Data + Data + Data = Relevance with Daniel from DomainsBot | Saw.com - Uncomfortable with Jeffrey Gabriel

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
In a previous episode , I did a review of the ICA
conference in Las Vegas and mostrecently I attended the ICANN
conference in Puerto Rico.
Like I said about the ICAconference, I think if you're
serious about the domainindustry, this is a conference
you should attend.
At these shows there are a lotof different corporate vendors.
When I decided to become aregular at these shows, it takes
time to get to know the folksthat attend.

(00:20):
Daniel from DomainsBot is oneof them, and Domainsbot provides
an interesting service.
They assist registrars withtheir search results, which is
actually an extremely hard thingto do, and they also offer a
suite of brand protectionservices, amongst other
data-related services.
You know, it is alwaysinteresting to speak to people
with a totally different pointof view in the domain industry,

(00:42):
and Daniel is a passionate,funny and entertaining person
that I've gotten to know overthe past few years.
He offers some insightfulinformation and a great
perspective from his vantagepoint in the industry.
Hearing his story aboutDomainsBot, with its humble
beginnings, programming in hisfriend's parents' basement, his
struggle with cancer and whatthey are working on today, leads
for a lengthy but great episode.

(01:04):
As an aside, when I have aguest come on the video channel
and we talk for a few minutes,then begin, you know, and our
conversation just kind of tookoff and I decided
mid-conversation to hit record.
And it might seem like you'reeavesdropping and I probably
break all the podcast rules, butsometimes the best
conversations happen before Ihit record or after I sign off,

(01:25):
and I wanted you to hear it too.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
So thanks for listening and enjoy Right now,
because it's been pretty goodconversation so far, so let's
just keep going the reality isthat, at the end of the day,

(01:49):
these gatherings of the industry, and especially for such a
niche industry like ours, um arereally the opportunity where
all the industry come togetherand we have, we have to say in
ital da cosa nasce cosa, fromone thing is born another thing.

(02:09):
And you can kind of apply toanything, but the funny thing is
that it's actually used themost exactly to talk about the
fact that when you have aconnection with someone, from
one thing it can lead to anotherthing Da cosa nasce cosa.
So the reality is that everytime that you go to these
conferences, you learn moreabout the industry.

(02:30):
You learn more about yourcustomers, your potential
customers.
It's really like the placewhere stuff happens and honestly
I don't want to sound like afomoist, you know, fear of
missing out, but uh, but I thinkthat it's actually worth it.

(02:53):
Look, I've been going toconferences for 20 years now.
Actually it's 2024, so I cansay it with pride.
It's been freaking 20 years andat least five.
There have been some years thathave been doing 10 or 15
conferences and I can count iton my hand, on the fingers of my

(03:13):
hand, the ones that I that Ican say, ah, damn, I could have
skipped this and nothing wouldhave happened yeah, there's
always.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
And, and the funny thing is is even the conferences
sometimes that are lightlyattended.
Um, you end up meeting like thebest client of your life.
You know, and that when youmeet that person or creates the
best relationship that leads,you know, you could also create,
like you know, the um sayingthe, uh, the, the six degrees of
kevin bacon.
Have you heard of that?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
I've heard about it, but I don't remember exactly
what it was about.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
There's six degrees of separation.
And then there's the wholething of the Kevin Bacon theory
where, with six degrees ofseparation, for example, you
actually know the king andyou're connected to the king and
you're actually only.
Well, actually, I'll give youone You're actually connected to
the president of the unitedstates by me.
My old boss her husband was aum was the secret service for

(04:14):
donald trump.
He worked in the secret servicefor him.
So how many?
So how many degrees ofseparation are you from the
president?
United states?
And then the same, yeah, andthen the, and then the same
would go like who does he know?
Well, he knows, the Pope, Ican't.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
I used to, I used to work for the Vatican actually
Funny story.
You said you really yeah, I did, what did you do?

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, the thing, you definitely weren't an altar boy.
Sorry, I said you weren't analtar boy.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Actually I'm going to say something that is gonna get
a.
That's gonna really get a lotof heat on me.
But here's the funny thing Iwasn't an altar boy but I was
actually a papa boy, as we were.
It was as we were defined backin the 2000.
When here's the thing, in in theyear 2000, john paul the second
, actually um had this jubilee.
That was a jubilee year andthis jubilee was mostly intended
it was the jubilee of youngpeople.

(05:12):
So during that summer, thesummer of the year 2000, rome
received like two million youngpeople from all around the world
and I started in a Catholicschool and obviously, you know,
I used to speak.
I speak English and Italian andSpanish since I was a kid.
So obviously you know, I wasapproached by one of the

(05:36):
teachers saying hey, would yoube interested in helping us out?
And obviously, when theyexplained to me that in late
June, mid-july, 350 boys andgirls from Sweden, denmark and
Norway were actually going to behosted at my house, obviously
you know 18-year-old meobviously said absolutely, I'm
going to do whatever it takes tohelp.

(05:58):
And I ended up actually helpinga lot with the organization and
we used to go around with a bluecup and a badge and during that
week, what's really funny isthat we owned the eternal city.
We owned it like, yeah, therewas so much crazy stuff
happening because, you see, whenyou receive two million people,
you gotta think about a lot ofthings like, okay, I'm hosting

(06:23):
500 peoples in a school, whereare they gonna sleep?
Where are they going to sleep?
Where are they going to eat?
What are we going to feed them?
You know, the organizationalpart was much more complex than
you may think.
It was just okay.
Here's the place is that yougot to take care of a lot of
things, but it was.
It was an amazing experienceactually, and uh, and during
that year, during that, duringthose two, I think in particular

(06:44):
, it was kind of the culminationof it.
I remember that practically,you know, with the blue cap and
a badge, you can do whatever thehell you wanted and you were
going to get away with it.
Do you still have the blue capand the badge?
I might actually still have it.
I surely have the badge in abox in my house in Rome.

(07:05):
You should wear that too, oh myGod, that would be actually
quite.
That would be quite funny.
That would actually be great.
That would actually be quitefunny.
I'm going to look for it nexttime, next time I'm in Rome, I'm
going to look for it Actually,yeah, so, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
No, you go ahead.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
We're talking about the badge no, no, I just wanted
to say that one of the trophies,uh, uh, that I actually came
back uh, sorry, brought backfrom colombia um, last time that
I was in italy.
I'm actually going to show itto you is actually that news
hang on, you can barely see itbecause it gets blurred but that
, that newspaper that isactually hanging on on the wall,

(07:41):
that is actually the newspaperof the most important sport um
newspaper in italy.
The next day after that, we wonthe world cup in 2006 and you
weren't excited about that.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
No, absolutely, you know it was.
It was like nothing.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
The stuff that I saw that night, my friend, the stuff
that I saw, oh saw that nightwas just bananas, like you know.
People just bathing in thefountains of Rome.
We were.
I was actually watching thematch in the Circo Maximo and
because the mayor put some maxiscreens and there were like 350

(08:21):
people, 350,000 people downthere watching the final against
France, and I remember that,even if, let's say, the event
ended at midnight, I couldn'tliterally physically get home
before like 3 or 4 am, justbecause there were so many

(08:42):
people on the street and I sawpeople just oh yeah, that's a
fountain from the 1600s, but wewant the World Cup.
Who cares?
And they would just throwthemselves.
It was really hot, it was July,so yeah, it was absolutely
crazy and it was like there's nohistory between France and
Italy.
No, absolutely, we go in unisonas one people with mutual love

(09:07):
for our, as we call them, theTransalpine cousins.
They are our cousins and calledTransalpini because they are at
the other side of the Alps,uh-huh.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
Okay, that's how it works.
So you're born and bred, grewup in Rome.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Actually I was technically born in Colombia
because my mom is Colombian andmy dad is Italian, although my
mom lived in Italy for like50-something years, or actually
maybe even more.
But yeah, but I did grow up inItaly, studied in there and
everything, until five years agothat I moved back.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Got it All right.
So this is a little backwardsfor our normal episode and our
normal listeners and those thatwere tuning in.
We were actually talking aboutbefore we started to record just
us going on the conferencecircuit.
And when I worked atUniregistry, I knew of Daniel
and I think we probably shookhands and said hello a few times
.
But when I left Uniregistry, Iknew of Daniel and I think we

(10:06):
probably shook hands and saidhello a few times.
But when I left Uniregistry andI went on my own and started my
own business, I had a moreformal business conversation
with Daniel at ICANN in Montreal.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yes, I remember that.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
Yep, and his business partner, emiliano, and so I'm
going to read you a little bitof his bio to give you some
background, and then we're goingto talk about why I think he's
a great fit for this show andwe're going to get into some
really interesting stuff.
Daniel Rizzini Meja, did Ipronounce your last name
properly?

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Mejia, it's just because it's Spanish for James.
Mejia, yeah, mejia.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
How about that?
Is that better?

Speaker 2 (10:38):
That was actually much better again.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
That was much better.
I'm getting there All right.
We'll work on it when I comevisit.
You are a successfulentrepreneur and business leader
with over 20 years ofexperience in the tech industry.
You are the founder and chiefstrategy officer of DomainsBot.
He has played a pivotal role inshaping the company's growth
and direction.
What DomainsBot does and Ithink it does a lot more than

(11:01):
says this, we're going to getinto it Empowers online
companies with data to betterunderstand their customers and
markets, enabling them to act oninsights that will make their
customers happier and businessesstronger.
You're fluent in English,italian, spanish, and you
currently reside in Colombiawith your family, where you
enjoy downtime between businesstravel and contributing to the
country's growing technologycommunity.

(11:24):
And you have, how many cows?

Speaker 2 (11:26):
I have about.
Well, actually technicallythey're my mom's, but uh, we
have around 100 cows, like 90something.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
100 cows, yeah have you ever branded a?

Speaker 2 (11:34):
cow.
I have vaccinated them, thoughyou vaccinated, yeah, yeah, and
believe me, giving an injectionto a cow is much harder than you
think.

