Why Your Domain Is Your Credibility in the AI Era | Matt Overman, CRO of Identity Digital

Domains have really just continued to go up and to the right in terms of their value to to a business and because of that That's driven to value in the in the aftermarket. My guess today is Matt Overman Chief Revenue Officer at Identity Digital The company behind the world's largest portfolio of top level domains with roughly 300 TLDs and supporting more than 28 million domains one of the topics that we Brought up that I think is really relevant to almost anyone is what you've called the trust procession with the noise and the volume of AI generated everything What do you think is happening there and how does that impact the domain world too? AI has proliferated all aspects of our life and You mentioned a bit in the intro, but it's it's becoming indistinguishable Often you can literally just say Copy this website make it look exactly like that same aesthetic everything and just put like this content in it What you're trying to do that they they they trust you and you're building programs that are Honestly win-win programs for that Showing up in person really doesn't want life I've been seeing that trend quite a bit with CRO CMOs that I'm interviewing the old school is the new school in person personal connections relationships I think there's been so much saturation. I don't think it's all about homicid about what industry you're in and being consistent Matt you've been in domains for almost 15 years running Auctions at name jet to premium sales to a portfolio of 300 TLDs What does the job look like today that would have been unrecognizable to you five years ago? Yeah Yeah, a lot in anti-first. Thanks. Thanks for having me excited to to be here A lot is different. It's really changed dramatically in the last few years more than anything as with many I think that are on your podcast and in just in in sales in general AI has really transformed Many aspects of our business There's less busy work than ever. We have AI automating a lot of things behind the scenes interactions with CRM Many companies are using that for for prospecting We have a lot more time to focus on the relationship side of it and that like strategy and relationship side matters more than ever It always has but we're spending more and more time on that and that's been a big sort of unlock. I would say The distribution channel that we have and go to market through is very different Years ago it was only through traditional registrars and hosting companies You know, that's where you would go to buy domains where users buy domains today Takes all shapes and sizes five coding platforms cloud hosting. There's new platforms launching every day SaaS platforms where domains are natively embedded into them and so it's The go to market channels that we use and what we would consider a channel partner are are very very different And even who buys domains and how they navigate them right we have agents now starting to go and make choices through Through prompts through cloud code or co-pilot people are asking their agents to go Navigate and recommend Domain choices to them or go actually take the step and buy them. So it's not just humans buying it. It could be It could be agents doing on their behalf. So those were all very Sort of unforeseen many many years ago and even why people buy domains like most Sort of fundamentally a big chunk of that people buy from an investment standpoint And when I started 20 years ago you would buy domains from a type in traffic Keyword domains really mattered you know flights.com things that people would type in and expect to find Results for that particular name now. It's all about brand and The type of domains that people buy. It's very very different. It's brand-centric. It's less about the type in traffic or the the SEO or now aio Capabilities to that and more about brand brand matters more than ever One of the topics that we That we brought up that I think is really relevant to almost anyone is what you've called the trust recession with the Noise and the volume of AI generated everything What do you think is happening there and how does that impact the domain world too? Yeah, I think AI has proliferated all aspects of our life and You mentioned a bit in the intro, but it's it's becoming indistinguishable Often what is AI generated versus what is human generated and so I think we're going to see increasingly a movement towards people gravitating towards things that That are brand brands or communication styles or even ads are a little bit more authentic where they can actually understand and and and trust what the offer is when when everyone has access to the same tools and And the same you know clods doing a lot of the writing for for many companies. How do you distinguish between What is what is real or what is more authentic and then taking it a step further to our industry? Domain names are one of those points that you can control where it is your brand. It is that sort of trust anchor where you establish a Connection to your user. It's the call to action ultimately when you are sending people to your website sending people to your your digital identity in email That's that's something that you control and people take it very seriously how you protect that You know, obviously there's the whole doubt the the negative security side of it and how Bad links and phishing and different different sort of bad actors used That lack of trust I think that that people have or the inability to distinguish rather To fool you into clicking on links and from our standpoint like having like a very clear Brand and using that using the domain name clearly in your Advertising in your materials and being consistent is really key in terms of building that trust There's all sorts of scams that are run where You know, you can't see what you're clicking on and people get fooled The toll road scams. I think are a really common one that people are aware of over the last year Yeah, and I think