An Interview With Efty Co-Founder, Doron Vermaat

Last week, Efty revealed that it has served over 59 million visitors across its sales platform and has processed over 100,000 verified inquiries this year. With such an impressive year behind them, I scheduled an interview with founder Doron Vermaat to find out more about Efty and its plans for future growth.

 

For those who don’t know you, can you tell me a little about yourself & your domain portfolio?

I’m a Dutch national but lived in Hong Kong from 2006 until 2019 where I co-founded the first English-language job board portal for China. In 2012 I started to invest in domain names on the side so this year marks my 10 year anniversary as a domain name investor. I’ve always had a strong focus on .com but started to diversify my portfolio a few years ago.

Like you, I used to publish a blog, DNgeek.com, which I sold earlier this year and analyzed long lists of newly founded startups and their domain names for years.

I learned to follow trends and make decisions based on data and as a result, I now own a good number of premium domains in alternative extensions such as Fire.co, Catalyst.co, Brain.co, Genie.io, Parrot.io, and Cocoon.io. With the rise of web3 and their appetite for even more exotic extensions I even acquired a few new gTLD domains such as nft.holdings and inbox.xyz

 

You’re also the founder of Efty, what can Efty do for domain investors?

There are a few reasons many of the most successful and profitable domain name investors choose Efty. First of all, we’re the only marketplace that gives investors full and complete access to data. So when a potential buyer makes an offer or submits an inquiry you will have their name, email address, phone number, and IP address. This allows you to research and identity the lead, do your due diligence, and have the upper hand in negotiations.

Then there’s our governance. At Efty we have a clear promise that your data is your data. Efty staff, including myself, does not have access to customers’ domains, inquiries, and/or offers, purchases, or sales data. This governance, plus our high standards of ethical conduct, honesty, and integrity has brought many of the world’s most valuable portfolios to Efty over the years.

Another huge reason for our success is that we’re a commission-free platform. Our sellers only pay a small monthly or annual fee to use Efty, no matter how much traffic, inquiries or sales their portfolios get.

Last but not least, there’s choice and customization. No other domain name sales platform offers so much customization and choice as we do.

 

How has Efty evolved since it was first launched?

We started out with a strong aspiration to help domain name investors get more organized and give them valuable insights into their domaining activities. While there are still many useful features within Efty that will help you manage your portfolio (for example, we pull in whois data for your entire portfolio so you have a consolidated overview and never have to miss a renewal again) we evolved into a sales platform over the years as we simply started to build out popular requests from our users. They want to sell more domains and pay less commission. Efty delivers on that.

 

What are the current usage stats for Efty?

2021 is another record-breaking year for Efty. We hosted almost 60 million visitors across the platform and generated more than 100k verified offers and inquiries for our sellers. As we don’t have access to sales data per our governance, we only hear about them when they are reported by the seller. The largest .co sale of the year, eth.co for $300,000 was a Buy-It-Now via Efty and other sellers such as BrandForce.com have shared 7-figure sales this year.

 

What new features are in the pipeline at Efty?

We’re hard at work to allow sellers to further customize and style their Efty-powered marketplaces and for-sale landing pages. We’re also partnering with a well-established fintech company to bring a borderless escrow API infrastructure to the sales platform and marketplace so we can soon offer our sellers a fifth solution for closing deals after PayPal, Stripe, Escrow.com, and Dan.com

 

As an investor, what kind of domains are you concentrating on buying and selling at the moment?

I am keeping a close eye on the developments within the web3 space such as cryptocurrency, metaverse, and NFT-related companies, and try and acquire names that make for great brands for companies, products, and services in this new space.

 

Where do you think the domain industry is heading in the next 12 months?

It’s going to be a record-breaking year. We’re going to see many multi-million-dollar domain name acquisitions and upgrades within .com but it will also be the year that alternative extensions and even some of the new gTLDs will shine and break records.

 

What can we expect from Efty in the next 12 months?

The new year is all about taking customization and choice to the next level for our sellers. We will also double down on new and existing partnerships with the most innovative companies in our space such as Dan.com to drive our industry forward. One thing is sure, Efty users can expect big things in 2022!