacent product. That's

17:46 not their core business is selling domains, but allowing their builders to publish their projects,

17:53 their apps, their sites in a really easy and clean way on their own domains is just a value add. It's

17:59 a point of friction to not allow that. They've just embedded natively embedded domain registration

18:07 and all the bells and whistles with that into their platforms. Seeing that customers expect that now,

18:13 they don't want to go out and just share a random link on a lovable project or share a file that

18:20 they generate in Cloud Code, putting it up and actually having it out. That is really your first

18:27 step of the go to market by publishing it on the web on a unique domain. This is not just something

18:33 that I was coding over the weekend. I'm publishing it for the world to see. It is that first step in

18:38 terms of building credibility on the conversation we already had. Are you seeing the economics of

18:45 domains changing a little bit? I'm guessing, I'm assuming because there's so much more volume,

18:52 people are building more, snagging up domains more. Is it making them more expensive for the good ones

18:59 or because there's more accessibility and more diversity? Is it easier to get domains? What are

19:05 you seeing in the marketplace of domains? Yeah, it's a great question. I think for

19:11 the more premium domains and whether that is in dot com and the one word dot coms or other

19:17 extensions like AI we mentioned and actually within any TLD, I can give some examples where

19:22 they're really semantically relevant. The better names are more valuable now than they've ever

19:28 been. There's been times throughout the history of the industry, I think the history of the industry,

19:33 since I've been involved, which is 15, 20 years now, where domains where the sentiment in the

19:39 market or speculation was, you know, is something going to disrupt the value of domain names when

19:45 apps were launched? Is this going to take people away? Are they not going to go to websites? Is

19:50 it going to devalue? And domains have really discontinued to go up and to the right in terms

19:54 of their value to a business. And because of that, that's driven the value in the aftermarket,

20:00 the pricing in the aftermarket. You know, the best domains, regardless of the extension,

20:06 are worth more today than they've ever they've ever been. So that makes it that makes it harder

20:13 to go out and get the most premium domains, but there's also more choice than ever at the same

20:18 time. There's hundreds of extensions. If you don't want to pay for a one word dot com or a one word

20:24 dot AI or some of the more expensive ones, you can find a top level domain that has a little bit less

20:30 demand that's relevant to your industry and still get a really, you know, clear keyword that then

20:38 adds, you know, to the right of the dot, some specificity about the industry you're in and not

20:43 necessarily pay an arm and a leg for that. So there's more choice right now. And actually,

20:49 we're about to embark on sort of the next wave of naming within the Internet. There's a whole

20:55 another wave of top level domains that are going to enter the market. The process is running right

21:00 now and they'll enter the market late twenty seven twenty eight. So top level domains that don't

21:05 exist today will exist in the next couple of years. Ones like agent is one that a lot of people have

21:12 have talked about or some of the Web three tlds dot BTC terms that weren't quite as popular and

21:20 didn't get created back in 2011 during the last round will come to market, you know, circa

21:27 twenty twenty eight. And so there'll be even more availability for people, more more choice, you

21:32 know, to be able to find the domain that aligns with your industry, with your market, the most

21:37 valuable names in any of those given namespaces and will continue to go up in value, you know,

21:44 owning your own sort of sovereign digital identity has never been more important.

21:49 I'm not super familiar with how that process works. Could you walk me and the audience through

21:59 how do those get decided on? So how did I maybe take it for granted? I didn't know when dot team

22:05 became available or dot AI. But what's the process of those coming into the market, getting approved,

22:13 being available? What does it look like? Well, dot AI just to hit on one of the categories, any two

22:21 character top level domain is a country code top level domain. And so every two character one that

22:27 you see out in the in the world is attached to a country. Dot AI is for Anguilla. TV is associated

22:36 with Tuvalu. You have dot DE is for Germany. UK is for UK. Some of them are very geographic specific

22:44 where they're used by registrants in that country. And some of them have been essentially rebranded

22:52 either purposefully or organically to be a more generic term. dot CO, it's the Colombian

22:58 extension, but it's used as some order.com. It's kind of a generic domain. Certainly people in

23:04 Colombia buy and register and utilize dot CO names, but people around the world do as well. Same with

23:11 that AI. And so those are all governed where there's they're just assigned to that particular

23:16 country. And they're administered by that country. Anything that is three characters or more

23:21 has been, you know, a few exceptions like dot gov and dot edu. And some of the more restricted one

23:28 are generic top level domains. And they go back to the really to the mid 80s with com and net being

23:34 the first two. And there's been some that have been released in the early 2000s. Dot travel was