Speaker 1 (11:45):
I'm sure your partner in the business is Emiliano
Pasquitelli, pasqualetti,pasqualetti, pasqualetti, and
the real specialties of thecompany that I understand there
are is domain search, domainsuggestion technology, business
intelligence services.
That used to be calledPandalytics, because I remember

(12:05):
you gave me a demo of that along time ago, and that helps
spot threats and opportunity.
From market trends.
You can understand your owncustomers from that.
Correct Helps with marketing orsales initiatives as well.
Through data you can identifyM&A opportunities.
You also have a brandprotection product that can help

(12:26):
get people in a threatmonitoring service.
Yeah, and it allows you to getvisibility on your on company's
CCTLD registrations, extendedvisibility over content on
homepages of any domain name,and you're obviously using
machine learning and and you'vebeen doing this for about 20

(12:47):
years and it's funny.
I asked you for your bio andyou gave me this paragraph.
It was a little longer but Icut it back a little bit but you
didn't really have much otherexperience than DomainsBot on
there.
So have you been really beendoing DomainsBot for the last
almost 20 years and been in thedomain business the entire time.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yes, and also you have to consider something
domains bot has been the companythat I've only worked in in my
entire professional life.
Are you kidding?
Absolutely your first job, man,I I created a company that I
was 17.
Okay, so when we started kind ofdealing with the domain names,

(13:29):
maxarali and I, we started.
We were literally 17.
It was our last year of highschool.
We started.
It all started very, very, youknow, oddly in a way because I'm
not exaggerating this isexactly how we went.
Max and I were in front of thecomputer.

(13:51):
I remember he had a very goodinternet connection back in the
day which was in a ISDNconnection.
So again, we're talking late90s and, oh yeah, and at some
point we stumble upon a pagewhich was, we discovered it
being was it called DomainFinder or something like that
from Verisign that said thisdomain name is for sale or

(14:13):
something like that.
And I remember that I turnedaround and looked Max straight
into the eyes and I said whatthe hell is a domain name man?
And he said I have no clue,let's figure it out.
And 20-something years laterI'm here talking to you.
Hell is the domain name man?
And he said I have no clue,let's figure it out.
And, um, 20 something yearslater, I'm here talking to you
well, a lot has happened inbetween but uh, but yeah, that's
actually really how, how we gotinto domain names, we just got

(14:36):
passionate about it, max, and Ialways had a nick for for doing
things, doing something in thebusiness world.
Since we were really small, infact, you know, when we started
kind of we do much morestructured website, I think that
we were really 18 or somethinglike that.

(14:56):
I think that I wasn't even.
I wasn't even 19 back in theday, and you know we used to
write the code ourselves.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
By the way, how did you learn code?
You said you learned.
Said you learned like peoplejust say, oh, and then I wrote
code, but like you were 19, sohow did you learn how to write
code, just yourself?

Speaker 2 (15:14):
I used it.
I used a very, very, uhinteresting technique, which is
just bang your head in front ofthe monitor to the monitor until
it works.
And and the reason why I saythis?
Because I remember that back inthe day and again we're talking
late 90s, first 2000s I wasjust getting into, you know,
writing maybe some basic HTML orsome PHP code back in the day

(15:38):
and obviously you didn't havethe access to knowledge that you
have today.
You know that you might have atrillion courses on all of this,
so you just would go to the PHPdocumentation and just try to
make it work and press F5 andrefresh that page until the
thing that you wanted to appear,it does appear.

(15:59):
Besides, the funny thing wasbecause we were studying,
studying, um mostly.
For example, during theweekends, max parents used to go
to the.
You know they had a house inthe mountains and one on the
seaside, so max and I would stayin rome and just, you know,
pull a couple of old nightersthere um to, you know, to try to

(16:20):
make it, to make it work.
But it was, uh, it was really atime of discovery.
It was a time of really tryingto understand as much as
possible and again, we didn'thave, let's say, a formal
preparation to what we weredoing, but we really had to
learn it through experience.

(16:40):
And to some extent experienceand to some extent I still do,
you know, I still do.
One of the nicest things thatanyone has ever told me was,
oddly enough, said by Emiliano,which, in the 20 years that we
have known each other, mighthave said four nice things about
me.
But no, because he's verysevere in his judgment, but he's

(17:03):
very, he's very truthful, youknow he's very sincere.
And recently he said you know, Ican say a lot of things about
know, and that's kind of whatwhat we had to do in this in

(17:27):
these 20 years.
You know, there's really, it'sreally been a path of discovery,
of applying our own intuition,of applying our own creativity
in a way, to the things thatwe're presenting in front of us.
Even the whole analytics andthe whole data actually was the

(17:51):
result of a very interestingconversation I had with a
registrar back in the academicin Brussels.
I don't remember exactly whatyear it was, but I think it was
maybe 2011 or something likethat and I was talking to a
registrar and to a person'sregistrar, and I asked him, just
out of curiosity, the followingquestion I said how many domain

(18:14):
names do you have undermanagement?
And the person told me xmillion.
So I turned around.
I remember we were actuallyhaving a glass of wine during
music night when there was musicnight back in the good old days
of the ICANN meetings.
I never went to a music meeting, oh, sorry.

(18:35):
So a long time ago at ICANNmeetings, there was this thing
called music night, where thewhole community would come
together and there was going tobe like people from the industry
playing, uh, you know, robertogaitano, andrei kolesnikov, all
of them would actually, uh,would actually play, um, play

(18:55):
music, and there was also a kindof a karaoke like people from
the industry would sing, whichobviously yeah, uh.
You know it might sound bad,but, for example, margarita from
DotCL, she has one of the mostamazing voices I have heard.
Yeah, absolutely, margarita, youknow, can, absolutely, you know
, knock your socks off when itcomes to singing.

(19:15):
You know, she has an amazingvoice.
It's one of my memories fromthe music and everybody was
looking forward to actuallyhearing her sing.
Or Roberto with the saxophoneRoberto plays the sax like
nobody's business and um, yeah,but, but nevertheless,
nevertheless.
So, during that music night, I'm, I'm, I'm talking with this
person and I and I, you know.

(19:37):
After that, he tells me thenumber of domain name under
management, which is kind of anindicator that everybody knows,
right, uh, it's like it's not noone's secret.
And then I turn around and Iask him but uh, do you know what
people do with these domainnames?
Why do they talk about?
Do they sell shoes?
Do they sell ice cream?
Are they porn websites?

(19:59):
What is it?
And he said I have no clue.
And that got me thinkingbecause I started asking myself
how is that possible?
You know that that thatregistrars and registries, you
know they handle, they're reallythe foundation of the internet
and they have no clue what'shappening at the, you know, at
the higher, the higher floors,you know that's, that's the

(20:21):
important part.
So I started studying, trying tofigure out as many things as
possible let's say about, youknow, about domain names, how
they used and um, and I rememberthat the reason actually, um,
the reason why it's it wasactually called pandalytics, is
because in the industry,everybody knows me as, as Panda,

(20:42):
to the point I don't know if Itold you this that I receive
business emails, like seriousbusiness emails, where the body
of the email is completelylegitimate business stuff.
That actually starts, hey,panda.
It all started in 2008 becauseFrancesco Cetrato he's one of my

(21:03):
closest friends we actually metin the industry one night, I
think we were in LA at an ICANNmeeting and I was kind of lost
in my thoughts, making a verypanda-like face, and he turns
around and he says you know what, dude, I just noticed something
you really look like a panda.
And since that, there was abunch of people around that they

(21:26):
were starting looking at me.
They all agreed and at thatmoment it was really not that
much that I could do, like I.
I said I can fight it all daylong or just or just own it.
So I said, okay, let's, let'sdo, let's, let's make it a panda
, so, so then you call the pandalytics no, but there's a reason
.
Actually it's not because ofegotistical leniences.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
I always thought it was called Panda because of the
Panda update with Google, and ithad something to do with the
tech, in that that was alwayswhat I thought, but I never
bought it.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
You're looking at the Panda in PandaLytics.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
You're ugly.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
My ugly face is the reason the reason actually was
much more technical.
While I was kind of trying toput together the prototype and
all the different pieces of codethat it needed for me to
validate, I was actually pushinginto our company's repository

(22:26):
and one of the things that Iused to do back in the day was
to put panda as a prefix on allthese different pieces of code,
so my tech team would know thatthat's actually my stuff.
They don't have to worry aboutit.
Just might be something that itdoesn't even go to production.
It was just me tinkering.
So one night I was uh, I thinkit was maybe 1 am or something I
was in Rome alone in my houseand it was just me sitting in

(22:48):
front of the keyboard and I hada glass of white wine next to me
and I said you know what?
Screw it, I'm just going to tryto lay down kind of a structure
of this.
And I opened a software that Iused to kind of write very basic
code back in the day and thefirst thing that the software

(23:08):
asks you is what is the name ofthe project?
So I started thinking I have toput panda.
So the guys know that that'snot like production stuff,
that's just me, and in thebeginning I wanted to call it
Domains Bot Analytics, even ifit was the most boring name ever
produced.
So at that point I said, well,panda Analytics, I just mashed

(23:30):
them together and the rest ishistory.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
And then you guys changed the name.
Now you're calling it yourbusiness intelligence service.
Well, the thing is that it'sactually different from
PandaLytics.
This is actually a veryimportant difference you see
PandaLytics at.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
This is actually a very important difference.
You see, pandalytics, at thevery beginning, was actually and
it still is a data access tool.
What you do is that if you havea question in your mind like I
wonder if there are any dotbanana domain names registered
in Indonesia that are hosted atStargate Technologies just

(24:05):
making a weird example with anSSL and email activated that
question, pandalytics helps youtranslate it into a query that
actually goes to this ginormousdatabase that actually fits that
system.
The business intelligence tool,which is Insights, is different
because it allows you to havethe bird's eye view to look at

(24:28):
trends.
It allows you to make queries,that's for sure.
But the thing is that you canvisualize in a different way.
While Pandalytics is, first ofall, a much easier, much lower
level type of service becauseobviously the business
intelligence tool it needs alittle bit of getting used to,
although it's very intuitivecompared to all the other

(24:50):
business intelligence tools outthere.
But it's really an analysis ata different level.
You are getting the data.
With Pandalytics, you aregetting the data, you are
getting some visualizations, butwhen it comes to that
granularity, to really gettingall the different shades that
the data can talk to you about.

