In many respects you shouldn’t be reading this history. Frank Schilling was the son of European immigrants, who would have settled in New York or California if not for the Vietnam War. “My parents were already fleeing the spectre of war, so they settled in Canada.”. There he grew up on a cul-de-sac, both parents worked so Frank and his siblings were raised by his maternal Grandmother - and American Television. “I watched all the shows you did and then some. That indoctrination to pop-culture and socially popular topics would prove invaluable in helping me to select some of the best domain names on the Internet.”
“I was a late bloomer who floundered in my teens, but I always had a deep rooted entrepreneurial spirit and love of people and personalities. I loved media, film, popular-culture and television; but Canada is a long way from Hollywood or New York. You could say my spirit was saved (or unleashed) by the Internet. It let me capture the world of media and entertainment from my couch, wherever that couch was.”
Frank stumbled onto domains as most people were busy day-trading tech stocks in the Autumn of 1999, but he didn’t view domains themselves as a business opportunity until later. Like most people he appreciated a domain name’s utility and what a good name could do for a business. Companies with short meaningful names were often valued much higher than similar companies with worse names. “I studied early internet forums and chat rooms relating to domain names, sharing and learning about domain names.” As time wore on it became apparent that the ability to secure good names as they expired, or became abandoned, was a niche-skill all its own. A player in this space had to understand the pop-culture or meaning of the name and it’s ramifications from a marketing perspective. “You had to appreciate different languages and cultures, the size of the markets that the name described, how to target the name and capture it the moment it expired and became available on a first-come, first-served basis.”
Frank spent the next several years getting drawn into the game of acquiring expiring domain names. First as they expired in seemingly random fashion, in the middle of the night. Later at the countless name auctions that would spring up as intermediaries injected themselves into the expiring name space.
“Along the way I’ve watched the domain name business evolve from a cottage-industry to a corporate juggernaut. We have thrived beyond our imagination. It has been an awesome privilege and a humbling journey to experience the growth of our company and this space.”