23:40 an earlier one. And then the first large round were the governing organization for numbers and

23:48 names. An organization called ICANN released around were many more, hundreds more of open generic top

23:56 level domains and brand top level domains were brought to market in around 2011, 2012. And that's

24:03 when the likes of dot team and dot live and dot life dot app dot online dot XYZ. Many that you

24:11 would see in the market today were all created back then this next round. So that was into that

24:18 closed in 2012. And it's taken 14 years to reopen another round where where companies could go

24:26 through all the steps to apply for new top level domains. So that process has been running for the

24:31 last year. Application window closed in August of this year. And really in the next couple months,

24:37 we're going to figure out who ended up applying for what and which ones had multiple companies

24:44 that have thrown their applications in foreign applications are both financial applications and

24:51 heavy technological tech requirements to be able to operate them. And so that's all going to play

24:56 out over the next couple months. And we'll start seeing some of those domains launch in early 28,

25:02 I think is the approximate timeline. So it's an exciting time in our industry.

25:09 How do you buy them? Is it a lottery system? Like how do you go buy up the Apple dot agent,

25:14 Nike dot agent? How does that process work of who gets to buy them? There will be a company

25:22 that ends up getting awarded dot agent. And in all likelihood, that will be that will go to auction.

25:29 So to actually run the namespace for dot agent and administer all the whole, you know, any

25:37 something dot agent, there's a company that will operate that that's what our company runs 270 of

25:42 those today will run more in the future, but there will be a number of companies that throw their

25:48 hat in the ring and spent $227,000 to apply and qualified through through all the application

25:57 process. And if there are multiple applicants, which for dot agent that's expected to be one

26:01 with multiple applicants, it's been one of the ones that have been talked about quite a bit in

26:06 our industry. If there are multiple applicants, then they will end up ultimately in an auction.

26:11 And the highest bidder will pay to operate that namespace. And so whoever ends up winning that

26:19 and administering it will then bring it to market at some point, 2028 or later, depending on how

26:24 long that takes, and we'll release it where you and I and anyone else can go buy whatever name dot

26:32 agent. Now you gave some examples like Apple dot agent Nike dot agent. There are all of these as

26:39 they go to market, the hundreds that will get released will run through a variety of launch

26:45 phases. One of those phases is called the sunrise period that's protected for trademark holders.

26:51 So the likes of Nike and Apple and any any major brands that have trademarks have the ability to

26:56 go claim their names in a period prior to the general availability. You know, the idea is that

27:03 brands can protect their brand names, and it's not for for you and I to go grab their names and do

27:10 nefarious things with them. You know, they we want the brands to ultimately own their names and to

27:15 use them. Some of those companies will not just go out and buy names in a generic namespace like a dot

27:20 agent, but they might apply for their own. In the last round, we had many companies apply for their

27:26 own brand names. And if you think about that as sort of like that, that trust anchor, Amazon was

27:32 one they they had to jump through a lot of hoops to get that Amazon and work with the people of the

27:39 Amazon region in South America to sort of unlock the ability. But Amazon is one that they use

27:45 heavily. They have that AWS as well. And we don't you and I don't see a lot of that that doesn't make

27:51 it out into the to their sort of customer facing advertising or products, but they use it heavily

27:57 in terms of like their own internal systems. And so from like a trust standpoint, a trusted link,

28:03 you know, if there is a domain that you see that is on a dot AWS,

28:07 you are certain that it's legitimate. And it's been administered by the team at Amazon. And it's

28:14 largely for internal, although they did run a campaign, I think it was get on if I remember

28:19 correctly get on dot AWS, and they blanketed the entire New York City subway system with sort of

28:26 advertising wrappers down in the subways of its get on AWS. So you see them occasionally the brand

28:31 TLDs that are used in the wild like that. That sounds like it'd be a lot more effective than

28:36 a bitly link on your subway campaign. Yeah, it was more than five years ago. And I still I think I

28:44 have the domain right get on AWS. But yeah, it was memorable and easier to type in and bitly.

28:50 What was it? Yeah, well, it's a fascinating process. And I think it's something that

28:58 you know, it dictates quite a bit of business owners, people going to market for the first time.

29:05 I definitely I can share my story, I knew I wanted to name the company lean scale.

29:12 So then immediately then I go to look for domains. lean scale.com was taken, but nobody was doing

29:19 anything with it. So the website was, there was nothing there was just a blank page. And I was

29:24 like, Okay, let me look around at different ones. And then I dot team was recommended. I thought,

29:28 Hey, that just like you mentioned, that's reflective of what we do how we do it.