(25:11):
That's why it's called businessintelligence, because it's
really two different purposes.
In a way, they are all comingfrom the same data set, but it's
the way that you look at itthat it's actually different.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Okay, got it.
So that's one part of yourbusiness, and then the other
part is domain search and domainsuggestions.
Correct, right, when did you?
So what?
So, by the sound of it,pandalytics came first Actually,
came second, because it wasaround 2011.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
The domain suggestion started in 2004.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Okay.
So you thought okay, I want toregister a domain name, the
results of the search, which,just as a side search, is a very
hard thing to do for a company.
Programmers can build all kindsof different things, but search
and search suggestion ingeneral I've been told by
multiple developers it is aserious pain in the ass.

(26:08):
It is it is, and people don'trealize what a pain in the ass
it is.
And I don't know if you canmention it, but a lot of
registrars that people mightsearch on are using this product
, which is providing searchresults and suggestions to users
at the registrar level, becausethey don't want to deal with it
themselves.
And you've created this product, but you started it in 2004.

(26:31):
2004,.
Yes, so you went in your firstbusiness where you didn't know
what a domain name was, and nowyou're going to use domain names
and provide search results,which, again, is a pain in the
ass.
And is Anne, a self-taughtdeveloper, and your other friend
, your colleague, max.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, we also had other developers back in the day
actually that we gathered, likeobviously, you know, I've
always been, you know, morefocused on the conceptualization
of a product.
If I can kind of build it orprogram it, even if it's just a
kind of a scratchy thing likeyou know, just something out

(27:10):
there to test it out, I'mobviously going to do it.
But back in the day, especiallywhen we started with domain
suggestion, I didn't take caredirectly of the development At
that moment, I was already moretheorizing what were the

(27:30):
features or what were thecharacteristics or how to get to
relevant suggestions.
Because, you know, especiallyin 2004, we didn't have access
to the same instruments that wehave today and that was actually
the challenge.
You know Nowadays, you know youhave, uh yeah, you have machine
learning, but even the computecapabilities of a server
actually have, you know,increased a million fold.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
So obviously, you know, back in that day, doing
that it was, it was way harderand um well, thinking back to
2004, though, like, even if youwent to google in 2004 and,
let's say you typed in Facebookwrong, it would give you the
suggestion of did you mean this,which it still does from time
to time.
Right, correct, but like, thatwas very rudimentary.

(28:15):
Now it gives you, like, it justgives you the result, it just
guesses that you know what it is, and then it kind of fixes it
for you.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
Absolutely, absolutely then it kind of fixes
it for you, absolutely,absolutely.
But back in the day, obviously,all these things were literally
happening.
Like you know, all thetechnologies and all the things
that today we give it forgranted, we're, we're absolutely
, uh, you know, we're absolutelyjust getting started.
You know, I remember, forexample, that one of the things
with the name suggestion is thateveryone you know, when it

(28:46):
comes to domain suggestion anddomain search, although they are
very similar, they areconceptually very different on
how you get there, because onething is applying ways to search
into a predetermined database,for example, you know, an
inventory, for example, example,right, uh, it could be an

(29:07):
aftermarket inventory.
And another thing is actuallytelling the system you have to
create new domain names fromscratch.
That obviously, in that case,is not searching, but it's
coming up with new strings thatthen you have to filter and make
sure they're still available.
And back in the day, even ifthe zone file contained maybe 10

(29:30):
million domain names orsomething like that, it was
obviously much smaller than itis today.
One of the biggest challengesis okay, of all the strings that
I have generated, that thesystem have generated, with all
the calculations and thesemantics and all of that.
Okay, how do I actually make tocheck that these suggestions
are still available, for example, checking them against the zone

(29:52):
file, without taking 25 minutes, because obviously these are
all things that need to be.
I remember that we were aimingat replying in really few
milliseconds, so the challengeswere okay.
First, how do we revolutionizethe way that actually people is

(30:14):
showing up alternatives tocustomers?
So we had to get into semantics, we had to get into really
trying to understand what thedomain name is about and trying
to gather the most relevantkeywords, third terms, related
terms that actually wererelevant to what the customer

(30:37):
was looking at.
And how do we teach the systemhow to assemble them together?
Because you see, most of thetimes you think about domain
name as a string, but thereality is that actually a
domain name can contain multiplekeywords and obviously it's how
you put these, how you assemblethese keywords together, that

(30:59):
makes a good domain name and abad domain name.
And obviously we say, okay, ifwe have to get into this crazy
plan, you know we either go bigor go home.
So we had to really rethink itfrom scratch.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
So how do you, how do you teach?
You know you talk about machinelearning and things like that,
but like, how would you?
And obviously I was at beforethis, before this podcast here I
was looking into what Googleuses and I watched a video on it
.
Google actually has a videothat explains how their search
works.
Now, obviously they're notgiving away anything of any

(31:33):
substance, but it's interestingthe key points that they show.
But it still blows my mind thatif, for example, I search and
I'm like a florist, so if Isearch flowers, now flowers
you're going to look at andyou're going to say, ok, and all
these random GTLDs there'sprobably the word flowers is

(31:54):
available for registration,however, not that there's
anything wrong with theextension but if flowershiphop
is available, it's probably nota great one for that person, you
know.
It probably isn't a great fitIf it was music different story
story, you know.
So you got to weed those out, nopun intended no, no, but then
but then of course, you know theflorist is thinking flowers,
florist, tulips, roses, like thehigher converting words that

(32:18):
you could put into a brand of a,like you call a company, red
tulip, you know, or, or pinkroses, you know, or something,
or you know.
You could be punny like we.
We sold the name.
Um, remember, obviously themovie forest gump.
Yeah, okay, frank, we sold thedomain at uniregistrated.
I'll never forget it's calledflorist gump, right, it's always
like a funny name and it'salways stuck with me as a good

(32:39):
brand that's actually.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
That's actually a nice word.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
I think it's a good brand right, and I still
remember it to this day fromlike 10 years ago.
But what I'm saying, though, isthat how are you, with all the
GTLDs out there, with all theCCTLDs out there, with com and
the availabilities of info andeverything else, how are you
taking somebody and providingactually relevant results that

(33:05):
aren't just typing flowers?
Just give them anything with aflower in it, and it's trash?
That's what I see on certain.
If I built my own brokeragewebsite with search, it would
just be totally keyword and youtype in flower and anything with
the word flower and you wouldget everything that gets flower
and it sucks.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
How do you guys do that?
So I remember it was the ICANNmeeting in Beijing.
It was 2013.
What year was?

Speaker 1 (33:30):
that 2013.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
So it was really when new GTLDs were really popping
into existence.
That I actually said to someone.
I said you know what.
To someone I said you know what?
I think that there's going tobe a new girl that is going to
rule the house here talkingabout the domain name industry.
And that girl is relevancyBecause, you see, with the

(33:56):
inflation of availability,because obviously now you have a
lot of TLDs and it's a greatthing that people have now
choices, because with onlycom atsome point the domain names
were starting to get a littlebigger, a little big.
At that point it's all about therelevance.
Relevance, the way that we doit.

(34:18):
It's first of all personalizingat a registrar level, because
no two registrars are alike, soevery registrar has its own set
of parameters, weights, targetsof what are the most relevant.

(34:39):
And then it's all about how youmerge the term with the TLD.
So by knowing at a semanticlevel if flowers goes better
with shop rather than I don'tknow plumbing again, nothing

(35:00):
wrong with plumbing, absolutelyyeah.
The thing is that at that pointit's important to know how you
put them together, because whena new gTLD brings value to the
table, that's actually howyou're contributing to the
Internet, to the registry, tothe registrar into the end, to
the registrar and to the enduser, because now it's just not

(35:21):
yet another string, but thatstring is actually bringing
value to the message that Iwanna convey, whether I sell
flowers, I'm a plumber, I'm anastrophysicist or I just have a
blog about my travels.
So it's in the moment that youtake into account the semantic
part, the meaning, what thatTLDs bring into the table, that

(35:43):
actually you can try to generatemore relevant suggestion.
Mostly, we use semantics as muchas possible.
As much as possible.
Then it's understanding andhaving this self-improving
algorithm that actually, basedon usage, is gonna understand.

(36:06):
To make you an example, maybedot photo.
It's actually much morerelevant from a category of the
people let's say, for example,photographer, but sorry, a
photographer more relevant froma category of the people.
Let's say, for example,photographer rather than camera.
That might be always talkingabout photography, but more

(36:28):
centered towards, for example,talking more about cameras.
So you know like having thesetype of things and obviously you
know like having these type ofthings and obviously you know
what's interesting about this isthe fact that when you think it
on an abstract level, it soundseasy.

(36:48):
The problem is this doing itwith a domain name that can be
barely two keywords when youhave absolutely no context in a
vacuum, is actually much harderthan it seems.
Or let me put it this way it'san imperfect science, meaning

(37:16):
that, at least so far, even uscan provide results that are not
perfect, but because, again,since we're dealing with
language, it's really hard toreach perfection.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, so now let's get into the weeds of it, though
.
Okay.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Right, so it's referencing the florist that we
were talking about before yes,right back, right.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
So when you get into search and the search results,
you're providing right andsomeone comes in and they're
searching, they searchbostonplumbercom and that name
is already registered, right, sothey can't be had.
Now registrars have the optionto say click here for the who is
this domain isn't available.
They always say is this yourdomain name?
Click here for the who is thisdomain isn't available.
They always say is this yourdomain name?
Transfer it in.

(38:02):
Or the service we provide.
We ask if they want to hire,like sawcom brokerage or another
brokerage, or pay for a buyservice to do that, or, you know
, try these other options.
So then they put out, like youknow, results from CETO, mls or
Afternic, dls or whatever thatare com names.
Now, with that, you're pullingfrom those and putting those

(38:23):
results in there right Based on.
Are you looking at just thekeywords and making a decision,
or are you kind of also gettingtheir location?
Are you getting time of day?
Are you getting other thingslike that that are important to
help you decide, or is that notas important in your business?

