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How Microryza Acquired the Domain Experiment.com
- gbelote 13y agoI like the Experiment.com brand name so much better, as cool and quirky as Microryza was. Congrats on a good find and sane price!
- jjoonathan 13y agoMycorrhizae are pretty darn cool. Two kingdoms of life abandoning a history of distrust to form an intimate partnership and solve a Hard Problem. It's symbolic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbuscular_mycorrhiza http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbuscular_mycorrhiza "experiment.com" sacrifices the neat science and the symbolism. The only appeal I see is utilitarian. Given their difficulties with "Microryza," I understand that this is enough to motivate the change, but it seems like the opposite of cool and quirky.
- mjn 13y agoHuh, I hadn't made the connection to mycorrhizae. I just read microryza as straightforward micro-ryza, "small root", with a meaning of building up science from small contributions. A pun on myco (fungus) vs. micro (small) totally went over my head, if that was the intent...
- sheetjs 13y ago> Sure, they got a little lucky because they connected with a domain owner that shared their vision for science. The fact that the domain wasn't sold since 1996, even when there were better offers from domain flippers during the time, suggests that luck played a much larger role than the statement implies
- larrys 13y ago"even when there were better offers from domain flippers during the time" It's quite common in the domain business to claim that you have offers that you have turned down. I would take that with a grain of salt. By the way while it is possible that the seller was telling the truth I have been in this business for a long long time. Most likely it was merely posturing. And for the record nobody flips domains quickly. It can take years and years. (Also I strongly agree with the luck assessment..)
- beachstartup 13y agoarticle doesn't seem to mention it, but i wonder if the previous owner took some equity or options in the venture.
- rohin 13y agoAuthor of the article here. No, it was a straight-up cash purchase with no equity involved.
- nally 13y agoYeah. (original domain owner here). I really struggled on this point, but was coached by someone I trust that legal gymnastics were not in anyone's best interest. What I really want is for experiment.com to become wildly successful, so that I can take part in some science projects.
- MysticFear 13y agoThey have started accepting Dogecoins: https://experiment.com/dogecoin https://experiment.com/dogecoin
- gsu 13y agoIt's actually pretty interesting to see these donations come in. No one would ever give $0.0001 to a crowdfunding campaign but we're seeing a lot of micro donations on the scale of 10-20 doges.
- hayksaakian 13y agoThe reason is that small donations either don't exist in USD (sub penny) or get eaten up in fees with the payment processor. Last i checked, doge transfers are 1-2 dogecoin for most transactions.
- pgsandstrom 13y agoAs far as I can see, they don't accept bitcoins. Hah!
- simonw 13y ago"The broker would help them find the owners of domain names, negotiate the price, and handle the transaction in exchange for a 10-15% commission of the price of the domain." The incentives there seem misaligned to me. The person negotiating the price for them gets paid a higher commission if the price ends up being higher?
- maxerickson 13y agoThey also talk about setting a budget. It's easy to imagine schemes where there is a fixed fee plus a percentage of the part of the budget that is saved.
- eli 13y agoLike buying a house, no?
- ThomPete 13y agoWorks excellent for NY real estate brokers.
- kkwok 13y agoGood system I've seen for domain buying is this: You set price you'll pay. Broker decides to take job. They negotiate a price that equal to or lower than your cap. They get fixed fee plus X% of difference between price paid and max price you'd be willing to pay.
- dchuk 13y agoI'm actually just about to go through the process of acquiring a somewhat recently dropped domain from BuyDomains.com for my new project. The current asking price for the domain is around $4,000 on their site. Anyone worked with them before? I'm prepared to negotiate with them but also want to make sure I don't shoot myself in the foot and cause them to raise the price on me. I would ideally like to not spend more than $2k but the domain is really perfect for my project so if we have to bite the bullet then we will... EDIT: To add more context here, I have purchased the getPROJECTNAME.com and PROJECTNAMEapp.com domains for normal registrar prices. PROJECTNAME.io is also available for the normal price of about $60/yr. So it's not a make or break situation, but since we're in stealth mode for at least another 5 months, I don't want to launch and then all of a sudden face a $40,000 domain acquisition situation rather than a $4,000 one.
- sheff 13y agoI have bought domains from them in the past. I would start off by offering half (as a maximum, less if you can) and sticking to the offer. The thing to remember is that they may have acquired the domain for registration price so even $2000 will be a large profit, and they may not have another buyer for years. If that goes nowhere, you can always go back later and pay the full price or whatever they have come down to. IIRC, they also sell domains which they don't own, and have less leeway for negotiation on those.