29:33 Unfortunately, two months after that, then the lean scale.com folks launched a website. And then

29:39 it's been a very confusing thing ever since I've reached out to them directly to try to buy their

29:42 domain and everything. Anyway, so it's like this impacts your ability to go to market so much. And

29:53 when you make a choice, you're almost here stuck with it. But you're making a pretty big commitment.

30:00 You are. And I think like, it's not uncommon, you're not the only business that has the same

30:05 name as another, as another company. I mean, there's, there's really big notable examples,

30:11 and how many how many brands are named united in some capacity, and there's only one united,

30:16 united.com, you take different permutations. And, and I don't think it's as much that there's one

30:22 right answer in terms of how you need to name, there's different extensions that resonate,

30:26 but it's the it's the consistency and actually driving that call to action, ultimately back to

30:33 your domain name and a place that you control. This is something we talk about.

30:37 That's not really a, it's not just an identity digital driven message, but just for our industry,

30:45 really, the power of actually owning your own space, where as long as you pay the registration fee,

30:51 no one's ever going to take that domain away from you, you own the content that's on it,

30:57 the permissions of how you want to allow how you want to use it for email, what you want to host on

31:02 it can't be taken away. We've seen examples in recent times, whether it's X handles that have

31:10 mysteriously been taken away, or platforms that shut down, if I'm going to date myself and go

31:18 back over 10 years to vine major short form video creator platform closed almost overnight. And all

31:25 of those major early days vine creators had to port their audience that they built up on that platform

31:31 had to pivot to another one, if that's all you're doing is trying to attract customers at a third

31:37 party platform. I'm not saying you don't use that that's where the demand is that's where the

31:42 audience is you have to go be on the various platforms. But it always boggles my mind when

31:48 those users aren't ultimately trying to drive a call to action back to a space, a website that

31:56 they own a domain name, ultimately that they own, where it doesn't matter, you might change what

32:03 you want to put on that you might want to just redirect it somewhere. But it's a it's a, it is

32:08 that call to action that you will, again, as long as you pay your registration fee will forever own,

32:14 and no one's going to take away from from you. And it might be your primary website, it might be

32:19 your foundation site, it might be that it's an aggregator, right? Lincoln bio platforms have

32:25 become a thing, not just because Instagram only allowed one link in the bio, but that notion of

32:30 actually aggregating all of the things that you want to share with people in one place, your link

32:36 tree, there's tons of the platforms now, many of which have custom domains integrated into it.

32:42 So we run dot bio and dot social, there's others like dot link, but it's not uncommon for someone

32:47 to have, you know, you might have Anthony dot bio, and that's your call that you have a link to your

32:52 Twitter page to your to lean scale dot team there to the, you know, latest funny video that you

32:58 created your all your podcast archives, you can put it all in one place. And you're sharing that

33:03 out as opposed to find me on these 19 different platforms. And here's all the the icons and they

33:10 come and go or you get one of them hacked, and you lose it. And so that it's just back to that

33:16 consistency and sharing that one sort of that one link that can be the central point can be trusted.

33:24 Well, I think there's not I think I'm certain there's a huge under appreciation for the system

33:31 that's in place. And also just the governance of this, so you can have a place that you own,

33:38 it's consistent. I think a lot of businesses take it for granted. I I'd like to get into a little

33:47 bit what the go to market looks like for ID, how you have hundreds and hundreds of partners,

33:56 I'm assuming channel partners are a big part of the go to market motion. But how are you going to

34:01 market? Are you waiting for these big events where they're launching new things? Is that a big part

34:06 of the strategy? How does it look like to go to market Friday? It's it's a great question. And

34:13 I would say it's unique. We're unique in our industry for now, notwithstanding all the new

34:19 extensions I just mentioned that are going to come out were the by far the largest portfolio applicant

34:25 in that we run hundreds of these. And so that presents a lot of really fun and interesting

34:33 opportunities for how you go to market and a lot of challenges, too. We have essentially 270

34:39 different products that we're trying to sell at a limited number of storefronts. And those storefronts

34:46 are expanding. There's there's new distribution points. But we still have a lot of different

34:50 products. We're kind of to use an analogy to consumer. We're sort of the proctor and gamble

34:57 of domain names. We have we have hundreds, hundreds of products. And, you know, at Walmart or a big

35:02 store, how do we figure out how to how to merchandise them and which ones to run co-marketing

35:08 with? It's it's we're never short on creative things that we can do. My teams run all the all

35:15 the partnerships. We are almost entirely a channel, a channel go to market play. We have over 500

35:22 partners. Many of them are existing partners. So we have a whole channel team that's running

35:26 programs with those big notable domain registrars like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace is a

35:34 registrar now. And how can we merchandise our products at the point of sale there? And then

35:39 a whole other team handling new partnerships and sort of the expanding channel and expanding

35:46 landscape for domain distribution, the vercells of the world that we talked about. Our channel is

35:52 getting quite broad now where you might go to find some form of web presence. More often than not,

36:00 you're going to have a domain name offering at the very least a simple way to connect a domain.