Speaker 2 (38:40):
So considering that I cannot get too much into the
details, but one thing that Ican tell you, though, is
absolutely the parameters, andthere are additional parameters
geolocation, actually is one ofthem help to further customize,
because, at the end of the day,what you really want to try to

(39:01):
do as a registrar is to get toshowing to the end user
something that is relevant tohim.
So Boston flowers is notavailable, or flowers of flowers
of Boston is not available atflowersboston is not available.
At that point you gotta askyourself, okay, what's out there

(39:23):
, you know, in terms of what Ican either generate or search in
the aftermarket, that has to bein the kind of in the limit of
what is close to that meaning.
So something that, if I was aflorist in Boston, what is close
to that meaning?
So something that if I was aflorist in Boston, what would I

(39:44):
use?
Right, and that entailsanalyzing the keywords.
So splitting the keywords up,splitting the domain names into
keywords.
That is the first step.
And then saying, okay, if thiskeyword represents flowers, what
are the concepts, what are thekeywords that are closest to

(40:06):
that?
Try to connect them togetherand then, and obviously, connect
them with variations, so saying, can I use this as an adjective
, can I use this as a pronoun,sorry, as a noun?
You know all of thesetechniques to create the wider
list possible.
And then saying okay, I havegenerated, let's say, 10,000

(40:28):
names what is actually available, and then you've got to filter
that out.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Obviously because and this is all happening in how
many milliseconds?
And then sent to the registrarto be displayed to the user Less
than 100.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
I know, you see, that's why I tell you Today is
actually given for grantedbecause technology has advanced
so much.
But you know, in hindsight,looking back in 2004, we were
really trying to get blood outof the beat, as we say in Italy,
getting blood out of a rock.
Because you know the technicalchallenges you know of, you

(41:07):
understand, is this evenfathomable?
You know, back in the day we'rereally big where six Italian
boys in an office not far fromthe Vatican competing versus
American companies and evengiants of the industry.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
How did you get your funding kind of going after
these things?

Speaker 2 (41:30):
We didn't, we just built it.
We just built it because Maxand I used to have a business
that was providing which.
By the way, this actually is aninteresting story that our
original name was not Domainsbot.
Domainsbot was actually ourbiggest competitor in 2001.
Because back in the day, maxand I had a business called the

(41:52):
Local who Is which was providingexpiring domain names.
We built a set of servicesaround the concept of expiring
domain names, so people can snapthem out.
And in 2001,.
We were competing withDomainsbot for the market and

(42:13):
Domainsbot was originallycreated by a guy in Canada, but
he was by himself and he was incollege, max and I were in uni
and but, but it was the two ofus plus we actually got a
programmer to help us out.
So we started competing,competing, competing, and then
in 2002, I um, uh, I get sick.

(42:35):
In 2000, in June of 2002, Iactually get diagnosed with
cancer and I got shipped to theUS for treatment and in July of
2002, this is actually a veryfunny story, so the situation
was actually not looking great,which I've known since I was

(42:57):
five and I practically grew upin his house.
And he says, dude, look, thepicture is not looking great.
I was in New York and Max says,okay, I'm coming over, and 48
hours later Max was in New York.
And again, you know, it'sreally good and it's really easy

(43:21):
when you think today's world,you know, and I'm 40.
But Max was 20 and it was in2002.
You know, it was a different.
It was a lot of money, it was alot of money and it wasn't even
that easy.
It's not something that youcould say oh yeah, absolutely,
I'm just going to.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
I had to get a visa.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
No, thank God, Italians never needed a visa for
the US.
But again it was a differentworld.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
But it goes to show you, though, what a good friend
he is, or was to come.
It doesn't even matter if theflight was free, it doesn't
matter, it's just the fact thathe's willing to put his life
aside and come visit his friendand make him feel better.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Look, I'm only child but one thing that I can tell
you is that, throughout my youth, if I can tell you what is the
closest thing that I have to abrother, it's actually Max,
because, again, I literally grewup in his house.
Actually, our first office backin 2002 was actually Max's

(44:22):
basement, max's house basement.
So the thing is that Max showsup and while I was actually sick
, he was talking to the guy thatcreated the main spot because,
as I said, he was in college, hewas by himself, he was really
hard for him, you know, for himto to keep things running by

(44:46):
being in college.
So he actually kind of gave us,gave us the main spot.
So I was, I was in a hospitalbed, highly medicated, and and
Max just storms in into a roomone afternoon and says, dude,
sign this.
And I was like dude, I was likepractically more asleep than

(45:07):
anything.
He says, dude, what is this?
And I was like, no, no, we'rejust getting the main spot.
And I go what he said yeah,yeah, sign here.
And then, like a few minuteslater, I kind of fall asleep
because, as I said, I was inimmense pain.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
It was like an angel flying in and flying out.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
You are not far from the truth.
So when I got better and I goback home, we merged the two
things together.
We kept with the domain namewith the domain name expiring
list business.
We kept going with the domainname expiring list business.
We kept going To be honest withyou.
On a more personal note, it wasreally, you know, domainsbot in

(45:47):
a way kind of saved my life fora reason.
I came back in November of 2002in Rome after my surgery that I
had in New York six cycles ofchemo.
I just had to do some kind ofrinsing chemo when I was in Rome
, but it was much lighter.
And when I came back, when Iarrived in Rome, I felt that I

(46:08):
was actually flying you know 24,30 centimeters from the ground,
because obviously you know, Igot my life back right and I was
so happy I was happy to be home, to be with my friends, and all
of that.
Now, oddly enough, this wasNovember 2002.

(46:29):
March 2003, I am kind of tryingto get back to my life.
You know, obviously, afterchemo and all of this, and I get
into a huge existential crisis.
And I remember that one day Iwas with Max and I told him, you
know what the problem is, thatI feel that I got back this

(46:51):
device that is full of buttons,but no one gave me the
instruction manual and thatdevice is my life.
For almost a year I was sofocused, like my life purpose
was literally saving my own ass,that now that I did, I didn't

(47:12):
know what to do with it or howto get to that max, in his, in
his infinite wisdom, turnsaround and says dude, you know,
we have domains, but you canfocus on it and and I did any
kind of how how this whole thinghappened.
So max and I founded the newdomains, bought the domain

(47:34):
suggestion and all of this withthe money that we were making
and we were saving from theother business that we kept for
a while we had expired domainname, expired domains for dot
com for a while.
Uh, because obviously at thatpoint we kind of had to do the
switcheroo of the, of the, ofthe of the different, uh, you
know, brands and businesses andyeah, and that's kind of how the

(47:58):
whole thing started and it was.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
So where's Max now?

Speaker 2 (48:05):
So Max is a doctor, max is an author and a
laryngologist.
He lives in Rome, married abeautiful daughter.
He's a little older than mineand he's still partially
involved at the main spot.
But then you know, 2000, put it, 2002, 2003, you know, life

(48:30):
gave me another brother because,again, my parents were kind of
lazy or, as I always joke, youdo not repeat the masterpiece or
they learned their lesson orthey learn their lesson.
I would say that is more thesecond in my case.
But the thing is that then lifegave me my second brother,
which is Emiliano.

(48:52):
You know, emiliano arrived whenwe were just starting with the
domain suggestion thing, when wewere just starting with the
domain suggestion thing, and hehas been, you know, he has been
the other half of the sky, let'ssay, for Domainsbot, and you

(49:16):
know, he has obviously become abrother to me.
And you know, have we have thisvery odd dynamic, like we used
to be really confrontational andto have a very kind of wouldn't
say bad, because it's neverbeen bad, but very strong.
You know, come from at aconfrontation level of
relationship when we both livingin Rome and we were both

(49:38):
working in the same office andwe just realized that the best
thing for us was just to have anocean apart from each other,
because since we he lives inTurkey and I live in Colombia we
have been working like freakingclockwork, you know, like we
have been really.
We have been really.
We have been really, you know,really being two sides of the

(50:03):
same coin and the good thing isthat we complete each other
quite well, you know.
So you're very opposite people,exactly You're saying but with
the fact that we have veryaligned goals and with the fact
that we accept our weaknesses.
You know, like, for example,one of the smartest human beings

(50:25):
that I have ever encountered inmy life, obviously, obviously
after you, jeff uh is our cto,javier.
He's from Argentina.
He's currently living in Madrid.
He's by far one of the smartestpeople I've ever encountered in
my life.
That guy sees things and he hasthe analytical capability that

(50:49):
I'm pretty sure that not even Iwill ever live and come close to
Believe me.
It's crazy.
I cannot state enough how muchI admire that guy.
He's very systematical, he'svery methodical, as a good cto
has to be right.
And and during that conversationwhere, where, uh, you know,

(51:13):
emiliano said uh, uh, dan is aman of action, I remember that
javier was saying okay, but this, we need to document it.
And I remember that Emilianostopped him and said you know
what?
I'm not going to even askDaniel to write it down.
I'm not going to miss Daniel.
Besides, I suck at writing inevery language I speak.

(51:33):
As you can see, I'm a littlebit better at talking just
because I do it a lot, because Ireally talk a lot.
But rather than that, the thingis that we now got to the point
that we understand each other'sweaknesses and we said, okay,
I'm going to give you strengthin that specific weaknesses
because I am the other side ofthe coin, and that creates a

(51:56):
bond that really transcends.
You know, this is my area ofexpertise.
It's really at a much deeperlevel you know, it takes a lot

(52:35):
for people like yourself and meto realize and then admit your
weaknesses and then findsomebody else that also feels
the same way and can admit theirmy weaknesses, and for Emiliano
to slap them in my face as hardas he could, and for me to
actually take his weaknesses andjust shove them in his face,

(52:57):
but with always this honesty.
You can say a lot of thingsabout Emiliano Pasqualetti and
just shove them in his face, butwith always this honesty.
You know, you can say a lot ofthings about Emiliano
Pasqualetti and most of thosethings might be true, but if
there's one thing that you cansay about him is that if he
tells you something is becausethat's what he really thinks.
He says things as they are and,believe me, that's really
important.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
Is that an Italian thing?
Because I think I have that.
I do that too, and sometimesit's not always the best thing
to do here's.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
The thing is that you know.
I always joke, especiallybecause Colombians tend to be
exaggeratedly polite, and infact I always joke with people
here saying if Colombians werejust a little bit rude, the GDP
of this country would grow by 8%overnight.
But the funny thing is that youneed to do it to the person

(53:54):
that you know is willing toaccept it.
To cut the crap.
It takes two.
It's not just you that cut thecrap.
It needs to be two Like I needyou to be truthful and I need to
listen like carefully.
That's how you make it, that'show you make it work.

