DomainX 2016 complete report

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domainking131

Forum Leader
Staff member
DomainX 2016 conference which was held in Shangri-La’s Eros Hotel, New Delhi was a massive hit. The conference was held from August 5 – 7, 2016 with a new addition to the series called BlogX.

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It brought together the veterans from domaining community, blogging community, investors, entrepreneurs, self-employed people and motivated youth who aspire to start their journey into online space. The energy was contagious. You could see the enthusiasm, excitement and determination in the eyes of each of those individuals who made it to the conference, right from the very young 13 year old Indian domainer to those with 13 years of experience and beyond.

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I couldn’t attend BlogX, so I would start with the networking dinner that was hosted on 6th August after the trip to The Taj Mahal.

There was a small presentation by GoDaddy where they mentioned about a lot of services that the company offers. Some of the top domain name investors participated in this and a healthy discussion took place as to what all could be improved, what are some of the lesser known services that they offer and so on.

I happened to meet Anand Vohra who represented Donuts, Mr. Arvind Reddy who is a top domain name investor from India, happened to speak with the father of a 13 year young domainer who had traveled all the way from Gujarat with his son so that his son could network and meet the community, Doron Vermaat – the brandable expert who runs DNGeek and some other fantastic people.



DomainX 2016 - 7th August – The Conference



The conference started with registration. There were stalls of the advertisers and conference sponsors at the entrance.

Some of the sponsors included Donuts (the stall and the company represented by Anand Vohra), Mapta.gs(a location guide built on the lines of Google Maps to make your location search easy, the company represented by the founder Krishna Yogi), GoDaddy, Radix, Sedo represented by Sophie and Dima, Microhost which was the prime sponsor for BlogX and DomainX.
Inforum.in was also a partner.


The floor was open for networking until the conference started.

The highlights of the conference are:


1) Mr. Samiran Gupta
Topic: The Future of the Internet


Mr. Samiran Gupta represents ICANN. In his presentation, he stressed upon community participation repeatedly which he said was significant in implementation of anything new.
According to him, the future of the Internet belongs to:

i) IDNs (Internationalized Domain Names)
ii) New gTLDs


In a world which is dominated by people speaking and writing different native/ country specific languages, English speaking community is not all that we have. In fact, 72 percent of globe doesn’t speak English, which was a highlight. There are immense opportunities in IDNs.

New gTLDs are here to stay.
The generic .COMs prices have soared to an extent that a small business may not afford it. In this case, new gTLDs are the way to go. “All domains(extensions) must be treated equally” is what he emphasized.


2) Jon Yau
Founder of StockPhoto.com. Purchased StockPhoto.com for $250,000

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Jon is an Entrepreneur who runs the website StockPhoto.com. He shared his journey about the acquisition of StockPhoto.com, the thought process behind the decision and how he built it into a cash positive business.

The thought process was that there are no logistics or ground work involved. Therefore, the domain name is the one thing that will represent the company and will be the marketing channel.

Questions that he put to himself before acquisition:

1) What can I sell on this name?
2) How much can I afford to spend in a) Building it? b) Operating it?
3) How can I hack the above(answer the above questions)?


After considering 4 options namely Parking, Affiliate Marketing, building a marketplace and offering software as a service(SaaS), he reached upon a conclusion that SaaS is the way to go.

As of today, the business is cash positive and doing well.

Takeaways from his session:


1) Build a business. Don’t fall in love with your domain name.
2) Solve important problems first.
3) Bootstrap your startup.
4) Focus on making the sale.
5) Don’t change your mind!!


Answering a question about what was last 1 hour like, before pressing the BUY NOW button, he laughingly said that he got real drunk!! :)


3) Mr. Pawan Duggal
Topic: Legal

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Mr. Duggal is a reputed cyber lawyer. He has been helping the domaining community from a long long time.
Key takeaways from his session:

To prevent your domain name from getting into legal hassle, here are some things that can be done:

1) Put Terms & Conditions page.
2) Rules and Regulations page.
3) User Agreement.
4) Privacy Policy.


