Thanks for sharing the love @milann, much appreciated!
So here's a quick intro about Undeveloped:
As entrepreneurs, we kept bumping into the problem of naming a new product/app//business. Over the years we developed quite a bit of expertise in the domain space. Yet we never saw the industry improve or evolve. Worse, more and more domains got taken over time, and we as buyers had even less choice. So we basically built the platform out of our own frustration with this market.
The idea of Undeveloped is to go beyond the "domain already taken" wall, so you can finally find something good.
This means you buy it from the guy who had registered it in the first place. Second hand so to say.
Those domains come from the assholes @milann mentioned, partly. But, you'd be surprised to know that 80% actually belong to normal folks. People like you, who just had a good idea, registered a domain name and never got to work on that side project. Renewal fees are pretty cheap, so you kept the domain just in case...
So, in the end, we're all part of the problem if we don't let go of the domains we don't use.
Undeveloped enables people to sell the domain they don't use. The price is what you decide. All the hassle of payment, escrow of the transaction, and change of ownership is 100% on our side. This way we guarantee you can NEVER get scammed. We also pioneered the industry with financing options if you prefer to pay monthly. That's something we'll do more of soon with the introduction of rent.
That's about it in a few words. Curious to hear your reactions ;)
PS: I haven't mentioned anything about the new branding and features we just unveiled. I'll let you read the blog post if you want to know more. Or just ask me or @rsardeha here!
@dominic_m@milann@rsardeha Is this just a hipster Web 3.0 version of Sedo? I'd prefer to use something newer like this, but what's the benefit to the smaller audience on the newer platform?
@benguild Haha you could say that. But, there's actually a lot more to it.
The 3 main differences are:
1. Audience: Undeveloped caters to buyers who will actually use the domain (rather than resellers). It also opens the market to smaller hobbyist sellers. This part is very important since these guys own most of the domains.
Full disclosure: many resellers are using the platform too of course.
2. Business model: No ads, the most important thing to us is that domains move from seller to buyer. We believe that ads get in the way of that mission. Instead, Undeveloped focuses on providing the best possible user experience and facilitating domain acquisitions. And our business model follows this line of thought: you only pay (as a seller) when a transaction is conducted successfully.
3. Vision: Today Undeveloped is a marketplace, but this is only part 1 of the puzzle. In order to really fix the domain market, all domains must be available, not just second-hand ones. Our vision is to unify the primary market, secondary, and back-order market in one place, and make those domains available to absolutely EVERYONE. More on that soon!
@dominic_m I noticed Sedo Parking was putting sketchy MacKeeper banners and popups on domains for sale with ads turned on, and their architecture is some legacy PHP3/4 stuff that makes people uncomfortable.
It'd be nice if you'd hand-curate and promote the cooler domains and not the ones that are actually junk but fit a certain algorithmic match of supposed value.
@dominic_m@benguild +1 to the curation. This is just a firehose of useless domains, with minimal discovery/filter tools (eg, turning off extended charsets)
@ow Thanks Owen! Vision wise we're not there yet as we're looking to radically change the face of the industry. One step at a time we'll introduce new tools and services that will fix the main issues you have as an entrepreneur trying to name your business. We see the domain industry really as one of the first internet industries that's just ripe for disruption because it has been at a standstill for far too long.
Great idea, a social marketplace to buy and sell domains... For all you assholes out there that buy up domains and not use them ;) But seriously, looks good and works well. Also inspires you to think of great names and urls for your business.
I'm curious @rsardeha and @dominic_m is this just not such a hot space because of the legal hassle, the assholes buying domains, and the pure scale (big) of this market?
Here's a short medium on how and why they made the changes, and it inspired me to post it here :) https://medium.com/undeveloped/d...
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It would be nice if there was a way to just browse domains on the site. It would also be good to just be able to filter down to ones that are on sale through undeveloped, rather than seeing a bunch of "get in contact" buttons. The search seems to be lacking a lot of great discoverability that it could have.
Great looking design. I feel like it needs some more filters so I can get to what I'm interested in faster. Also, is there a way to filter by just USD?
@davidsfeng Completely agree, advanced search filters is something we definitely plan to add.
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Nice design! I agree finding a great domain name is such a hassle. Your site makes finding a domain easier.
I wish there was a solution to the root cause, people sitting on useful domain names for profit. Startups have a hard time justifying big $$$'s for a URL. Seems to me that this would be a good area for some legislation.
@mespi Thanks Mark! In order to solve the root cause we're going beyond the secondary market only. When we launched Undeveloped about 2 years ago our main goals was to introduce transparency in the market. Take out the shadiness of dealing with "second hand" domains. A bit later down the road we started to learn the true market dynamics and observed the biggest reason why finding a great name for your business, that you can be proud of, is so ridiculously hard is because there's zero access to all available options for you.
The domain industry has never been as fragmented as it is today. There are literally a plethora of stakeholders each owning certain inventories which makes it so hard for you to even have the opportunity to know which names you could use.
That's why we've started centralising the market. By making all available domains, which are currently scattered all over the internet, accessible both on Undeveloped but also directly on partner sites like registrars through our API. We want to make the whole experience of entrepreneurs finding and acquiring the right name painless, swift and easy.
Now the price issue is something we care about deeply. Even we couldn't afford Undeveloped.com until we raised out first pre-seed round back on 2015. Domain prices keep increasing simply because more businesses go online and the demand for quality names keeps increasing.
I think we have to accept the reality that domains are simply virtual real estate and that simple trade is determining the future of the business. Back in the days in the US you the historical Land Run. You threw a rock, where the rock landed that marked your new land. That land was obtained by someone for free but currently is worth quite a lot. Same thing has happened in the domain industry. The market is maturing and changing. You see that in the current movements in the market as well. As domains have change hands quite often most registered but unused domains aren't even in the hands of professional resellers. Their in the hands of folks like you and me. Hence, the current situation.
You touched on a very big issue. Pricing. How we're solving the pricing issue is by providing buyers interest free financing options. You can now buy a domain in 6 installments at Undeveloped, soon you'll also have the option of 12 & 24 months. The contract is very flexible. If you for whatever reason can't fulfill your payments we turn the already paid sum into rent and return the name to the seller. As a startup this takes some pressure of.
We're also launching the rent your domain feature very soon which will give the current professional domainers a big incentive to put their names on the market instead of putting them on parking pages filled with ads to just generate ad income from clicks.
By doing so we could get about 15M high value names on the market so you can build your next brand on one of them.
I hope this gives you insight in how we want to solve the issues you mentioned.
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