(54:15):
Yeah, and again I that that wehave this up, because sometimes
when I get into this type ofdiscussions like this is like
damn it am.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
I talking about my business partner of my wife, but
uh uh well, you, you sharesometimes the same amount of
time and you travel just as muchwith them.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Here's the funny thing, with problems and others.
I have known emiliano forlonger than I've known my wife.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
I've known my wife for 11 years and I've known
Emiliano for 21.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
So this kind of tells you Absolutely.
This kind of tells you.
And also one important thingactually at a human level is
that when you have 20 years ofsharing the path of your life
with someone you have beenthrough so much, we have seen

(55:05):
each other at the strongest andat the weakest.
In the major, emiliano saw meborderline dying on a hospital
bed, and I've seen Emiliano inhis weakest moments in his life,
even if it's not evenprofessionally.
That that actually creates achannel of communication, of

(55:28):
truth and of trust that nowadayshe can even call me names as
much as he wants, me names asmuch as he wants, and I know
what he means and I do the samewith him.
You know and I do the same withhim, and that actually is what
make a business relationshiplast for 20 years and also the

(55:50):
fact that there's an oceanbetween us, so we kind of
limited physical interaction toa minimum.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
So let's talk a little bit more about search.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yes, sorry, I opened these very personal.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
No, I love it.
I'll tell you something.
I'll tell you a very abridgedversion of our business or my
business was is that I startedmy business, and I started my
business with a person namedAmanda Waltz, and Amanda is
another domain broker and she isone of the best domain brokers
in the business and we worktogether.
And I think we had differentaspirations of where we wanted

(56:24):
to take the business and what wewanted, and different goals and
unfortunately, you guys havestuck together but we parted
ways two summers ago and afterthat happened, months later, I
started talking to the CEO of aname silo, called Kristaps Ronca

(56:45):
and they had a sales platform,that name lot that I've had my
eye on.
It's kind of like I wanted tobuild this into more of like a
marketplace and a brokerage andself brokerage and all these
things.
And one of the areas I wastotally struggling with is is
development, because I'm more ofthe business development guy,
I'm the salesperson, I'm the onewith the ideas.

(57:08):
If I turn my screen I've got.
It's actually hilarious.
I'll actually show you this.
I hope I don't knock it over.
I've got a list of.
I threw away my whiteboard andthen, right after I threw away
my whiteboard Uh-huh.
And then, right after I threwaway my whiteboard, I needed it
again.
And my sons have a target an ax.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
But I put a piece of cardboard and I write my ideas
there and it fell down and itscared the shit out of me
earlier, but anyways.
But he brings in ourrelationship where you know more
of a man I'd be more the Apersonality sales go get them.
You know they bought, you knowwe're partners in Sawcom and

(57:50):
doing this and he brought theside of the business, of
technological side of thebusiness, and him and his
personality is exactly what yousaid is it's filling in.
What I'm definitely not.
And one of the biggest problemsthat I've had in business and I
think it's taken me a long timeto figure this one out is when I

(58:11):
would talk to a developer Iwould explain the problem I'm
having.
I would tell him what I want,or her what I want out of it,
and then when they give it to me, a lot of the times what it is
isn't what I wanted and then Iget mad and frustrated.
But in the end, if you actuallypick apart what occurred, the

(58:34):
reason why it isn't the way Iwant it is it's because the guy
looking in the mirror, because Ididn't do a good enough job
explaining it and covering everysingle detail to make sure that
that is exactly what I wanted,and what they do is they do what
you told them to do and theydon't think of the details.

(58:54):
They did it to the dot, but I'mnot good at mapping that out,
I'm not good at doing everylittle thing, so I need a very
good project manager and I needsomeone like him to question me
and ask those details that Idon't.
My brain just doesn't thinkthat way.
I look more like if we do this,then we can get here.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
And we can hear and hear.
It's to have the vision, it'sto have the vision yes, and Get
it there.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
He's brought that into this business and things
have been going great as well,not to say that it wouldn't be
going as well if Amanda wasstill around.
It's just kind of a differentpartner.
I have nothing bad to say aboutit.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
What did you say?
It's a different endeavor, it'sa different type of project in
front of you Now you're having adifferent approach, totally.
But you see, you said somethingreally interesting, because now
you started having that honestyto look at yourself and to say

(59:57):
this is where I'm lacking, thathonesty to look at yourself and
to say this is where I'm lacking.
Then that direct channel ofcommunication can be opened.

Speaker 1 (01:00:07):
And that's actually how things evolve, it's true,
and you got to realize that Ican't be like Hercules on one
side of the boat with an oar andthen everybody else is on the
other and I'm doing everything,and then there's a bunch of
little ones here Like you needto delegate, you need to trust
in people to do a good job, youneed to, you know, give them

(01:00:27):
those opportunities.
And then you also need you justneed people to talk to and
bring you back down to earth andtell you your ideas are stupid,
sometimes as well you know, orthat's not doable.
Your ideas are stupid, sometimesas well, you know.
Or that's not doable.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
You know long, long time ago Uh, and again I'm
talking 20, even beforeDomainspot times uh, because Max
and I started fiddling with, uh, with the internet and creating
websites and try to, you know,put put online ideas, since we
were really 16 or something.
And, um, and we had this method.
Uh, that was this method.

(01:01:00):
That was really interesting.
We would just get into a roomand if I had an idea, you know,
and I explain it Max would spendtwo hours just trying to poke
brutally as many holes aspossible in my idea, and I would
do the same with his, if itsurvived it may be worth

(01:01:22):
exploring.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
Ah, that's good.
It would be like a trial byfire.

Speaker 2 (01:01:27):
in a way, Like you know, I'm just going to try to
throw everything I can to justdestroy your idea.
If it's still standing, it hassome legs.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Yeah, when I manage the sales team of 50 salespeople
and one of them would come tome and say you know, I think we
should buy this product rightand we would use this technology
to do this, and I'd be like,okay, so what I would do is I
would write it down in my littlenotebook and I would say, well,
we'll look into it, and Iwouldn't say a word back to that

(01:02:02):
salesperson on purpose and Iwould wait, and a lot of the
times they never came back againand asked again, and that, to
me, tells you that it isn't asmission and critical as they
think.
It was just important that dayto have it.
But if other sales people startcoming over and saying, hey, I
was working with john and he'susing this widget, he showed me

(01:02:23):
this widget, I really want itthen all of a sudden it's time
to maybe have a demo, maybe it'stime to start looking into
pricing, maybe it's time tostart seeing how they're using
it, you know, and then you startimplementing it or you don't.
You know you get to that pointas well, absolutely so, yeah.
So I have a question for you.
Yes, okay.
So you are, I'm guessing that,on a daily basis, your search

(01:02:46):
algorithm that people are usingon registrars and hosting
companies in places like that isprobably used millions of times
a day.
Is that fair?
Yes, fair to say yes Millionsof searches of times a day.
Is that fair?
Yes, fair to say yes Millionsof searches.
Okay, do you think if you tookthe daily search volume and
maybe you had it trailing the,let's say, the S&P 500 or the

(01:03:09):
stock market or the globaleconomy based on location, do
you think that it would possiblyfollow stocks, but delayed?
I just feel so.
From my point of view, and theway I'm looking at the stock
market and the way things aregoing right now in the United
States is we've just broken theall-time high for the size of
the market, but there are ahandful of stocks that are

(01:03:32):
really performing exponentiallywell, making it look a lot
better than really what it isright now, because a lot of
other stocks are flat yeah whichis drag, which is pulling up
everything else right, and otherstocks that are similar to that
company are also getting, youknow, are going up, and then,
just in general I don't have allthe specifics but, like you

(01:03:54):
know, we don't have theexplosiveness of registrations.
I'm an investor in link andwe're relatively flat for new
registrations this year.
Despite doing a lot ofpartnerships and going out there
and doing a lot of biz dev andhitting the streets.
It's relatively flat.
It's not the same growth wewere getting before.
What does that tell me?

(01:04:15):
If registrars aren't getting alot of new registrations or
losing registrations, then thesearches must be less than they
were two years ago, whereactually, you know, as an
economy, I would think yoursearch volume would be a metric

(01:04:42):
that people should potentiallybe looking at and if pegged in a
certain way, you'd probably besurprised as to what you'd see.
Have you ever thought aboutthat?

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
So it could be, it could be eventually, but there
are two important considerationsto make there are two important
considerations to make.
The first one is that, even ifwe wanted to, we cannot, let's
say, simply because one of thecharacteristics of our service

(01:05:17):
is that our customer searchesare our customers.
And this is a very importantpart, because the reason why we
have a paid service that weprovide to our customers is
because we cannot touch the data.
And, believe me, across theyears, there has been a lot of
people saying hey, you know, isthere a way that we can get a
hold of X registrars logs orsomething like?

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
that Well, I wouldn't say.
I'm not saying X registrars, no, but even in aggregate, even in
aggregate.
Even in aggregate.
You don't want to know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
But, with that said, there is a, because there are a
bunch of other registrars andespecially the, let's say, the
resellers that use kind of theself-service product you know,
can provide us with some data.
We did an interesting analysis,is actually in our blog, is

(01:06:08):
actually on Domainsbot blog.
It was a massive analytics workdone by Emiliano In seeing how
the behavior, especiallypost-pandemic, has changed over
time, has changed during thepandemic and post-pandemic.

