17th
6 months for 4 letters
This summer on a “get to know the local entrepreneur” meeting with a VC, we were discussing trends and projects that I was exploring on the side. While PhoneTag is my day to day business I always have a few fun projects going.
One of those projects was dubbed internally, Build-a-tel. The model is something I have wanted to do since 2000. It is basically a uniform API and GUI for a broad range of services to software developers. The VC liked the idea and spoke to one of his partners about it. The partner, an expert in the telecom space, loved the concept and before I knew it, my side project was becoming a VC backed start up.
One of the most important lessons I learned from SimulScribe (now PhoneTag) was that a shitty name is something that is hard to overcome. While a great name does not guarantee anything, a bad name does not help. So we started to think of a new name for Build-a-tel. My parameters were that the name had to be a .com (no .net, .us, etc.), no more then5 letters and had to provide the flexibility to support the wide range of products that we will offer. After about a week of brainstorming and cross-referencing with domains we had two possibilities, Bulk.com and Grid.com.
We emailed both of the domain owners. The owner of Bulk.com wanted $800,000. HOLY SHIT, $800,000! The owners of grid.com never got back to us, yet as time passed it become the name I really loved.
After weeks of silence, I started to research the origins of Grid.com. Turns out there was a computer once called the Grid computer, it was a cool laptop for its time. The company went out of business in the 90s selling its assets to Tandy. Tandy sold its computer business to Samsung. Samsung then sold all of their computer assets to Benny Alagem. Benny is the owner of the Beverly Hills Hilton, the founder of Packard Bell computer and in early 2000 had bought the computer assets from Samsung to try and re-launch his old brand. So I figured that the domain must have ended up with Benny.
I finally finagled a meeting with Benny, long story short Benny didn’t own it. The domain name did not come along with the purchase. Shit.
Back at zero. I started contacting people at Tandy and Samsung that I knew through various networks. Additionally I used the internet archive to look at every website that had been published to Grid.com since it was registered. This was my first big break, turns out after Grid sold it assets to Tandy, Grid.com had a new website up with a consulting service called GSCS.
None of the info of the consulting service was valid. I started to check linkedin for anyone who might have worked for Grid/GSCS in their resume but could not find anyone that did (sorry to the 80-90 people who worked for different Grids that I emailed). In an act of desperation I googled one of the names I found on the Grid.com consulting website. The only hit that I got was a PDF from some company in Pennsylvania. It had the guys name and email address on it. Nothing to do with Grid from what I could see but maybe this was my guy. So I emailed him.
A day later he emailed back, informing me that he was the right person and forwarded the contact details for the current owner.
Bingo!
I contacted the current owner. We started to negotiate price and in a few weeks came to an agreeable sum. I funded an escrow.com account and waited to join the 4 letter .com club. After a week passed the owner decided she wanted more money. I agreed.
Meanwhile, the wire from the VC’s was scheduled for the day before thanksgiving. At 4pm the lead VC called and explained that one of their investors had an issue and because of that they were out. I had already bridged a substantial amount of money to the company as the wire date had been pushed by almost 60 days, so this was more than bad news.
With no investors in a collapsing VC market, I received an email from the Grid.com owner telling me that despite agreeing on a number again she was no longer selling. I could not walk away, I like the business, team and name to much to just let it go. So I invaded my piggy bank and did everything I could to get GRID.com
After a short court battle and a bunch of cash evaporated, VICTORY! Now it’s time to finish our software and launch our private beta in March!
