KikScore Interviews Name.com – Local Denver Domain Registration Company
March 22nd, 2010 | Featured,Interviews,Online & Small Business Resources,Small Business,Small Business Tips | No Comments »I stumbled upon Name.com about a month ago while researching local small businesses. They are a close knit team that is very active in the Denver community and show a strong passion for small business and teamwork. Lesley Yarbrough, the Community Manager of Name.com shares with us their exciting story.
1. Tell us about Name.com and who you focus on serving?
Name.com was founded in 2003 by Bill Mushkin, who previously founded Mushkin Enhanced. Our office is located in gorgeous Denver, CO in an old building that was part of Lowry Air Force Base. Name.comis comprised of an awesome and diverse group of people working hard to create innovative tools and provide our customers with the best service possible.
Really we focus on serving three different groups:
- Retail customers
- Small to medium sized business and startups
- Domain investors or “domainers”
2. There are a lot of domain sites out there. How does Name.com differentiate from the competition?
We try to provide the best search tools we can to help our customers find the right name for their needs. For instance, our Domain Suggestion tool is very unique in that it not only provides our keyword suggestions, but also Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) translations and Google Keyword suggestions. We also offer over 50 extensions for registration and awesome, personal support for all of our customers.
3. Where will Name.com focus most of its energy in 2010?
A lot of our energy in 2010 is going to be focused on reaching out to our community and establishing more of a local/regional presence here in Colorado. We’ve recently hired a Community Manager to help us with this effort. We also want to focus on improving our search capabilities and providing more value-added products to our customers.
4. If you had 2 lessons learned from your business that you could pass on to others about having an online business, what are those?
Try new ideas and act on them quickly, because if you don’t someone will beat you to the punch. Also we’re working to create more strategic partnerships and “acting quickly” can be applied to that as well.
5. As 2010 begins, what do you see as 2 new trends in your business this year?
IDNs are pretty popular in the investor community and we see those becoming more mainstream this year. We think we’ll also start to see a higher adoption rate of alternative extensions (.TV, .MOBI, .IM, .TEL, etc.) as fewer .COM and .NET domains are available.
6. If your business/store could be any movie or movie character, what movie/movie character would it be and why?
Honestly, the first thing that came to mind was The Big Lebowski . We’re genuine, laid back, and we can get the job done. The Dude abides.
7. If Name.com could have a dream spokesperson for your company who would it be and why?
Why Gary Vaynerchuk of course! We’re huge fans of Gary in our office, we love his passion, his hard work, and his honesty. We take what he has to say to heart and try to crush it every day. He actually did a personalized video for us recently when we ordered a bunch of his books for a promotion.
8. How do the folks at Name.com let loose after a busy day working?
We’re a diverse bunch, so we let loose a few different ways. Being located in Colorado we have access to great biking, hiking, skiing, and all that fun stuff. We have a ping pong table in our office and sometimes we’ll have tournaments, so there’s a bit of friendly competition going on. We also do a weekly web show called Beer Fridays.
9. Do you have any parting thoughts for our readers and the small business community?
Work hard, show your customers you care, and keep on rockin’!