what it used to be So I started lean scale in 2021 and something that was very important was to get a website that was designed really well If I'm showing up with a deck or a pdf or anything Like we had to make an investment to make sure that things looked and fell professional like this company was real Yep Now you can vibe code that in two seconds And you can make it look you can literally just say Copy this website make it look exactly like that same aesthetic everything and just put like this content in it Yep, so some of those barriers aren't there anymore But you can't fake a domain right You can I mean, there's there's a lot of different choice, but everyone has those those sort of same tools in terms of being able to To do that as you mentioned I over a weekend. I'm not Technical I've been on the commercial side operational side for a long time never an engineer never in product I can vibe code a business Over a weekend and you can take it to market in any number of ways But a domain name every domain name is unique and how you actually want to convey yourself Uh Is is really attached to that name it's You know never ceases to amaze me how many people will launch initially on a A third level domain or someone else's brand or or link to a Facebook page or even if they're building a website You know in the early days Uh with square space or wicks using a Their name dot square space dot com or dot wicks dot com where you're actually not you might have part of your brand there But you're really building brand equity For that other platform and it's not the actual domain name that you control It's not tied to your email It might be that's the site and then you're sending from a totally different email a Gmail And there's no consistency it doesn't build trust when you're talking to someone from A Gmail address and you can't actually tie back that that person is associated with this website So the domain name is really the The connective point where you can have your website sent on it can be tied to your email When you're driving traffic from an advertisement it lands on that site It's the way that the users that show up there can trust that it is who we thought it was said it was whether you're a big company a small company Uh, yeah, so it's really central to To sort of all aspects of that I'm curious your perspective what what part matters is it hey the dot com is still like the park avenue of domains or Is it more important to be Consistent and just have a brand that Lives in the same place In terms of building trust with your market or there are certain things that signal more trust than others Yeah, it's a great question. I mean certainly dot com is still the most well-known, and if you go to most of the Fortune 500 companies, you're going to find that their primary site lives on the.com. But most companies that are starting out small businesses, they don't have the luxury of being able to go get a one-word.com. Those have been taken for a long time, and they cost off in millions of dollars. And some will raise money and eventually do that. But what has transformed over the last 15 to 20 years is there's an incredible amount of different naming choices. And you can get the one-word name that perfectly describes your brand name with something meaningful to the right of the.com that conveys either what you do, you know, leanscale.team. I mean, that is the business that you guys are in in terms of helping to go and work with companies and be part of their team and extension of their team. It conveys sort of an extension, you know, your business model as an extension of their team.AI is another one that has become incredibly popular. It is a it is a it is a trust signal or a very much a both building trust that we are a legit AI-focused company and tells you clearly what type of company it is. That is a domain. It's actually a country code. We run the technology for it. It's for the country of anguilla. It is really blown up for the last couple years with the emergence of AI. But it's absolutely a trust signal for companies in that space. There's many companies that gravitate to that over over a.com. They want to signify we are an AI company. And so I don't think it's all about comments about what industry you're in and being consistent. And, you know, having a shorter domain, there's a lot of different types of domains. And a domain that fits whether you're an individual or a business that fits your personality. I mean, there's a lot of creativity that comes. But it really it comes back to that brand consistency. You mentioned a few earlier and that's super helpful of, hey, here's some things to do. You have some options. Are there any major red flags that might not be as obvious to people when they're thinking about the domain to choose or how they're leveraging their domain? Yeah. In terms of red flags, I mean, I think it's more like how we went when you have a domain, how you put it out in the wild or when you choose not to. Certainly one of the things that we've we've seen and I know that you've probably experienced this as well. Many many it's individuals, small businesses, events, brands have a hard time making that offline to online connection. I've received wedding invitations or seen out of home advertising where there's a bitly link. Or there's a, you know, the not forward slash a bunch of stuff forward slash the wedding name and it might be 100 100 character URL and it's on a it's on a you know a piece of paper and I'm expected to type that in and somehow get it right to get to the site. And so people don't always make the connection that a short concise memorable domain name is your often your best gateway to take someone from offline to online. And you know imagine on a billboard or I always drive by that in the Seattle area. I drive by this sign as I'm leaving the parking garage at C-TAC and it's the airport and it's this bitly link is the call to action. If you have any questions or comments here go to bitly forward slash a bunch of