What did he cook up in his mind? For Negari it was simple: .xyz. Why? Because it’s short, simple, used worldwide, and it has a natural ending. Growing up we learn that the alphabet ends in X, Y, and Z, so why shouldn’t a domain extension echo that teaching? To him, it made absolute sense. The real question here was how to slay the giant. Negari went out and bought ‘xyz’ as a domain name and signed up with a registrar so he could sell the extension to the public similarly to GoDaddy. While working on the software, the small team opened an application window where they discovered they could in fact apply for their own top-level domain. The 300 page application process didn’t kill Negari’s dream, though it slowed him considerably. He went days without sleep, and after everything was completed and submitted the grueling two year wait period began. It was worth every minute. In 2013 Negari was finally approved for the domain extension .xyz, but he wasn’t able to fully launch until June of this year. Ever since the launch however, there’s been a huge increase in distribution via registrars; the other top-level domains were starting to pay attention to this dark horse. But how do you compete with a company that can throw millions of dollars at any problem that comes there way? Negari’s innovative, entrepreneurial spirit flourished in the face of that question. He didn’t let anybody tell him his dream was impossible. He followed his passion. He never gave up. And that meant he didn’t sleep for days on end, but until you get where you need tobe that’s what you have to do. Beyond sacrifice though, Negari employed some brilliant business tactics to focus on precisely who is customer is. You might think that it’s the people registering for domains, but you’d be wrong. In fact, Negari’s customer base is filled with registrars like GoDaddy, Gandi, and Network Solutions. To that end .xyz will employ a multi-phase marketing approach to enter new markets on a weekly basis. They’re working with registrar partners to inform their customers that .xyz is a creative, low cost, and unique option. As the registry grows, the marketing will take care of itself as .xyz is further spread across the internet and more people hear about it. True, .com had a 25 year head start on .xyz, and it’ll take time to penetrate the market that deeply. But Negari is off to a stellar start. When I interviewed him for this article, Negari told me that .xyz saw 750,000 registered domains that day alone. And that, folks, is your A-B-Cs, .X-Y-Z.