- dchuk 13y agoAwesome, thanks for the reply. Do you know of any way to find out if they're brokering the domain for someone or selling it themselves?
- sheff 13y agoIf you make a low enough offer that they can't accept, they will tell you and they have told me in the past that its because its below the sellers reserve. Whois may also give you a clue as to who owns the domain. They have fairly decent margins for discounts - I used to get marketing emails offering 20%+ off prices in the past.
- sneak 13y agoAll domains should really cost $1000/year from the registrar at a minimum to stop this idiotic "I'll buy thousands of them and sit on them forever until someone offers me enough for one of them to make the whole enterprise worth it".
- avalaunch 13y agoSo the average person can no longer afford to have a website on a domain they own? That sounds much worse to me.
- primitivesuave 13y agoExpensive domain registration would make it cost prohibitive for average people to start a website. The better thing to limit is how many domains you can own, or at least how many domains you can park.
- drdaeman 13y agoLimiting number of domain registrations per-person probably won't work, because one can get thousands of sockpuppet "shareholders", each having registered a sole domain. And parking domains is indistinguishable from using them. Unless under "parking" you mean explicitly stating this domain is for sale. But with imposed restriction squatters will just remove those and park domains with "this domain is... well, you get the idea".
- jameswburke 13y agoTreat domains like a trademark registration. You have x amount of time to show that you're actually using it for something. And that something has some kind of value. There's issues with what's considered value, but our existing system is nonsense.
- tacticus 13y agoSo what happens when you have internal domains?
- jhund 13y agoGiven that the company relies on word of mouth marketing, the move makes a lot of sense. 'Experiment' is a fantastic name. My only concern is that such a generic term negatively affects findability. E.g., it makes brand monitoring or web-searching very hard. You won't rise above the noise. You could address the findability problem by adding a unique token to the name (e.g., 'Experiment42').
- stared 13y agoActually, I am curious if such generic name is a good choice. You need to tell people that you use Experiment the Crowdsourcing Website, not experiment with crowdsourcing or use your experiment to crowdsource funds. And the same for googling. (And BTW I really liked Microryza; I do know that it may be hard to spell (still easier than mycorrhizae), but Ryza sounds nice too!) And an anecdote: when I was mailing with Cindy Woo almost a year ago, I joked about the tagline: " Mic[r]oryza Mycorrhizae spelled in the sane way "
- cindywu123 13y agodon't worry the name microryza will live on http://www.yelp.com/biz/microryza-coffee-roasters-san-francisco http://www.yelp.com/biz/microryza-coffee-roasters-san-franci...
- stared 13y ago:) I am definitely visiting this place, when the next time in SF!
- Ricapar 13y ago> [...] but their budget was $12-15K [...] > .... > After weeks of gentle negotiating, they came to an agreement: $54K in cash for the domain. Yikes. That's 3.6x the max budget they were hoping to spend. I really do hope that in the long run it pays off.
- uptown 13y agoIt's a strong-enough name to be considered an asset. Worst-case ... just resell it.
- keerthiko 13y agoI doubt anyone with a semblance of a conscience in their shoes could do that, except back to the benefactor, for cheaper (which would also be pretty lame)...the man turned down 6 figure offers and gave it to them because he believed in their mission. That they would go "whoops, it cost too much, gonna sell it to whoever offers me the most while we bail from our failed startup" would make the benefactor feel like total shit. I would never do that to a guy. I'd probably go work a 9-5 for a year and keep the domain for my next stab at a dream in the space.
- uptown 13y agoYou'd work 9-5 for a year to keep a semi-valuable domain name, currently "valued" at $54k, for some future potential pipe-dream of using that name in another startup where the name is equally relevant?
- goatforce5 13y agoThe original owner could have added the right to buy the domain back from the new owners at a fixed cost should they wish to sell it in the future (or right of first refusal, etc) if he was worried about that. I worked for a start-up that acquired a smaller company (complete with an awesome name) for cash/shares. Smaller company supposedly had a clause in their contract saying they could buy the company back for £1 should the new owner run out of money. Fast forward 2 years: parent company failed and smaller company carried on...
- avalaunch 13y agoAm I the only one that likes the name Ryza more than Experiment? Experiment just sounds so bland to me and will be harder to rank high with.