bunch of stuff. It's like that's that's that's just a generic short link. I'm supposed to remember that as the place that as I'm driving by here. So it's the offline to online bridge. You know certainly QR codes play a role in that but that requires you to put your phone up and scan it. And as you actually scan the QR code you can only see sort of the root domain. And if it's going to a Facebook page you're only going to see facebook.com that doesn't tell you where you're actually going to end up. So that doesn't build trust in terms of I want to I want to click on this and go go forward. You know if it's if it's you're sitting on looking at a restaurant menu maybe you can trust that they're putting the right one here because I'm about to go on. But if it's just out in the wild how do you actually know where you're going to end up. And so being really consistent and purposeful about how you present your brand and make it easy for users to to see it to know what they're clicking on and to grip again use that sort of branding opportunity as someone seen the domain name and clicking on it to reestablish you know build consistency there. I think it's it's critical. That is absolutely hilarious that there is a billboard with a bitly link on it. Next time in Seattle I'm going to be looking out for that because I can't believe that. You if you pay attention to it they it happens far more often than you not than you would believe far more often than not. One one thing that I've been seeing quite of it recently I've fallen a little bit victim to this too. So everybody's powered with cloud now it's pretty easy to build web pages landing pages blog posts and anything you can build things really really quickly. And one of the most popular ways to to share them is to deploy it on Netlify or Versel. So you take the asset, deploy it there and go share it with people. What I think people really miss is if you're doing that you're really compromising quite a bit of your AEO and SEO when when you're sending so many assets and materials out that way. Yep. Can you share the magnitude of how detrimental that could be? Essentially in terms of going to market on just a third party platform as opposed to putting it out. Yeah. For sending materials out. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I think I mean you hit it right there just in terms of your ability to be found in search whether it's AEO or traditional SEO publishing anything that's not on your own domain name. You're not going to necessarily rank as well. It's harder to be discovered. And so from that that trust standpoint being able to put it on a domain name this is my business. This is where my content lives and have that be one of the signals that the LLMs are looking for all sorts of stuff and a trusted URL is a component of it. Obviously the content matters as well. But what we're seeing within that companies you mentioned a few Netlify, Versel, Replet, Lovable, these are all those are a lot of the platforms that I talked about in the beginning that have sort of come closer to our industry. Those are distribution channels for us now. They have, when they started a handful of years ago, allowed through a few different steps that you could connect a domain to it. Currently they are actual domain resellers. They make it very easy. Some of the easiest ways to buy a domain actually in our industry are now through two clicks. You can go to Versel, Rapid Search, Buy a domain, two clicks attached to your project and you're you're published. They've they recognized on their end that their customers want that and that they could they don't need to necessarily monetize domain names to a meaningful degree. It's sort of an adjacent product that's not their core business is selling domains but allowing their builders to publish their their projects, their apps, their their sites in a really easy and clean way on their own domains is just to value out. It's a point of friction to not allow that. And so they have they've just embedded natively embedded domain registration and all all the sort of bells and whistles with that into their platforms. Seeing that customers expect that now they don't want to go out and just share a random link on a a lovable project or share a file that they generate in cloud code putting it up and actually having it out. And that is that is really your you know your first step of the go to market by publishing it on the web on a unique domain. That's like this is not just something that I was coding over the weekend. I'm publishing it for the world to see. And so it is that first step in terms of I guess building credibility you know on the conversation we already had. Are you seeing the economics of domains changing a little bit? I'm guessing I'm assuming because there's so much more volume people are building more, snagging up domains more. Is it making them more expensive for the good ones or because there's more accessibility and more diversity? Is it easier to get domains? What are you seeing in the marketplace of domains? Yeah, that's a great question. I think for the more premium domains and whether that is in.com and the one word.coms or or or other extensions like AI we mentioned. And actually within any TLD I can give some examples where they're really semantically relevant. The better names are more valuable now than they've ever been. There's been times throughout the history of the industry, the industry of the industry since I've been involved which is 15, 20 years now where domain where where the sentiment in the market or speculation was you know it's something in a disrupt the value of domain names when apps were launched. Is this going to take people away? Are they not going to go to websites? Is it going to devalue? And domains have really just continued to go up into the right in terms of their value to to a business and because of that that's driven the value in the industry. in the aftermarket, the pricing in the aftermarket. The best domains, regardless of the