I went to a very small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania called Muhlenberg College, and there aren’t many people in the domain space who have even heard of Muhlenberg. In December of 2007, I checked to see if anyone at all connected with the domain industry had attended Muhlenberg College, and I saw that Lori Anne Wardi, then of Mike Mann’s WashingtonVC, graduated from Muhlenberg in 19(no comment).
I sent Lori Anne this LinkedIn message after she accepted by connection request:
“I saw that you are a Muhlenberg College alum and involved on the domain space. I would love the opportunity to chat via email. I am a Muhlenberg alum (class of ’02) and I am active in the domain community. Please contact me when you have a chance to say hello.“
Since then, we’ve shared many emails, phone calls, lunches, dinners, and other get togethers over the last several years. It’s amazing how a brief introduction on LinkedIn can lead to a great business friendship.
Courtesy of a tweet from Juan Diego Calle of the .CO Registry, I want to share an article Lori Anne wrote for Brazen Life, a lifestyle and career blog for ambitious young professionals. The article is called “How a Burned-Out Lawyer Quit Her Job and Discovered Her Dream Career,” and it discusses her shift from practicing law to finding her dream job, working with the .CO Registry.
I know that .CO is a polarizing topic for many in the domain industry. However, I think we should all look at .CO from an objective business perspective and see just how successful they have been. Lori Anne has been one of the forces behind the company’s success. I also think that there are many people who would love to change careers and work full time within the domain industry. Lori Anne’s article offers some insight into her career change.
I’ve told the Development office at our small college about her success in the domain industry, and I always introduce her as a classmate of mine from a different era. Despite this ribbing, we’ve remained friends. Â Lori Anne has a dynamic personality, has a sharp business mind, and the information she shared is well worth your time.
Hey Elliot,
Thanks so much for the nice post! By the way – one day you’ll be old too, you know!
: )
Lori Anne
Not wanting to correct Lori but we don’t get ‘old’, we get more seasoned. 🙂
Have to admit, enjoyed the read and about Lori Anne Wardi. Inspiring and good post! I have heard great things about her.
While I dropped my .co domains (think 8 total), I am happy I did.
Now the flip side, hope one day they realize speculators and domainers got .co off the ground. The owner kinda trashed domainers in a video but its ok for him to be a domainer as well, LOL. But ok…
Wish Lori Anne Wardi the very best! Actually bookmarked the link and glad to see your happy! Life is to short, keep it going!
The only question I have for Mr. Calle is how many start-ups could there be a year, 100? Perhaps 600? Let’s assume 2% of those choose to go with .CO, and yes 2% is generous, so how many is that, about 12 or so? Are you seriously telling us that you are running a Registry for Start-ups?
Personally I believe that ‘domainers’ help launch the .CO, and sustained it, and not Start-ups. That’s bull.
According to Gust.com, “There are several million “startups” that are formed each year”
http://gust.com/angel-investing/startup-blogs/2012/11/22/how-many-start-ups-in-the-us-get-seedvc-funding-per-year/
@Elliot,
They are probably counting domain registrations there; technically, every registered name is a start-up.
But, I was referring to s start-up, start-up. You know, a start-up; I don’t know how to put it across, you understand, a real start-up. There couldn’t be more than a few hundred of those.
I think you’re way off base.
A different article on CNN Money from 2011 says “Last year, 340 of every 100,000 adults launched a business each month, creating 565,000 startups monthly, the report found. That was the same percentage as 2009, when 558,000 new businesses a month were created.”
http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/07/smallbusiness/new_business_starts/index.htm
I’d search some more, but the information is easily accessible if you want to have a look on your own.
I will look into it further, I’d be very surprised if the figures refer to serious start-up firms.
In either case, some ‘domainers’ own that many domain names in just one of their accounts. Therefore, it’d be fool-hearty to disrespect “domainers” as a Registry. Even if one doesn’t need domainers anymore. 🙂
Startups are startups. . . . Kaufmann foundation is a great source for this info as they study it annually : http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/kauffman-index-of-entrepreneurial-activity.aspx
That was a great read. Lori and the team at dot co are really laying the foundation for what gTLDs should be doing to be successful. Plus she’s an all around nice person!
Melons was from Colombia, S.A., btw. If I had known that .co was a Colombian registration I don’t think I would have hand-regged so many-. Actually, the Indian domainer posted that .co was a short extension of .com’s when .com’s weren’t available. Didn’t do MY homework.
At Harvard business school students study case studies of FAILED businesses so they can learn what NOT to do.
Juan is making a fortune by hiring Lori—-smart man. Glad you are happy Lori!