- dchuk 13y agoRank high for what? The term Ryza? It's easy to rank high for a made up word, but if you're ever in debate over whether to use a domain with ambiguous spelling or a standard word...go with the standard word.
- avalaunch 13y agoYes - rank high for Ryza vs Experiment. It's pretty bad if you aren't the first result when someone googles your company's name especially for a company relying on word of mouth.
- dchuk 13y agoLooking at the SERP for "experiment", I actually don't see them having much trouble ranking for it after a bit of time has gone by. Most of the results are informative and they're spread across different sectors (There isn't a heavy commercial influence in the SERPs). Just look at Box.com...they rank for "box" now, for the same reasons experiment.com will eventually come to rank for "experiment" so long as they nail the basics for SEO.
- nally 13y agoI agree. (original domain owner). If ranking for that term is important to the experiment.com business model, I'm sure they'll be able to do it.
- CamperBob2 13y agoThe very first paragraph of the article puts the lie to that, doesn't it?
- mwsherman 13y ago
- lauradhamilton 13y agoI probably wouldn't have chosen the name "Experiment." They won't be able to trademark that, because it's descriptive. I think Ryza was the better choice.
- CamperBob2 13y agoThey can trademark "Experiment.com", but if they really had a shot at a pronounceable four-letter domain name, that seems like a no-brainer. From the article: It was just settling for a domain choice. In 40 years, when I told my grandkids what I did, I shuddered at the idea of telling them I worked at a company called ‘Ryza’. Um, Denny, it's your job to make the name mean something. Why do you think your company was initially confused with Zynga?
- dublinben 13y agoThey own Ryza.com as well.
- wpietri 13y agoRyza has real issues with transcription. Riser? Riza? Raiza? Ricea? Rysa? Raitser? Because it's totally arbitrary, there's also trouble getting people to associate the word with what you do. And I think both of those lead to issues with retention. In their shoes, I would have gone with something that was suggestive but not purely descriptive. For example, Kickstarter is a great name, and Indiegogo is pretty good too. That said, naming a company a fucking nightmare, and as far as I'm concerned, anybody who has gone through it without gnawing a limb off or calling their company Drgnblv did well.
- jenntoda 13y agoAll in the name of science. :)
- nally 13y agoI agree. (I'm the original owner that sold the domain.) I'm sorry for not having won the web for the google search on 'experiment', but I actually believe that this team is going to succeed where I have not. I believe they are on the right track, and that they can grow into a variety of spaces/tools/utilities/education/information systems etc., especially if, as they have done so far, they "stay true" and focus on the bits that make for high quality investigations.
- 727374 13y agoNeat story. Were there any provisions should Microryza go out of business? Not a lawyer, but seems that org would be legally compelled to flip the domain for a price much higher than 54k, which could lead to the domain being used for something not 'nobel' as the seller intended.
- untilHellbanned 13y agoI actually like Cofactor best. It basically screams science crowdfunding and is noticeably less generic than Experiment and highly spellable unlike Microryza.
- steele 13y agomuryza.com And use the savings to fill out a true, full rebrand
- vvvVVVvvv 13y agoMuryza, fuck yeah ?
- jeremyjarvis 13y ago"The founders conferred. They were prepared to settle for Ryza.com, but suddenly Experiment.com was available. That’s like being engaged to a high school boyfriend only to learn that Brad Pitt is interested in dating you. Never in their wildest dreams did they consider that they could get a domain like that. What to do?" Stick with the person you love, right. Yeah, tell Brad Pitt to take a hike. Yep, that's definitely the right thing to do. Aww, high school sweethearts. That's lovely. What a nice story. Oh. Wait. Huh? you dumped high school sweetheart for that wally off of the Chanel ads? Sigh, I suppose it was... "inevitable" (http://youtu.be/mGs4CjeJiJQ http://youtu.be/mGs4CjeJiJQ)
- Grue3 13y agoExperiment.com is not even on the first page of Google results when I search for "experiment". This can't be good for their traffic.
- theklub 13y agoSo this is just another Kickstarter clone which happens to have a great domain name?
- gopi 13y agoIn my view Premium keyword.com domains are best for services with not much frequent usage (like freecreditreport.com). For servces with repeat usage brand names are better, thus facebook and amazon are better names than socialnetwork.com or buy.com. So by that logic i think Cofactor.com is a much better choice than the more generic Experiement.com