extension, are worth more today than they've ever been. So that makes it harder to go out and get the most premium domains, but there's also more choice than ever at the same time. There's hundreds of extensions. If you don't wanna pay for a one word.com or a one word.ai or some of the more expensive ones, you can find top level domain that has a little bit less demand that's relevant to your industry and still get a really clear keyword that then adds to the right of the dot, some specificity about the industry you're in, and not necessarily pay an arm and a leg for that. So there's more choice right now. And actually we're about to embark on sort of the next wave of naming within the internet. There's a whole other wave of top level domains that are gonna enter the market. The process is running right now and they'll enter the market late 27, 28. So top level domains that don't exist today will exist in the next couple of years. One's like dot agent is one that a lot of people have talked about or some of the web three TLDs.btc terms that weren't quite as popular and didn't get created back in 2011 during the last round will come to market, circa 2028. And so there'll be even more availability for people more choice to be able to find the domain that aligns with your industry, with your market. The most valuable names in any of those given namespaces and will continue to go up and value. Owning your own sort of sovereign digital identity has never been more important. - I'm not super familiar with how that process works. Could you walk me and the audience through how do those get decided on? So how did I maybe take it for granted? I didn't know when dot team became available or dot AI but what's the process of those coming into the market, getting approved, being available? What does that look like? - Well, dot AI just to hit on one of the categories, any two character top level domain is a country code, top level domain. And so every two character one that you see out in the world is attached to a country. Dot AI is for angwilla.tv is associated with Tuvalu. You have dot DE is for Germany, dot UKs for UK. Some of them are very geographic specific where they're used by registrants in that country and some of them have been essentially rebranded either purposefully or organically to be a more generic term.co. It's a Colombian extension, but it's used as samorda.com. It's kind of a generic domain. Certainly people in Colombia buy and register and utilize dot co names what people around the world do as well, same with dot AI. And so those are all governed where there's, they're just assigned to that particular country and they're administered by that country. Anything that is three characters or more has been a few exceptions like dot gov and dot edu and some of the more restricted one are generic top level domains. And they go back to the really to the mid 80s with comm and net being the first two. And there's been some that have been released in the early 2000s, dot travel was an earlier one. And then the first large round where the governing organization for numbers and names, an organization called ICANN, released around where many more, hundreds more of open generic top level domains and brand top level domains were brought to market in around 2011, 2012. And that's when the likes of dot team and dot live and dot life, dot app, dot online, dot XYZ, many that you would see in the market today were all created back then. This next round, so that was, that closed in 2012 and it's taken 14 years to reopen another round where companies could go through all the steps to apply for new top level domains. So that process has been running for the last year. Application window closed in August of this year and really in the next couple of months we're going to figure out who ended up applying for what. And which ones had multiple companies that have thrown their applications in foreign applications are both financial applications and heavy technological tech requirements to be able to operate them. And so that's all going to play out over the next couple months. And we'll start seeing some of those domains launch in early 28, I think is the approximate timeline. So it's an exciting time in our industry. How do you buy them? Is it a lottery system? Like how do you go buy up the Apple dot agent, Nike dot agent? How does that process work of who gets to buy them? There will be, there will be a company that ends up getting awarded dot agent and in all likelihood that will be, that will go to auction. So to actually run the namespace for, for dot agent and administer all the whole, you know, any something dot agent, there's a company that will operate that. That's what our company runs 270 of those today. We'll run more in the future. But there will be a number of companies that throw their hat in the ring and spent $227,000 to apply and qualified through all the application process. And if there are multiple applicants, which for dot agent that's expected to be one with multiple applicants, it's been one of the ones that have been talked about quite a bit in our industry. If there are multiple applicants, then they will end up ultimately in an auction. And the highest bidder will pay to operate that namespace. And so whoever ends up winning that and administering it will then bring it to market at some point 2028 or later, depending on how long that takes. And we'll release it where you and I and anyone else can go buy whatever name dot agent. Now, you gave some examples like apple dot agent and Nike dot agent. There are all of these as they go to market. The hundreds that will get released will run through a variety of launch phases. One of those phases is called the sunrise period that's protected for trademark holders. So the likes of Nike and Apple and any major brands that have trademarks have the ability to go claim their names in a period prior to the general availability. You know, the idea is that brands can protect their brand names and it's not for you and