Putting these 4 can drastically reduce your chances of losing the domain name in a UDRP.


4) Dima Beitzke and Sophie Pieck
Chief Business Officer at Sedo.com

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Dima gave some interesting information in his presentation which included the top buyer nations. China leads the list followed by US, Germany, UK, Canada, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Gibraltar and Spain.
The top sellers remain US followed by Germany.



After the lunch break which consisted of great Indian food, we met for a presentation by Mapta.gs.


5) Anand Vohra
Donuts

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Anand Vohra shared some insights into the new gTLDs. The representative of Radix and .CLUB joined together to promote the new gTLDs.

Some interesting numbers were put forth in support of the new gTLDs. Some examples of successful startups using new gTLDs were also mentioned. One that I remember was CBR.Exchange.


6) Zak Muscovitz, Rodney Ryder and Gurpreet Singh Monga (moderated by Ankur Raheja)
Panel Discussion on Legal Side

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A panel discussion moderated by Mr. Ankur Raheja was conducted to clear the doubts regarding anything legal. The panel consisted of Mr. Zak Muscovitz from DNAttorney.com, Mr. Rodney Ryder and Mr. Gurpreet Singh Monga. A lot of questions were discussed. In case you have any legal doubts/consultation, these would be the best people to consult.


7) Inderpal Singh and Shiva Kandula
.IN MOGUL

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This was the most interesting session of the evening. Their love for .IN ccTLD and the belief in it could be seen in their eyes, slides and the session as a whole. Inderpal and Shiva are two major investors in the .IN ccTLD and they firmly believe in it.

Inderpal even got some T-shirts and goodies promoting the .IN extension.

A lot of interesting facts were shared and some of the attendees around me were convinced enough to find value in .IN extension and invest in it (who hadn’t already invested).


8) Panel consisting of Manmeet Pal Singh, Doron Vermaat, Deepak Ramani (moderated by Pankaj Vijayvargiya)
Topic: Domain Valuation

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This was the fun part. The audience was asked to share their domain name and the panel members would evaluate it and put a valuation to it. A number of interesting .INs and .COMs came up.

Doron Vermaat shared his wisdom regarding the brandable domain names and I found the session pretty interesting and useful since I am planning to invest in some brandable names.


The conference concluded with the goodie distribution from .CLUB.

Thanks to Manmeet Pal Singh, Gaurav Kohli and the DNOAi team for conducting such a great, informative and well-organized conference.


P.S. If you need any further details on some particular session, PM me and I shall share what I learnt at the conference in more detail(although I’ve tried to cover most of it here).
 
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@domainking131 Thank you so much for your report on DomainX.

Seeing that picture of Paul and Shiva up there makes me ecstatic. .IN's progress is unstoppable,undeniable and irreversible.

Goodluck to all the rightful believers.
 
@domainking131 Thank you so much for your report on DomainX.

Seeing that picture of Paul and Shiva up there makes me ecstatic. .IN's progress is unstoppable,undeniable and irreversible.

Goodluck to all the rightful believers.

Thank you!!
These guys are absolutely amazing. I am amazed by the amount of energy, passion and enthusiasm they have for .IN..
You must have seen the crowd around me. One person was so convinced that after a point, even I couldn't answer his questions about .IN. He was like, I am definitely going to invest in .IN and was so excited.

He also said that he'd soon be here on the forum to learn and connect with the community.
 

Haha Jeff.
I got so busy taking photos of the conference and talking to the people(domain investors, SEO experts, bloggers, internet marketers and entrepreneurs) that I forgot to take one for myself.
Although I do have some with this guy named SEA(a domainer and an entrepreneur), who is out on a 6 month trip to travel around the world and help the underprivileged kids in Africa by building schools. Thanks to the freedom that this industry provides. I was so impressed with his work that I remembered to take some photos with that guy definitely!!
Will share it soon.
 
Great insight on the conference that took place last year and it had some very important personalities in the internet domain industry who shared their knowledge with the panel..Great stuff.
 

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