(01:06:29):
Obviously, we're coming out ofthe pandemic, and data had a
massive impact.
Back in those days, when we wereall enclosed in our houses, we
were registering and searchingfor domain names like nobody's
business.
Today, obviously, the thing haschanged, right, and we didn't
even look at the United Statesby itself.
We looked worldwide, andobviously there are places that

(01:06:53):
have, right now, an economicoutlook and an economic
situation that is even moredifferent from the one in the US
.
With that said, though, I thinkit's interesting to look at it
because it could give you someindication of how active people

(01:07:13):
is online and nowadays, howactive people is online, and
nowadays, how active people isonline could be an indication on
how active is people in general, and what I mean by active, not
how much they run.
You know how active theireconomic you know activities are
, and this is definitely aninteresting part.
However, I would say that morethat for the big companies, it

(01:07:43):
would give you a great outlookon how the small businesses
outlook is looking, because whosearches for a domain name, main
name?
If I'm an investor and I'mtrying, for example, to bet on,
uh, you know, new keywords ornew terms or new technologies or

(01:08:03):
things like that, okay, yeah,that's definitely a thing, but I
would look at it maybe fromanother angle, which is, uh, how
much people is starting a youknow a little shop around the
block?
What?

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
that's what I'm trying to say is that the US is
built on small business.
You know, people from theoutside looking in think it's
Microsoft and Amazon, but thereality is you drive through the
United States it's all smallbusiness.
You drive on the roads it's allsmall businesses driving around
, true, true?
Well, in that case, actually?

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
yes, it definitely could.
It definitely could be anindicator.
But if actually you want thatanswer, I would say that I
wouldn't even look directly justat the search volume, but I
would use something like ourdata to actually say what's
happening.
In the last year, how manyrestaurants have popped into

(01:08:56):
existence, where are they based,what are the things that
they're selling, how manyflorists, how many dentists, how
many you know like.
Maybe not directly, lookingonly from the domain search side
, but I would actually use thedirect metrics which, by the way
, our data has, because it'sonly there, but it's to see how

(01:09:18):
many of these businesses arepopping into existence and even
how many of them are dying out,to see actually how the whole
economic activity is expandingor not.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
But then you look at companies like Linktree.
That added millions of users ina couple of years.
That added millions of users ina couple of years and if they
were a registrar, that pulledthat off to 20 million
registrations in two years.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
It would be pretty big.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
They would be queuing the band.
The moment that registraranyone from that registrar
walked into ICANN, the redcarpet would come out and
registrar the other registrarswould be like surrounding them,
asking for autographs, becausethat would be the greatest
business person ever to walkthrough.
I can't be able to grow at thatspeed, Right, but they really
did it.
They really did that.
That's almost like a registrar,but it also shows that there

(01:10:07):
could be more of like a culturalchange where people aren't as
worried about the domain nameand they're just getting their
link in bio and they're puttingit on their Instagram or their
Facebook business and they'resaying, okay, that works too,
and I don't have to go with theweb builder and all the bullshit
that comes with it, and smallbusinesses might be going in
that direction as well.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
You see, there's an important part.
There's an important partactually, I have discussed this
topic with a bunch of people inthe industry incidentally, even
the guys at link, a bunch ofpeople in the industry,
incidentally, even the guys atlink about the fact that there
is one important piece ofknowledge, let's say, that has

(01:10:47):
to be maybe shared and madeunderstood better by the wider
industry sorry, by the widermarket which is the fact that,
with LinkedIn bio, with yourInstagram, with your Facebook
page, you are giving control ofyour web presence to someone

(01:11:09):
else.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Oh, totally.

Speaker 2 (01:11:12):
And this is an important part.
You know there was an analysisI did a long time ago about
streamers, for example.
Right Now, the streamercommunity depends on you know
the web presence.
You know if I'm a streamer,either it's about video games or
whatever it is.
You know you have, you need tohave control of the place where

(01:11:42):
your audience come in.
If your audience only knows youfrom twitch slash Panda, or
YouTube slash panda or facebookslash panda, nothing wrong with
it.
Or even link three dot slashpanda, nothing wrong with it.
But just bear in mind you areanyway at the mercy of them with

(01:12:04):
your domain name and with yourweb presence, even if you have
to go through your web buildingand let's be honest, building a
website these days is not samething as I used to do in 1995
when I got no to to code in htmlby yourself no way but
even in that, even in that, itat least gives you control.

(01:12:25):
And I have seen countlessstreamers, you know, or
youtubers, make a wrong move andjust get erased from existence.
And the thing is that obviouslyyou know, you might argue, you
might argue you know what it'sworth the risk, because I don't
want to have the hassle toregister a domain name or to

(01:12:47):
renew it once a year.
But let's be honest if you'retwitching business or streaming
business or your activity onlineis going good, it's really a
relatively small price to pay.

Speaker 1 (01:13:00):
Yeah Well, I know that Joe Rogan was on all
YouTube and he got a warningbecause they were saying that he
was talking about fake newswhen he was talking about the
vaccinations and things likethat.
So he started to get worriedthat he was going to get his
channel shut down.
And then Spotify picked him upand he still puts his episodes
on YouTube, but not the full.
He gives you shorts, but he'sleft there and he has more

(01:13:23):
control.
But you know, he's a juggernautand that's a whole different
animal.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
You're talking about, you know, maybe one of the most
important podcasts right now,even in the world, that he has a
huge audience.
I'm not familiar with hisnumbers, but I know for a fact
that he's really big, soobviously in his case it's

(01:13:48):
different, meaning that healready by himself has the power
to then say okay, I'm justgoing to move here and move
there, and you know he can evenstay on Spotify and still be Joe
Rogan.
But the reality is that themoment that you have and the
moment that you are known by,for example, your web presence,

(01:14:10):
which could be even a domainname linked to a link, three to
a link you know, this is myInstagram, this is my thing, but
you have to have the power, theday that you switch to YouTube
pages, to change it and go toyour new YouTube page, for
example.
This already gives you much morecontrol.
You know, in the end it reallygoes back down to the, to the,

(01:14:36):
to the very old, the metaphor orof what the domain name
industry is.
You are buying it.
Do you remember in the good olddays, when we were all younger,
that we used to say that adomain name is a piece of real
estate in the internet?

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
I still do Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
The thing is that when you are actually just you
know a guest at someone's house,obviously it's different than
actually saying, okay, I own myplot of land.
It might be barren, it mighthave a beautiful house, a
beautiful website on it, butit's my land.
So at least I have more controlIf I'm a guest at someone's

(01:15:16):
house.
You know, in Italy I don't knowif in the US it's the same, but
we have this say that a guestis like fish After three days it
starts smelling bad.
So the thing is?
The thing is that I would saythat that is one of the most
important arguments that youwould have, but again, it's a

(01:15:40):
problem of education, ofeducation, of letting people
understand that.
And when it comes to new GTLDsI think I used to use this
metaphor a lot when I'm talkingwith registries is that right
now and for some maybe still thecase there is almost this veil
of transparency?

(01:16:00):
Right, new GTLDs now, but ittook 10 years for new GTLDs to
be just part of everyone's dailylife, right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
Yeah, I don't know why they call them new anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
Well, in technology terms, you know, 10 years might
sound like an eternity.
But the reality is this is that,since you are touching one of
the things that has touchedsociety the most in the maybe
last thousand years, which isthe internet, obviously, for as
fast as technology goes, youhave to give it time to people

(01:16:41):
for that to sink in.
Because, remember, the internetis, you know, is, yeah, nvidia
Link 3, like this supertechnological.
It's the edge of technology isFacebook.
But the internet is also awebsite of a pharmacy that is in
a street corner, in a tinyhouse in North Dakota, or is in,

(01:17:03):
you know, in a tiny Colombiantown.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Or six Italians in Rome building a business.
You see, that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (01:17:11):
That's the thing, yeah building a business.
You see, that's the thing.
That's the thing, yeah.
So the problem is that if it'strue one world, one internet if
it's also true that what itstands, what, what it's work,
what, what it's part of everydaylife for nvidia or for
microsoft or for domainsbot orsubcom, has to be the same for

(01:17:31):
the pharmacist in North Dakota.
And that takes time.
And again, I'm just making theexample of North Dakota as a
remote location.
But this is the thing you know,being Italian, maybe for me I
have the perception that NorthDakota is very remote.
But that's the point is thatyou know is that it's a process

(01:17:52):
that takes time and maybe people, even in the domain name
industry, really underestimatedhow long it was going to take.
They really did, because a lotof people back at that Beijing
ICANN meeting it was at thebeginning of the new GTLD era
people were convinced okay, I'mgetting out with my new brand

(01:18:13):
new extension, I'm going to makea trillion registration in the
first six months.

Speaker 1 (01:18:17):
Good luck with that we thought at Uniregistry when
like link was launched and Frankinvested in 20 other GTLDs he
had, that the numbers were goingto be explosive and they grew.
But they grew not to the amountthat he felt was a success, but

(01:18:37):
they grew organically like anormal business and they've
continued to grow that way.
A lot of them I mean some ofthem had some very good promos,
like XYZ did the penny a nameand then a lot of those names
have renewed and they havereally done a wonderful job with
that extension.
But I think the majority ofthem have grown at a nice steady
rip.
You know doing what companies dowhen they have campaigns and

(01:18:59):
opportunities at work but thenthe gold vein burns out and
they're going to find a new oneand they might dip and then get
into other things and otheropportunities come along.
But you know, I think if youasked the total number of GTLDs
registrations 10 years in, Ithink even those that had the
more conservative numbers otherthan the haters but those that

(01:19:21):
had the more conservativenumbers would still have been
pretty high from what peoplewere expecting.
But the demand wasn't there.
It's going to be interestingwith the new round three years
from now or two and a half years, really like three years from
now, where there could behundreds of new applications
that come in and new extensions,and that's going to make your

(01:19:41):
job a little harder of addingmore options.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
It's going to make it wider I wouldn't say harder, I
would actually say wider likenow.
It's going to be maybe easierfor us, for example on the name
suggestion side, to serve thepublic, because now there's
going to be either even more,much more availability and
there's going to be thepossibility and at least I pray

(01:20:06):
to god actually that the newgtld round is going to have very
relevant strings.
That is not just going to belike whatever I come up with the
morning in the morning and Ijust make a tld out of it, but
if the strings are relevant it'sgoing to be easier.
There's going to be moreavailability and more relevancy
because, again to me, my, mywords and paging still stand

(01:20:29):
true relevance, butlevance.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Yes, you're absolutely right, but the thing
is is that every store you gointo only has so much shelf
space, and if it's a lot of badextensions as you can see in the
list of GTLDs now that arelisted publicly for sale aren't
getting the registrationsbecause they're either not
relevant, they're too long, thequality isn't there whatever it

(01:20:55):
is, or there's no commercialdemand for it, and so the
registrars aren't going to haveyou put results of some crappy
extension in there just becausethat name's available, because
it's just not going to convertand your algorithm is going to
learn from that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
It's a duck pretty quick, right it's going to learn
from that that it's a dumppretty quick, right, it's gonna
adapt, it's gonna learn and it'sgonna adapt to see if the
people is more receptive to thistlt, there is no logical reason
for which we shouldn't weshouldn't show it.
Obviously, in the moment, thetlt is relevant to the, to the
customer.
So, yeah, it's my daughter thatis walking away.