I to go grab their names and do the various things with them. You know, we want the brands to ultimately own their names and to use them. Some of those companies will not just go out and buy names in a generic namespace like a dot agent, but they might apply for their own. In the last round, we had many companies apply for their own brand names. And if you think about that as sort of like that trust anchor Amazon was one, they had to jump through a lot of hoops to get that Amazon and work with the people of the Amazon region in South America to sort of unlock the ability. But Amazon is one that they use heavily. They have that AWS as well. And you and I don't see a lot of that. That doesn't make it out into their sort of customer facing advertising or products, but they use it heavily in terms of like their own internal systems. And so from like a trust standpoint, a trusted link, you know, if there is a domain that you see that is on a dot AWS, you are certain that it's legitimate and it's been administered by the team at Amazon. And it's largely for internal, although they did run a campaign. I think it was get on. If I remember correctly, get on dot AWS and they blanketed the entire New York City subway system with sort of the advertising wrappers down in the subways that was get on AWS. So you see them occasionally the brand TLDs that are used in the wild like that. - That sounds like it'd be a lot more effective than a bitly link on your subway. - That was campaign. - Yeah, it was more than five years ago. And I still, I think I have the domain, right? Get on AWS, but yeah, it was memorable and easier to type in than bitly, what was it? - Yeah. What's a fascinating process? And I think it's something that, you know, it dictates quite a bit of business owners. People go to market for the first time. I definitely, I can share my story. I knew I wanted to name the company LeanSkale. So then immediately then I go to look for domains. LeanSkale.com was taken, but nobody was doing anything with it. So the website was, there was nothing there. It was just a blank page. Now I was like, okay, let me look around at different ones and then I, dot team was recommended. And I thought, hey, just like you mentioned, that's reflective of what we do, how we do it. Unfortunately, two months after that, then the LeanSkale.com folks launched a website and then it's been a very confusing thing ever since I've reached out to them directly to try to buy their domain and everything. Anyway, so it's like this impacts your ability to go to market so much. And when you make a choice, you're, I don't want to say you're stuck with it, but you're making a pretty big commitment. You are. And I think it's not uncommon. You're not the only business that has the same name as another company. I mean, there's really big notable examples of how many brands are named united in some capacity. And there's only one united united.com. You take different permutations. And I don't think it's as much that there's one right answer in terms of how you need to name. There's different extensions that resonate, but it's the consistency. And actually driving that call to action, ultimately back to your domain name in a place that you control. This is something we talk about that's not really a, it's not just an identity digital driven message, but just for our industry, really, the power of actually owning your own space, where as long as you pay the registration fee, no one's ever going to take that domain away from you own the content that's on it, the permissions of how you want to allow, how you want to use it for email, what you want to host on it, can't be taken away. We've seen examples in recent times, whether it's X handles that have mysteriously been taken away or platforms that shut down. If I'm going to date myself and go back over 10 years to vine, major short form video creator platform closed almost overnight and all of those major early days buying creators that deport their audience, that they'd built up on that platform had to pivot to another one. If that's all you're doing is trying to attract customers at a third-party platform, I'm not saying you don't use that. That's where the demand is. That's where the audience is. You have to go be on the various platforms, but it always boggles my mind when those users aren't ultimately trying to drive a call to action back to a space, a website that they own, a domain name ultimately that they own, where it doesn't matter. You might change what you want to put on that. You might want to just redirect it somewhere, but it's a it is that call to action that you will, as again, as long as you pay your registration fee will forever own, and no one's going to take away from you. It might be your primary website. It might be your foundation site. It might be that it's an aggregator. Link and bio platforms have become a thing, not just because Instagram only allowed one link in the bio, but that notion of actually aggregating all of the things that you want to share with people in one place. Your link tree, there's tons of the platforms now. Many of which have custom domains integrated into it. We run.bio and.social. There's others like.link, but it's not uncommon for someone to have, you might have Anthony.bio, and that's your call that you have a link to your Twitter page, to leanscale.team there, to the latest funny video that you created, your all your podcast archives. You can put it all in one place, and you're sharing that out as opposed to find me on these 19 different platforms, and here's all the icons, and they come and go, or you get one of them hacked, and you lose it. It's just back to that consistency and sharing that one link that can be the central point and can be trusted. Well, I think there's, not I think, I'm certain there's a huge under appreciation for the system that's in place, and also just the governance of this, so you can have a place that you own, it's consistent. I think a lot of businesses take it for granted. I'd