Stop collecting domains, says TheHustle.CO founder in anti-domain tirade

Sam Parr, founder of The Hustle, a tech news aggregator operating from TheHustle.CO, laid out a series of tweets laden with anti-domain sentiment yesterday.

The self-proclaimed “internet entrepreneur and investor” sent out a series of patronizing tweets casting doubt on the importance of domain names, urging his audience to seek paying customers first.

Said Parr:

“Stop collecting domains. Buying a domain name should NOT be step 1 in starting something. Getting paying customer #1 should be. In MOST cases, your domain name is meaningless. Company.wordpress.com will even work. Collecting domain names is a habit for the actionless folks.”

This irrational advice ignores by far what many start-ups have found to be an expensive lesson in domain rebranding: paying huge amounts of money for their matching brand .com once they become famous and loaded with cash, instead of seeking a low-key acquisition of that domain early on.

Domains are for losers – Photo by Dragos Gontariu on Unsplash

Rick Schwartz chimed in promptly with his Domain King wisdom spanning two and a half decades:

“I won’t argue with the need for paying customers but your other part is just a foolish statement. The fact is you need both to reach full potential. When you have #domainnames, which are time sensitive by the way, it gives you many options for customers.”

At some point, The Hustle .CO founder called domain investors “hoarders” and claimed that “your domain is not your brand.” He also said that GoDaddy founder, Bob Parsons, should be collecting domains. Since 2018, Bob Parsons is retired and no longer on the GoDaddy board.

Of course, knowledgeable domain investors such as Drew Rosener quickly shut down such silly and irresponsible arguments. Said Drew:

“Spend it on the domain once and get dividends forever or spend it forever on marketing and SEO. Reminding people where to find you… But yes, please build a proof of concept first so you can pay me an (un)fair price!”

You can follow this hilarious and misinforming thread on Twitter. Better still, join in and share your thoughts.

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