(01:21:34):
They're going, they're goingpiano lessons.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
Oh, that's cute, that's cute.
So I'm going to ask you somequestions here, some more
questions.
I got a bunch of them.
Sure, these are the.
These are going to be.
These are going to be shortanswers for you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
Okay, all right right , remember, if there's one gift
that god give didn't give me,it's actually synthesis, but I'm
gonna try to do my, to do mybest try your best.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
Try your best, okay.
All right, you've mentionedyou're drinking white wine, but
are you more of a red wine or awhite wine kind of guy?

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
honestly white, or white.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Okay, so then my next question was would you you like
South American wine or Italianwine more?

Speaker 2 (01:22:13):
Do you really need?

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
to ask Well, if it's white, it's probably the Italian
anyway, right?

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
No, in general, I'm a huge fan of Italian whites.

Speaker 1 (01:22:24):
Italian whites.
That's your favorite.
Okay, what's your favorite?

Speaker 2 (01:22:27):
grape would say that there was.
One of the best white winesI've ever had was actually
something that it's kind ofweird because it was called the
Pinot Giallo, yellow Pinot.
You are very used to Pinot Noir, so the black one.

Speaker 1 (01:22:49):
Yes, pinot Grigio as well.

Speaker 2 (01:22:51):
Exactly, pinot Giallo was one of the best I had it
very, very, very few times, andI'm a huge fan of the.
How do you spell it?
How do you spell it?
Giallo g-i-a-l-l-o, which meansyellow in italian, and um and
um.
Tune it to my two, let's say,favorite wines are from the

(01:23:16):
farthest northern part of Italy,which is right at border with
Austria, which are the MüllerTurgau and the Gerwustraminer.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
I'm surprised you make good wine from there,
because it's cold, you know, inthe winter that's actually what
makes them slightly sweeter andmuch more aromatic, like they
don't okay they don't pack thesame punch that, for example
yeah a red from Tuscany would dowith uh, uh, you know yeah pack
.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
They're much lighter okay, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:46):
Next question have you ever had chef boyardee?
Sorry have you ever had chefboyardee?
It's American spaghetti in acan.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
I am not entirely sure it is possible, although
I'm afraid that if I did, thatwould make my Italian citizen in
jeopardy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:07):
I think you would have loved it.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
No, I'm pretty sure that it's great.
It's just that you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
Again, I have an italian passport to defend have
you ever had domino's pizza orpapa john's or any or sparrow?

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
so I had actually a slice of um what's the other
famous, uh, american pizza,pizza hut I had it.
I had it once in in the czechrepublic, in prague, and once in
beijing, but in both cases itwas in beijing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
It was out of necessity it was just you're
starving and you neededsomething to eat.

Speaker 2 (01:24:47):
Yeah, and we were really running out of options.
I was with francesco ceteraro.
He used to be at aphelios for avery long time and um the thing
is that he's the most thefoodiest of the foodies that
I've ever met in my life it'slike if it's not michelin star,
I'm not eating.
And he was so desperate inbeijing that he says dude, I
even know where mcdonald's inbeijing are so he was eating

(01:25:10):
chinese sparrow yeah, somethinglike that, yeah like that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
Yeah, that's the lowest of the low right there.

Speaker 2 (01:25:15):
Yeah, that's kind of how bad it can get.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
All right.
Last question what do you thinkabout if you came to my house
and I was making pasta and Ibroke it in half when I put it
in the pot?
Yeah, the spaghetti.
How would you feel about that?
Would you be bothered?

Speaker 2 (01:25:30):
More than bothered.
Feel about that.
Would you be bothered More thanbothered?
I would just politely try toexplain to you why it's a bad
idea.
Because people think that thatis just a quirk, but there's a
reason for it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Okay, lay it on me.
What's the reason so?

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
every pasta has.
Every shape of pasta is meantto have a sauce, and the reason
why that pasta has a shape isbecause it works better with
that sauce.
The reason why spaghetti worksso well, for example, with
sauces like tomato sauce orcarbonara or matriciana, all of
those is because you're justgiving it more surface to for

(01:26:06):
the sauce to stick to.
So the thing is that when youcut them in half, you are
actually cutting in half yourbite, your chew, when you roll
them.
Okay, so it's not that Italiansget mad at it for like… You're

(01:26:27):
just like why?
No, there's just a reason.
There's just a reason like thereason why in Italy you can find
500 shapes of different shapesof pasta.
It's not because we didn't haveanything to do that afternoon
that we decided to invent them.
It's because every pasta issupposed to go with the sauce.
You know the rigatoni.

(01:26:48):
It's called the rigatonibecause riga means a stripe and
they have all those stripes inthere.
It's called the rigatonibecause riga means a stripe and
they have all those stripes inthere.
It's just to increase thesurface area to actually have
the sauce stick.
But they have that shape so thebites of stuff can get into the
tube.
So when you eat it you actuallyhave a bite of the three things
together.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
There we go.
I like it Is that easy.

Speaker 2 (01:27:11):
The most hated cut of pasta in Italy, or the least
used, is actually the smoothrigatoni or penne.
They don't have the stripes,they're just smooth with fish

(01:27:32):
dishes, because obviously youwant to, on a fish pasta dish,
to actually have the pasta playkind of a little tuned down role
, because since you're using aquality ingredient like fish,
you want that one actually toshine as much as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
I got it.
Yes, do you want?
Yes, Everything has a reason,my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
Everything has a reason.
Fusilli is my possible.
I got it.
Yes, do you want?
Yes, Everything has a reason,my friend.
Everything has a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
Fusilli is my favorite Fusilli.
What kind of what is that forFusilli, for example?

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
because the fusilli has an enormous surface area for
its volume.
Yes, an enormous pesto Fusillial pesto With pesto you cannot
go wrong, or even a tomato sauce.
Even a tomato sauce.
You are actually just givingthe possibility to the sauce to

(01:28:22):
shine because it attaches to it.
You need to give it surfacearea to attach to when you have
a sauce which is obviously veryliquid.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
And how's the Italian food in Colombia?

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
Actually, oddly enough, now you have access to
much more things, for example,compared to 20 years ago, like
there are restaurants even in mytown.
I don't live in the capital, Idon't live in Bogota, I live in
Pereira, which is kind of thecapital of the coffee zone of
the country, and it's a millionpeople, like between 750.
It's a million people, likebetween 750, almost a million
people, uh I'm gonna, I'm gonnahave to have you bring me a

(01:28:58):
pound of coffee next timeabsolutely absolutely oh man
yeah and the thing is that, uh,here now you, we, we even have a
couple of restaurants that areactually owned and operated by
italians that move, and you canfind Italian pasta, you can find
Italian parmesan, you can findItalian olive oil, so you have

(01:29:19):
access to the products.
Now, you know, 20 years ago, Iremember when I was a kid and my
Colombian friends would ask meoh, can you cook us pasta?
And it would turn like very,very bad is because I didn't
have access to the ingredients.
At the end of the day, italiancuisine, it's all about the
ingredients.
We don't cook, we ensemble, wecraft, but something it's true.

(01:29:43):
It's true, like you know.
Think about the fact that apasta dish, actually it's
traditionally made in the sametime that it takes the pasta to
cook, which is maybe 10 minutes.
Carbonara can be assembled in10 minutes.
11 if you're slow, but that'spretty much it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:06):
It's not cooking, it's assembling.
You just need to know how to doit.
Yep, I got it.
That's great.
So we talked about search.
We talked about your businessintelligence tool.

Speaker 2 (01:30:17):
And before we wrap this up, because you usually try
to keep these for an hour, anhour and a half now, I told you
that synthesis was not a giftfor me.

Speaker 1 (01:30:20):
I warned you a bit, but you were also worried that
you wouldn't know what to talkabout today.
You were saying so come on.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
Jeff, you got to understand something.
In Italy we have a say it'sbetter to keep your mouth shut
and give people the doubt thatyou're an idiot, that opening
and give them confirmation so ohyeah, and how do you do that in
italian?
What's that, what's the?
What's the traditional way?
And may you, may, you, may, youstart zitti and lashar,

(01:30:50):
something like that.
I don't remember exactly thesay, like there is a traditional
way of saying it, but right nowit's kind of I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
I just lost it for a moment.
So registrars can use you Acurrent business can do it if
they're doing for brandprotection, cctlds and scanning
the internet for matchingdomains to their business to see
what ones are registered andwhat's on those names and threat
scores for what's happening onthose names, correct.
And then, additionally, arethere any other products that

(01:31:20):
like a domainer, because there'sa lot of domain investors that
listen to us that might findvalue in what you have.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
I would say that Pandalytics could be an
interesting research tool.
Actually, it is, in fact, agreat research tool.
Actually, it is, in fact, agreat research tool even for
domain investors.
And the reason why I say thisis because we search the entire
internet, all domain names inexistence.
We crawl them, we analyze it,we take all this information, we

(01:31:45):
structure it and we make itavailable.
And every domainer has his ownsecret sauce, has his own way of
looking at domain names tounderstand if this niche is
working, if this other niche isworking, to even place bets on
the future, and understandingwhat is the situation today.
It's definitely one importantfactor into that equation, if

(01:32:06):
you are a domainer that you are,for example, specialized in
domain names of a specific niche, understanding how many domain
names there are there, how manywebsites real websites that are
producing revenue about thatindustry are in there, where are
they, what language do theyspeak, and all of this can

(01:32:26):
actually allow you to say, okay,now I'm going to go and get
these domain names to enrich myportfolio.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
So if someone would dump, like you know, I think one
of the things that a lot ofdomainers kind of fight with is
obviously they're a lot of timesare handcuffed by what's coming
on the drop and a lot of peoplejust buy expired names.
So if they were going to take alist of expired names and they
would use PandaLytics to findthings like diamonds in the
rough, like it's obvious when aone wordcom expires and it's

(01:32:55):
easy to look at perfect twowordcoms if you're going to get
those, but it's finding thosethat it's obscure and the
majority of your colleagues,it's just going to go over their
head and these guys buy it inthe in the closeout section for
25 bucks or 50 bucks or ahundred bucks and then they can
dump it for $5 within a year ortwo years.