like to get into a little bit what the go-to-market looks like for ID. How you have hundreds and hundreds of partners, I'm assuming channel partners are a big part of the go-to-market motion, but how are you going to market? Are you waiting for these big events where they're launching new things? Is that a big part of the strategy? How does it look like to go to market for ID? It's it's a great question, and I would say it's unique. We're unique in our industry. For now, notwithstanding all the new extensions, I just mentioned that are going to come out, we're the by far the largest portfolio applicant in that we run hundreds of these, and so that presents a lot of really fun and interesting opportunities for how you go to market, and a lot of challenges, too. We have essentially 270 different products that we're trying to sell at a limited number of storefronts, and those storefronts are expanding. There's there's new distribution points, but we still have a lot of different products. We're kind of to use an analogy to consumer, we're sort of the proctor and gamble of domain names. We have we have hundreds of products and at Walmart or a big store, how do we figure out how to how to merchandise them, and which ones to run co-marketing with. It's we're never short on creative things that we can do. My teams run all the partnerships. We are almost entirely a channel, a channel go-to-market play. We have over 500 partners, many of them are existing partners, so we have a whole channel team that's running programs with those big notable domain registrars, like GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace is a registrar now, and how can we merchandise our products at the point of sale there, and then a whole other team handling new partnerships and sort of the expanding channel and expanding landscape for domain distribution, the vessels of the world that we talked about. Our channel is getting quite broad now where you might go to find some form of web presence. More often than not, you're going to have a domain name offering at the very least a simple way to connect a domain, but now more often than not, the ability to buy an easily configured one too. So all of the website builders, vibe coding platforms, hosting, increasingly even registration, company, and corporation companies, you know, a legal zoom, a zen business, you're setting up an LLC, you can also set up a website and buy a domain. So where what distribution looks like today is very, very different than what it did before. I would say just to kind of put a pin in your question, we lead with certain TLDs that have maybe a little bit more inherent demand, and so we have programs and promotional programs that incentivize the sale of some of those, but ultimately what we're trying to do at any of our partners with so many extensions is to show the right name at the right time. I'm not expecting that GoDaddy is going to plaster on their homepage.taxi or.plumbing or even.team, you know, in place of.com, but if someone is coming and they're looking for something that is relevant to one of those searches, and they're looking for something, and they type in AI. AI should be shown or other tech-related TLDs. So they're searching for something food-related. There are TLDs, I mean we run.restaurant, other companies have.bar, you know, there's food and beverage-related ones.menu, and so how you serve the name at the right time based on a platform, you know, their domain search or their product search, and how you bundle it with the other products. I mean, we sell through many partners now where the core offering is not a domain name. Someone is there because they're building an app or they're buying a website, and they're adding a domain not as the first step, but later on in the process. And so if someone has just built a yoga website, you better believe we want.yoga or.studio or something akin to that to be one of the offerings, you know, our incentives are aligned with our partners there. They want to find a relevant name that's very associated with the product that their customer has just self-selected, and if they can find a really good name that matches their studio name.studio, they're ultimately going to get a stickier overall offering and a higher retention rate, and that's really the name of the game for us. We're trying to find ways that not just we can sell a bunch of domains, but we can sell high value ones that are going to renew, that are going to retain. Our model is a recurring revenue model at a micro scale, you know, ten and twenty and thirty dollar domain transactions, hundreds and thousands of times, millions of times. That's that's how it works. Has AI played a big role in helping that matching process, recommendation engine, are there other areas you're leveraging AI as well, both on product and go to market? Absolutely. And not just us, but our partners as well. I mean, the way that products are served up and those search results are heavily influenced by AI recommendations now, so how you would go to any of the partners I've just mentioned and search for a product or a name, it's heavily AI assisted now. Sometimes you can choose a legacy search or an AI driven one, but it's always working behind the scenes to some degree. How we price names, I mean, our whole pricing engine, we have 270 extensions, like I mentioned, with many price points that we've tested in terms of first year promotional pricing across each of these, across 500 or more partners, you get down to, that's many unique cohorts. And so we're heavily leveraging machine learning and and AI to analyze all the data, ultimately trying to figure out the ones of the most price elastic and what the perfect entry point is to maximize the lifetime value. So all of our pricing engines in terms of go-to-market and how we design programs and content and logo, I mean, AI certainly plays a major role. And on the sales side, I mean, I started, I think, our conversation a while ago, we've automated a lot behind the