Domain Investors Shouldn’t Exist. What you do is wrong and adds no value.

A few days ago, I read this comment:

Forty-eight doors opened.

Forty-eight little surges of adrenaline before walking in.

Forty-eight versions of:

“Thank you. We’ll contact you.”

Some people listened with interest.

Some had no idea why a domain could matter.

Some barely understood why their business needed a website at all.

Remember: this was Moldova in 2013. For many small and even medium-sized businesses, digital presence was still something for later.

Walking through the snow

Toward the end of the day, I was exhausted.

I walked down from the area of the National Bank of Moldova, past the Technical University, farther down toward Metro, and eventually continued in the direction of Stăuceni.

It was dark.

It was cold.

Christmas and New Year were approaching.

And I was thinking about all the money I had put into domain names.

Not because I expected to become a millionaire next month.

I was buying them because I could see something happening.

Good Moldovan domain names were being registered from other countries.

I believed that someday local businesses would need those names.

And that having them available locally would be better than discovering years later that everything meaningful had disappeared.

At the same time, I was wondering whether my rather technocratic and meritocratic view of how things should work was simply crashing into a wall of misunderstanding, pride, jealousy and short-term thinking.

Then I noticed something strange.

My shoes were wet.

I thought snow had gotten inside.

They made that unpleasant squishing sound with every step.

It wasn’t melted snow.

It was blood.

I had walked so much that day that my feet had rubbed raw inside my shoes.

That is one of my strongest memories from my early years in domains.

And apparently I was doing all of this while “adding no value.”

But something else happened that day

The domain eventually found its owner.

But, looking back, that wasn’t even the most interesting result.

Because I had spoken to 48 organizations.

And those conversations produced other consequences.

A few people became interested in creating their own websites.

Others started asking questions about social media.

Some began thinking seriously about their digital identity for the first time.

Others registered additional domain names themselves because they suddenly understood that the names they might need in the future would not necessarily remain available forever.

The domain I was carrying from door to door was only the conversation starter.

The real product was sometimes the idea.

“Maybe we should finally do something online.”

And one such thought can trigger an entire chain of economic activity.

What value can a domain investor actually create?

A domain investor does not create a factory, manufacture a refrigerator or grow wheat.

The value is less visible.

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

A single conversation about a domain can lead to:

• a company registering additional domains;
• a registrar receiving new business;
• a hosting plan being purchased;
• a web designer getting a project;
• a developer building a website;
• an SEO specialist being hired;
• a copywriter producing content;
• a photographer creating images;
• a graphic designer building a visual identity;
• a marketer launching campaigns;
• a social-media manager opening and managing accounts;
• advertising budgets going to Google, Meta or other platforms;
• new email infrastructure being created;
• new products or services getting their own names;
• a business thinking seriously about branding years earlier than it otherwise would have.

In my particular case, one domain generated 48 real conversations.

Those conversations helped accelerate the creation or purchase of dozens of other digital services.

Would some of those companies eventually have built websites anyway?

Of course.

That isn’t the point.

The point is that many of them were not thinking about it that day.

Something made them think about it.

That something was a domain investor walking through the snow and knocking on their door.

Domain investors create urgency

There is another form of value that is uncomfortable precisely because it works.

Scarcity.

When every name is infinitely available, there is no reason to make a decision today.

Domains aren’t infinitely available.

There is only one exact example.com.

One exact example.md.

One exact word in a particular extension.

Knowing that another person may register a name tomorrow forces companies to think about branding, naming and digital assets now rather than someday.

Sometimes the result is frustration.

Sometimes somebody pays more than registration price.

But sometimes it is the little push that finally turns:

“We should probably have a website someday.”

into:

“Let’s build it.”

And once that happens, an entire ecosystem starts working.

Investors also preserve options

There is a strange assumption that an unused domain has no value.

But we don’t apply that logic everywhere else.

A vacant commercial property can still have value.

An undeveloped parcel of land can have value.

An unused trademark can have value.

A book sitting unread on a library shelf can have value.

Value can exist because an asset represents an option for future use.

Domain investors spend their own money identifying, registering, renewing, researching and maintaining names without knowing whether anyone will ever want them.

Many never sell.

Those renewal fees are real.

The risk is real.

And occasionally the investor correctly anticipates a name, technology, industry or linguistic trend years before demand appears.

That is speculation, yes.

But speculation and value creation are not mutually exclusive.

Are all domain investors useful?

Of course not.

There are bad practices in this industry.

Trademark abuse is not something I defend.

Deceptive outbound marketing is not something I defend.

Registering a name purely to exploit someone else’s established identity is not the kind of domain investing I want to defend either.

But going from “some practices are bad” to “domain investors shouldn’t exist” is an enormous leap.

There are collectors.

Researchers.

Brokers.

Developers.

Brand consultants.

Investors.

People searching expired names.

People protecting linguistic and geographic names before they disappear.

And, yes, people trying to make a profit.

Often the same person is several of these things at once.

So, do I create value?

I can only answer from my own experience.

In December 2013, I walked through Chișinău until my feet bled because I believed one domain had value for a local organization.

That domain eventually found its owner.

But along the way, dozens of people started conversations about websites, domains, branding and the internet.

Some of those conversations turned into registrations.

Others into websites.

Others into hosting, design, marketing and content.

One domain created a reason for 48 conversations to happen.

And those conversations accelerated far more than one transaction.

So when somebody tells me:

“What you do adds no value.”

I don’t really need a theoretical answer anymore.

I remember December 2013.

I remember 48 doors.

I remember the cold.

And I remember looking down at my shoes.

Sometimes the value created by a domain investor isn’t the domain itself.

Sometimes it is everything that starts happening around it.