Conversations from NamesCon Part I – Frank Schilling

We are in Las Vegas, attending the domain name conference NamesCon. The other day, Marcus Glaad got to talk to the legendary domainer Frank T. Schilling, who is a Cayman Islands based Internet-investor and the founder of Uniregistry Corporation. Schilling has been a long-time participant in the evolution of the commercial domain name space. He financed the Caribbean’s first ICANN accredited domain name registrar in 2003, joined as a member of the ICANN business constituency and co-founded the non-profit Internet Commerce Association in 2006.

NameCon – Las Vegas – January 29, 2018

Conversation with Frank Schilling (FS), Uniregistry
and, Marcus Glaad (MG), Dotkeeper.

MG – It has now been 2 years since our last interview here at NamesCon. Back then, we talked a lot about the new TLDs and the usage of them. Could you please give us a short recap about the nTLD space over the last years?

FS – We had a great launch with the new TLDs and there was big excitement and euphoria. The curve just pointed at the sky! And then we had additional TLDs coming on, some with free registrations, trying to stoke the demand. In the history of time, right there two years ago, we were all trying to push and sell the new TLD’s that was just made available. A lot of uptake happened – the amount of registered names grew very quickly. And then, a year later, people had renewals at full price, and naturally people started to delete. The line started falling down – and we had a lot of fall-off from the initial registration volume.

But now, I see what I characterise as a bottom line, or at least close to bottoming line, as the free registrations drop off and as people slowly start to market and sell again. We are here at NamesCon and I see 30-40 booth with people selling different domain products and TLDs. I´m sure that volume growth will come back again as a gradational slow growth as we for the most part use regular prices now.

You have to remember that, when .com was born in the late 80’s, it was just symbolic – there was no browser! It wasn’t until the browser came along in 1993 – first Mosaic and Netscape – that the domain name had utility because now you could create your own channel on the Internet and put pictures up and “Wow”! That journey took many years of nothing. There was no demand – nobody talked about domain names. Similarly with new TLD’s, there were first this euphoria – then everybody writes them off as over – while they quietly make money for their owner as they are profitable. And they are still growing – there still is a demand! Every day a person knock on the door and say “Hey I’m gonna use 10 000 of these for this crazy idea” and these deals happen all the time quietly in the background. And some of these ideas will grow and thus expand the landscape. So that is sort of what we came from, and sort of where we are right now, as I see it.

MG- You are also running Uniregistry. You see several sides of the business, as you are covering both registry and aftermarket. What about the aftermarket?

FS – Our aftermarket is growing, it’s a profitable business unit. We have a lot of demand for registrations. And a lot of demand for resales on the secondary market. We are doing a good job selling. Last year we were up 30% in terms of dollar-sales from 2016 to 2017 – that’s nice!

MG- Any trends within the aftermarket that you can see?

FS – The trend would be that there are no bottoms anymore like it used to be. We used to have months that were just inexplicably disaster months with a lower volume of sales, vs the next month that would be much higher. Now its much more of a smooth trendline with steady growth.

We can also see a refinement of the market. And, we see more payment plans – more domain names go out on payment plans. E.g. Instead of selling a name for 10 000 dollars and getting 10000 in cash we are getting 2000 upfront and we’re carrying 8000 with low payments over a 6 year progressive payment schedule. Payment plans is just something we see more of. And some of that is due to our own infrastructure – we have created an infrastructure to facilitate that and maintain it. But at the same time we see more demand for it.

MG – What can we expect from 2018, you think?

FS – Great question. I think you’re gonna se some consolidations and acquisitions of registry’ – that will happen this year. I also think your going to see some consolidations in the registrar space – in fact you’re already seeing that! Some of the smaller registrars is being bought and integrated with registrys. More vertical integration is just a logical reality. Registry’s are going to be registrars – a mix of both because its important to a have a space to place names. I predict, if the economy stay strong, we are going have a strong year in domain names. Domain names very much mirror the broader economy. How the business is going for the small and medium businesses – that’s how the domain market will go.

MG – Final question, our blogg-readers are mostly C-level excutives working on medium to large companys as we do coporate domain name management at Dotkeeper, can you give one recommendation in terms of domain names to corporates?

FS – There are a lot of new great corporate service providers coming up. I have seen some great product offerings and as its important for companies like Dotkeeper to work with those and get of head of them. Then you can help your clients with progressive tools that are out there. I mean when you look at the products… you’re like wow! Some of these new products is just game changing… As a service provider, you need to stay ahead.

MG – Thank you, Frank!