- Joined
- Oct 6, 2026
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Hey all,
@Helmuts has been telling me to sign up here for a few years now. I kept finding reasons not to. He finally wore me down, so here I am, no more excuses.
Quick intro. I have spent 20 years inside European hosting and SaaS, in CTO, CEO and COO seats at companies like Computer.nl, Hosting.co.uk, LuxHosting.lu and Cloudhosting.lu. Domains have been the constant through all of it. I have sold a fair number over the years and I sit on a small portfolio, a few hundred names on the side. If I am honest, I buy more than I sell, so "investor" might be generous. Collector is closer.
Lately I have been doing something that probably sounds insane to this crowd: giving premium domains away for free. Not parking them, not flipping them, actually handing them over. The catch is that we build a complete subscription business on the name, run all the tech behind it, and split the revenue with the person who takes it. The domain is theirs, the business is real, and they can sell it later. AIWebsiteCreation.com is one example of a name offered this way.
That all comes out of BrandForge, which is what I actually spend my days on now. For 20 years I watched the same thing happen from the provider side. A business buys a domain, full of excitement, and then nothing. No logo, no brand, no idea where to start. The hoster that just sold them the domain has nothing to offer next, so the customer either stalls or wanders off to an agency that charges thousands. I saw that moment thousands of times and never once thought of it as an opportunity. That is the embarrassing part. When you are inside something long enough, you stop seeing what is right in front of you.
When we started BrandForge I almost made the classic mistake, trying to out-build the AI logo makers with a better product. But the better logo was never the hard part. AI makes a logo in seconds. The hard part is reaching someone at the exact moment they need a brand, through a company they already trust. That is when it clicked. Twenty years of relationships with hosters, registrars and agencies were not background, they were the distribution. So we built BrandForge to be white-label and channel-first, sitting inside the providers who already own the relationship. Someone buys a domain, and now there is something waiting for them.
Also I'm quite active in going to events in our industry, and frequently you can meet me at events at: Nordic Domain Days, Domain Days Dubai, NamesCon, CloudFest and of course Domain Summit.
Anyway, that is me. Here to talk domains, swap war stories, and probably buy a few more names I do not need. Good to finally be in the room.
@Helmuts has been telling me to sign up here for a few years now. I kept finding reasons not to. He finally wore me down, so here I am, no more excuses.
Quick intro. I have spent 20 years inside European hosting and SaaS, in CTO, CEO and COO seats at companies like Computer.nl, Hosting.co.uk, LuxHosting.lu and Cloudhosting.lu. Domains have been the constant through all of it. I have sold a fair number over the years and I sit on a small portfolio, a few hundred names on the side. If I am honest, I buy more than I sell, so "investor" might be generous. Collector is closer.
Lately I have been doing something that probably sounds insane to this crowd: giving premium domains away for free. Not parking them, not flipping them, actually handing them over. The catch is that we build a complete subscription business on the name, run all the tech behind it, and split the revenue with the person who takes it. The domain is theirs, the business is real, and they can sell it later. AIWebsiteCreation.com is one example of a name offered this way.
That all comes out of BrandForge, which is what I actually spend my days on now. For 20 years I watched the same thing happen from the provider side. A business buys a domain, full of excitement, and then nothing. No logo, no brand, no idea where to start. The hoster that just sold them the domain has nothing to offer next, so the customer either stalls or wanders off to an agency that charges thousands. I saw that moment thousands of times and never once thought of it as an opportunity. That is the embarrassing part. When you are inside something long enough, you stop seeing what is right in front of you.
When we started BrandForge I almost made the classic mistake, trying to out-build the AI logo makers with a better product. But the better logo was never the hard part. AI makes a logo in seconds. The hard part is reaching someone at the exact moment they need a brand, through a company they already trust. That is when it clicked. Twenty years of relationships with hosters, registrars and agencies were not background, they were the distribution. So we built BrandForge to be white-label and channel-first, sitting inside the providers who already own the relationship. Someone buys a domain, and now there is something waiting for them.
Also I'm quite active in going to events in our industry, and frequently you can meet me at events at: Nordic Domain Days, Domain Days Dubai, NamesCon, CloudFest and of course Domain Summit.
Anyway, that is me. Here to talk domains, swap war stories, and probably buy a few more names I do not need. Good to finally be in the room.