Speaker 2 (01:33:15):
And you think PandaLytics has the ability to
uncover possibilities like thatTo uncover possibility to
understand the sizes of markets,understand the sizes of niches,
right.
All these things can be easilyunderstood with PandaLytics, and
the main part is with the factthat at least you would know

(01:33:37):
that what you're, what you'relooking at, is really all domain
names in existence for GTL.
these are it that they believefor cctl these, we are pioneers
with our techniques to actuallyhave the biggest coverage of
cctl these possible.
So, yeah, these are.
These is, for example, on thedomain investor side, for

(01:33:59):
registrars, obviously, domainsuggestion and understand and in
our data, whatever analytics orinsights or whatever service
you want to look at, it is thefact of understand, is the fact
of understanding what are mycustomers doing, what are they
buying from the outside that I'mnot even aware of?
What are the things that I maybe offering as a service, like

(01:34:24):
it's part of my product offeringand it's a perfect match for
them and I just don't.
I haven't connected the thedots by giving you the third
party.
From the outside perspective,you are able to look at this.
And for registries, obviously isunderstanding who is using my
domain names, what are theydoing, what are they talking

(01:34:46):
about with these domain namesand what is the information that
I can get to position better myTLD.
I have a couple of examplesthat are actually common
knowledge Dot ME, when theystarted analyzing their TLD and
they realized that theirprogrammers and start-uppers

(01:35:09):
were using their TLD, theyactually got their strategy by
looking really closely at theircustomer base and they decided
okay, this is actually how Iwant to position it.
And they have done brilliantthings, organized conferences
about new technologies, aboutstart-ups, because it was their

(01:35:31):
customer base telling.
This is why we appreciate them.
It's never a top bottom thing,like I decided that my tld is
for this, you know yeah, well,the people decide.

Speaker 1 (01:35:44):
In the end you can say whatever you want and then
it's just what people are doing.
And I think I think, from aregistry standpoint, which a lot
of people don't realize is thatthey do promos try to get as
many registrations as they can.
The problem is when you sellnames at a penny or a dollar,
two bucks or whatever on a bigpromo, the renewals aren't very
high.
So you're hoping the next yearrenews at 20 bucks or 15 bucks

(01:36:06):
or whatever, and if people don'tuse the name, then your odds
are very slim.
They're probably going to renewit unless they make a mistake,
and it just renews automatically, not being used in trouble.
Yeah, so if you look at your soyou could scanlink and you can
say 80% of the string arebusinesses that are using it.
You know, 15% are investors and5% is unknown.

(01:36:31):
So then when we look at ourprojections we can say, okay,
these are probably not going torenew and this is what we're
looking at next year forprojections and revenue, for
example with the registrar.
What are those?

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
activities, those promotions, those packages or
those messages that we canconvey in order to stimulate at
least part of that customer base, part of those domain names

(01:37:02):
that are still inactive, they'restill dormant into turning it
into something, because themoment they turn into something
your chances of having thatdomain name renew, you know, go
to the roof.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
So it's really also predictive in the sorry, not
predictive, that's the wrongword preemptive in say before
they drop or before they'reabout to drop, I'm going to try
to do something, yeah, and thenyou can potentially guess what
they're gonna do with itabsolutely.
And so you could then say, hey,this isn't being used.
How about a free link in biocoupon to this company, or you

(01:37:44):
do whatever to get it renewed,or they're using it, and then
you can say your renewals comingup correct, you know, or
something, and yeah, I'm to tellyou something that I've always
said about Pamletics and aboutour data in general.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
Um, that I knew is going to sound weird, but I
really believe that, and atleast everyone that has used our
data has confirmed my weirdsaying the biggest limitation of
our data is the creativity ofthe person sitting in front of
it, because it's so deep and wetry to be as complete as

(01:38:22):
possible because of all thedifferent data points that we
collect.
What we're trying to do, or atleast what is one of the most
important uses of it, is topaint a picture.
So every single data point isnot the entire picture, but

(01:38:44):
every data point, every anglethat we analyze a domain name,
it could be.
Let's look at an email.
If they're using an SSL, whattype of SSL?
What type of CMS are they using?
Are they using a bloggingsystem?
Are they using an e-commerceplatform?
If yes, which one?
All these things are differentstrokes of brush of a painting

(01:39:06):
that I'm trying to paint andthat painting is the face of the
customer standing behind thedomain name.
So looking at the e-commercemight be an eyebrows.
That painting is the face ofthe customer standing behind the
domain name.
So looking at the e-commercemight be an eyebrows.
Looking at if they're usinganalytics might be just the
shape of the nose.
But every one of these things,not by themselves, but all
together, they paint you apicture, and these, for

(01:39:29):
registries and registrars alike,is really important, because
the moment that you know thatpicture, then you know what to
do next yeah, and a domaininvestor could do the same.
Absolutely, absolutely for, forthem, for them.
Let's say that the customer isnot a customer, but in that case
, you are painting a type, atype, yeah, like.

(01:39:50):
This is my industry, this is myniche, this is my market, this
is what this domain name cangive me, so it can really be.
This is why I say it's really amatter of creativity.
And obviously, one thing, andand and I and I would hate
myself for not saying this,sorry I'm taking so long is that
it's been great one of thethings that we really pride

(01:40:13):
ourselves, emiliano and I andall the Domainsbot team is that
we're just eight at this moment.
We're very tiny.

Speaker 1 (01:40:22):
Eight okay.

Speaker 2 (01:40:25):
It's just that we really want to be and are part
of the process.
We're not just going to giveyou a username and a password,
say okay, log into Panalyticsand now you're off to the races.
No, it doesn't work like that.
We want to be and we put toeach one of our customers.
I personally spend with eachone of our customers the time to

(01:40:47):
understand what it is that theydo, what it is that we can,
that we can.
You know that our data can helpand we really put ourselves out
there, you know, as part ofwhat we do.
You know it's not a joke when Isay that when you work with
Pandalytics, you get a piece ofthe panda, because of the fact

(01:41:08):
that no, and you can ask itaround at all the companies that
work with us.
You know it can be, as let'slook at the data together, let's
find innovative ideas together,let's try to, you know, find

(01:41:30):
what is in the data, that you'redoing things.
The data can help.
We will be part of that processand we will make you more data
driven.
You know, and it's a processand it's a process, but the
thing is that it's never ausername and a password or a
newsletter.
You talk to Daniel, you talk toEmiliano and we put each one of

(01:41:51):
our perspectives into theprocess.
You know, when we kind ofrestyled ourselves.
You know, one of the differentsentences that we say is with
the human part of data, and younever have to forget that.
Everybody says yeah, you know,data is the new oil, right?
Yeah, that's true, but oil isgood.
If data is oil, you know datais the new oil, right?

(01:42:12):
Yeah, that's true, but oil isgood, it's got you if all.
If data is oil, you know, foryour car you don't need oil, you
need gasoline, and those aretwo different things yeah, yeah,
every time I look at data, it'salways different than what I
thought it was going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:42:28):
The outcomes are always, is always, different.
You know, and it's, and it'sfunny, and you get so stuck in
your ideas that you believe, youtotally believe it yourself.
And then you look at thenumbers and you're just like
whoa I've had those moments thatthis is so many times.
You know, like we've donedifferent landing pages on the

(01:42:49):
um, on the website, we'vedifferent.
We had a person who designedViagra landing pages.
So we were thinking toourselves you know what this guy
targets?
Men in their middle ages,mostly in the United States,
canada, uk, different placeslike that.
That is the perfect landingpage.
And then we had another onethat we had and another and

(01:43:11):
someone who built it differentlyand it's kind of a strange
looking one.
I'm this is kind of stupidlooking and that one converts
better than the viagra one.
But you would think that youknow, pfizer pumping um viagra
to middle-aged people, havingmillions of people go to this
landing page, would haveconverted the best, because we
thought that that's the targetand obviously I was.

(01:43:31):
I was wrong and we don't usethat one like we used to.
So it's just there's.
You know it's alwaysinteresting, always interesting
data that comes up in whateveryou do.
So how can anybody contact youor do you want them?
Just go to the website and askfor a demo, cause you have demos
on there, ways to contact you.
What do you got?

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
Absolutely.
You can come to Domainspot.
There's a very Italian emailaddress that people can contact
us directly, which is ciao atdomainsbotcom.
But you know my email addressdaniel at domainsbotcom,
emiliano at domainsbotcom.
You can contact us directly tosee if we can help you, let's

(01:44:13):
say, in being more data awareand taking advantage of this
knowledge to really make adifference, because at the end
of the day, that's what it's allabout.
If we don't make a difference,why are we here, right?

Speaker 1 (01:44:29):
It's like why are you showing up at ICANN meetings if
you don't make a difference.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
You should be home, and that's kind of what we try
to do and we really do it with alot of heart and a lot of
passion.
I can tell you that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:45):
It is, and working with you and seeing you in
action and hearing about youfrom our colleagues.
What you're seeing here in thevideo is what you're going to
get um from, from uh him and uhhis team.
So he totally, totally means it.
So, but thanks for your time.
I hope everybody enjoyed thisone.
I certainly did.
I think this is a great showand I'm really happy that you

(01:45:06):
came, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:07):
I apologize again for the fact that god really didn't
give me synthesis.
In a world that is coming sofocused and synthetic, I'm kind
of the exact opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:45:18):
And I love it, and there's nothing wrong with it at
all.
All right, thanks, my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
Thank you so much, jeff.
It's been really really apleasure being here and I'm glad
I was able to kind of share mystory.

Speaker 1 (01:45:30):
There we go.
I'll talk to you soon.

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