scenes and we do from an SDR standpoint as well, but increasingly are really leaning into the human side of it. I mean, from a partner standpoint, many of these partners are ones that we've done business with for a really long time. They're not new partners. The relationships matter now more than ever. And if we're we and every other business in our industries, using AI heavily behind the scenes or more of the content is kind of going AI, like who you are and how you show up and the trust side, not just in the domain names, but on the relationships that we've built over time matter more than ever. And so we really place an emphasis on that with all of our account managers showing up in person. You know, there was a world when COVID hit where some of us for like our whole industry is booming, people are sitting at home building websites buying domains. Are we ever going to go back to the office? Will I ever see you at an event again? I might just live in my basement and sell more domains than ever for the rest. And that is that has come full circle back to, we spend more time and money going to events, whether it's new partner events or our industry events to go meet our partners face-to-face. It's more critical than ever in this, you know, AI Slop is a common term, but it's just in that trust building. We have to make sure those relationships, they know who we are and that we present ourselves. You know, authentic authenticity sort of an overuse term, but I mean, it really matters that your partners know who you are and what you're trying to do that they trust you and you're building programs that are honestly win-win programs for them, showing up in person really goes a long ways. I've been seeing that trend quite a bit with CRO CMOs that I'm interviewing where the old school is the new school in person, personal connections, relationships. I think there's been so much saturation in a lot of the digital channels that people really don't know how to sift through the noise and pick up the signals that are really relevant. Everybody's inbox in LinkedIn has been completely obliterated with automated messaging, so it's very, very difficult to stand out there. And one of the biggest competitive advantages is getting in person again. And I think the word you're using trust, in order for that equation to balance out, it does have to be two humans on either side. So I can't just be one human on one side and then trust the AI to do something. I need to know somebody's on the hook for making this a success and making this work. It can't be a nameless entity for me to have trust. So I think when it comes to the function of sales, the function of BD, partnership development, it's not even possible if you don't have humans on the other side. - I agree. I mean, when was the last time? I mean, I'll respond occasionally or look at the email, the amount of emails we get and LinkedIn messages, certainly always curious how people are selling and what products could help us do a better job on our end. But you're not, I assume when was the last time you intentionally answered a phone number that you didn't recognize or certainly one that's labeled spam call. I mean, just how you go to market is very different. We're not cold calling. There was some of that years ago, but that doesn't happen at least for us anymore. You know, we have to be very thoughtful about how we come across in a trustworthy way in terms of online communication and if we can meet people at events, even new partners, that is by far a more impactful way. I think you had someone on recently that talked about the power of events now and I agree completely. Like we're gonna spend more money in 27 on new partner events than sort of emerging industry events than we ever have. - I think it's the channel that's producing the most and then everything else is for them to go learn more about your brand after they've met you. So anything that you have as a digital presence is really for them to kind of go down the rabbit hole on your brand and learn more. And I just think that's gonna be one of the few channels that continues to have a consistent return. You may get a few hacks here and there, but it means your point, I have an EA that sifts through all my emails, only tags the important ones. She's not tagging a single one that is a random automated outreach. And she controls my LinkedIn inbox as well. So even those are sifted through and tagged to where I never even see them. And then on my phone, I haven't go to auto voice mail if I don't have the number saved in my phone. So only like people I know can really get through. Otherwise, I mean, it's not even manageable to get through your day. - Yep. - Matt, I really appreciate everything you shared on the podcast. I think it's really, really eye opening to understand how important your domain is. And there's all of these new ways that people are creating assets, materials, artifacts that are really pointing their market somewhere that isn't your domain. And it really is one of the last consistent ways to build trust in the market. And I think, as you mentioned, having that consistency where they can see your brand, they can see your name and then pointing people there is gonna be really, really important. And I also appreciate your perspective on how to build trust in the market right now because there really is, as you put it, a trust recession that's happening with the expansion of AI content, AI-driven automation and anything you can do to help build trust and credibility is gonna go a really, really long way. So Matt, I really appreciate you being on the show and I can't wait to see what you all do next and I can't wait to maybe apply for my dot agent domain in the future. - It's an exciting time in our space. I'm so certainly happy to follow up and point you to some of the info is that comes out as the future becomes a little bit more clear and we figure out who's running what. I'll send over some of that info. - Amazing, thank you. All right, thanks Anthony.