36:05 But now more often than not, the ability to buy and easily configure one too. So all of the website

36:10 builders, vibe coding platforms hosting increasingly even registration company and corporation companies,

36:18 you know, a legal zoom, a Zen business, you're setting up an LLC, you can also set up a website

36:23 and buy a domain. So what distribution looks like today is very, very different than what it did

36:30 before. I would say just to kind of put a pin in your question, we lead with certain TLDs that have

36:36 maybe a little bit more inherent demand. And so we have programs and promotional programs that

36:44 incentivize the sale of some of those. But ultimately, what we're trying to do at any

36:50 of our partners with so many extensions is to show the right name at the right time.

36:56 I'm not expecting that GoDaddy is going to plaster on their homepage.taxi or.plumbing or even.team

37:05 in place of .com. But if someone is coming and they're looking for something that is relevant

37:11 to one of those searches, and they're looking for something and they type in AI. AI should be

37:16 shown or other tech related TLDs or they're searching for something food related. There

37:23 are TLDs, I mean, we run .restaurant, other companies have .bar, you know, there's food and

37:28 beverage related ones, .menu. And so how you serve the name at the right time based on a platform,

37:37 you know, their domain search or their product search and how you bundle it with the other

37:43 products. I mean, we sell through many partners now where the core offering is not a domain name.

37:49 Someone is there because they're building an app or they're buying a website and they're adding a

37:53 domain, not as the first step, but later on in the process. And so if someone has just built a

38:00 yoga website, you better believe we want .yoga or .studio or something akin to that to be one of the

38:09 offerings. You know, our incentives are aligned with our partners there. They want to find a

38:14 relevant name that's very associated with the product that their customer has just self-selected.

38:21 And if they can find a really good name that matches their studio name .studio,

38:26 they're ultimately going to get a stickier overall offering and a higher retention rate. And

38:31 that's really the name of the game for us. We're trying to find ways that not just we can sell a

38:36 bunch of domains, but we can sell high value ones that are going to renew, that are going to retain.

38:41 Our model is a recurring revenue model at a micro scale, you know, 10 and 20 and $30 domain

38:49 transactions at hundreds of thousands of times, millions of times. That's how it works.

38:57 Has AI played a big role in helping that matching process recommendation engine?

39:03 Are there other areas you're leveraging AI as well, both on product and go to market?

39:08 Absolutely. And not just us, but our partners as well. I mean, the way that products are served up

39:16 and those search results are heavily influenced by AI recommendations now. So how you would go to

39:23 any of the partners I've just mentioned and search for a product or a name, it's heavily AI

39:27 assisted now. Sometimes you can choose a legacy search or an AI driven one, but it's always

39:34 working behind the scenes to some degree. How we price names, I mean, our whole pricing engine,

39:39 we have 270 extensions, like I mentioned, with many price points that we've tested in terms

39:46 of first year promotional pricing across each of these, across 500 or more partners, you get down

39:52 to, that's many unique cohorts. And so we're heavily leveraging machine learning and AI to

40:02 analyze all the data, ultimately trying to figure out the ones that are the most price elastic and

40:06 what the perfect entry point is to maximize the lifetime value. So all of our pricing engines,

40:15 in terms of go to market and how we design programs and content and logo, I mean,

40:20 AI certainly plays a major role. And on the sales side, I mean, I started, I think our conversation

40:27 a while ago, we've automated a lot behind the scenes and we do from an SDR standpoint as well,

40:34 but increasingly are really leaning into the human side of it. I mean, from a partner standpoint,

40:42 many of these partners are ones that we've done business with for a really long time. They're not

40:47 new partners. The relationships matter now more than ever. And if we and every other business in

40:55 our industries using AI heavily behind the scenes or more of the content is kind of going AI, like

41:01 who you are and how you show up and the trust side, not just from the domain names, but on

41:06 the relationships that we've built over time matter more than ever. And so we really place an

41:12 emphasis on that with all of our account managers showing up in person, you know, there was a world

41:20 when COVID hit where some of us for like our whole industry is booming. People are sitting at home

41:25 building websites, buying domains. Are we ever going to go back to the office? Will I ever see

41:28 you at an event again? I might just live in my basement and sell more domains than ever for the

41:33 rest. And that is, that has come full circle back to, we spend more time and money going to events,

41:41 whether it's new partner events or our industry events to go meet our partners face to face.

