Domain names are critical to every company, so Ryan Colby, Founder of Outcome Brokerage & MatchSuite, helps established ventures and startups obtain the best domains possible. In real estate, experts stress the old adage “location, location, location”. Well, that same principle applies to domain names – but in this case substitute “location” with “brandable”.
Ryan Colby got his start with Sedo – the world’s largest domain marketplace in Boston. He now has about ten years of experience in the domain space and has been providing private consulting and domain brokerage through Outcome Brokerage for the past four years.
Here, he serves more established companies – think venture capital funded companies. “[We focus] typically on the higher end of the spectrum for ultra-premium names.”
“So as a result of that [experience] I saw sort of a gap in the marketplace. Only certain types of companies can afford $1 million bucks for a domain.”
He noticed everyone wants a great name, but not everyone can afford one.
That’s where MatchSuite comes in – it offers domains for early-stage companies with much smaller budgets.
“With MatchSuite, [we] incubate really good, vetted, brandable domains that lend themselves to a technology startup. The value we provide is we try to do all the vetting upfront so we save time and money for the startup who have a limited budget.”
He will work with an entrepreneur to find the best domain that fits within the budget. In the case that a founder already has a company name or some keywords in mind, the entrepreneur may visually browse or search the site to see if MatchSuite has the name – or something similar – readily available.
Otherwise, if an entrepreneur is seeking not only a website but also some branding and marketing assistance to come up with a catchy company name, Colby will establish more of a consulting relationship with the startup.
Through conversations, he will try to understand the company’s product, approach, and competitor landscape to then recommend a few available names – so the entrepreneur is not left looking at websites already in use.
Colby stresses that doing this very early on is severely important. “Good, meaningful words that follow trends are always going to be in demand.”
“Find out if the domain is available first, and then make your branding decisions based on the choices [you] have.”
At this point, he’s mainly focused on providing clients with dot-coms (“.com”) since most of the larger, growing, and more successful companies he deals with through Outcome Brokerage are still going after dot-coms.
“Not-coms”, the clever name used for generic top-level domains outside of the more prevalent domain endings, are not yet experiencing rapid adoption by serious companies in the marketplace – “.com”, “.net”, and “.org” compared to “.co”, “.shop”, and “.pizza”.
Despite the catchiness, he still suggests founders pursue a dot-com domain, especially when most founders’ growth aspirations are substantial. “Perceived value is important.”
Although, Colby’s not oblivious to a potential future shift from the traditional dot-com to the newer, alternative “not-com” offerings. He mentions, “a lot of data suggests that it could [shift].” But he remains focused on the here and now – providing the best brandable dot-com domains within budget.
Again – brandable, brandable, brandable.