41:45 It's more critical than ever in this, you know, AI slop is a common term, but it's just in that

41:52 trust building. We have to make sure those relationships, they know who we are and that

41:57 we present ourselves, um, you know, authentic authenticity, sort of a, of an overused term,

42:04 but I mean, it really, it really matters that your partners know who you are and what you're

42:09 trying to do, that they, they trust you and you're building programs that are, that are honestly win,

42:14 win programs for them showing up in person really goes a long ways. I've been seeing that trend

42:21 quite a bit with CROs, CMOs that I'm interviewing where the old school is the new school in person,

42:29 personal connections, relationships. I think there's been so much saturation in a lot of the

42:35 digital channels that people really don't know how to sift through the noise and pick up the signals

42:42 that are really relevant. Everybody's inbox in LinkedIn has been completely obliterated with

42:48 automated messaging. So it's very, very difficult to stand out there. And one of the biggest

42:54 competitive advantages is getting in person again. And I think the, the word you're using trust

43:02 in order for that equation to balance out, it does have to be two humans on either side.

43:07 So I can't just be one human on one side and then trust the AI to do something. I need to know

43:14 somebody's on the hook for making this a success and making this work. It can't be a nameless

43:21 entity for me to have trust. So I think when it comes to the function of sales, the function of

43:27 BD partnership development, it's not even possible if you don't have humans on the other side.

43:35 I agree. I mean, when, when was the last time, I mean, I, I'll, I'll respond occasionally or

43:43 look at the email, the amount of emails we get and LinkedIn messages. Certainly always curious

43:48 how people are selling and what products could help us do a better job on our end. But you're

43:54 not, I assume when was last time you intentionally answered a phone number that you didn't recognize

44:02 or, or certainly one that's labeled spam call. I mean, that just how you, how you go to market is

44:10 very different. We're not cold calling. There was some of that years ago, but that doesn't happen.

44:17 At least, at least for us anymore, you know, we're, we have to be very thoughtful about how we come

44:22 across in a trustworthy way in terms of online communication. And if we can meet people at events,

44:28 even new partners, that is by far a more impactful way. I think you had someone on recently that

44:36 talked about the power of events now. And I agree completely. Like we're going to spend more money

44:40 in 27 on new partner events than sort of emerging industry events than we ever have.

44:48 I think it's the channel that's producing the most. And then everything else is for them to go

44:54 learn more about your brand after they've met you. So any, any thing that you have as a digital

45:00 presence is really for them to kind of go down the rabbit hole in your brand and learn more.

45:05 And I just think that's, that's going to be one of the few channels that continues to have a

45:12 consistent return. You may get a few hacks here and there, but I mean, to your point,

45:19 I have an EA that sifts through all my emails, only tags the important ones.

45:25 She's not tagging a single one that is a random automated outreach and she controls my LinkedIn

45:31 inbox as well. So even those are sifted through and tagged to where I never even see them. And

45:38 then on my phone, I have them go to auto voicemail if I don't have the number saved in my phone.

45:42 So only like people I know can really get through. Otherwise, I mean, it's not even manageable to

45:52 get through your day. Yep. Matt, I really appreciate everything you shared on the podcast. I think it's

46:01 really, really eyeopening to understand how important your domain is. And there's all of

46:07 these new ways that people are creating assets, materials, artifacts that are really pointing

46:13 their market somewhere that isn't your domain. And it really is one of the last consistent

46:19 ways to build trust in the market. And I think as you mentioned, having that consistency where they

46:26 can see your brand, they can see your name, and then pointing people there is going to be really,

46:29 really important. And I also appreciate your perspective on how to build trust in the market

46:34 right now, because there really is, as you put it, a trust recession that's happening with the

46:41 expansion of AI content, AI driven automation, and anything you can do to help build trust and

46:48 credibility is going to go a really, really long way. So Matt, I really appreciate you being on

46:53 the show. And I can't wait to see what you all do next. And I can't wait to maybe apply for my dot

47:00 agent domain in the future. It's an exciting time in our space. So certainly happy to follow up and

47:07 point you to some of the info as that comes out as the future becomes a little bit more clear,

47:13 and we figure out who's running what. I'll send over some of that info. Amazing. Thank you.

47:21 All right. Thanks, Anthony.