Rick Schwartz joins Ish Milly on an epic Spaces on X

So Ish Milly had Rick Schwartz join him in a spaces on X. Rick talked domains for three hours, a lot of people who listened to it live gave it rave reviews. Ish has his Spaces recorded so you can listen below.

A Mitchell did a great job highlighting some of the best parts from Rick.

AI․com just sold for $70M. Ish said LasVegas․com sold earlier for 90M and like AI․com, it was sold just as a domain, with no business entity attached. Rick Schwartz said that the original asking price for AI․com was probably $100M. “How did the other CEOs miss it?” Rick said.

The sale buys the buyer a seat at the table, whether the incumbents like it or not. It is not because it’s a LL․com, but because it defines the sector. Amazing power. Rick’s message to the other AI CEO’s: “Wake up.” They shouldn’t have missed it. The buyer knew what he was doing, Rick said. Other CEOs have to pay for ads, so they’re merely renting those ad spaces, whereas the buyer of AI․com now owns the ground they’re standing on. Rick’s advice: don’t negotiate on price. “The moment you start with price, you lose with price,” he said.

Get into a conversation, he said. “The best way to do that is to not open with price. Have an intelligent conversation.” He doesn’t answer most inquiries because he can’t qualify them. Rick heard “smart glasses” mentioned on a news media site.

Then he ran to Huge Domains and bought the .COM for $3500. Rick doesn’t sell inventory, he sells dreams. Rick negotiated $8.5M for porno․com, but then buyer started to play with the deal and asked Rick to be allowed to try it for a month. Rick told them to fuck off and never contact him again. The buyer’s CEO immediately wrote to him, saying the money will be in Rick’s account in 48 hours. Don’t let buyers play with the deal, Rick said. Non-COMs aren’t marketable, Rick said. .AI is the only non-COM that has earned a place in the ecosystem, Rick said.

It’s marketable because people accept it, he said. Rick says 36-48 months should be the most popular LTO period for domains. “Approved use” an LTO buyer has to agree to, Rick said, before he’ll approve an LTO deal. You gotta know an LTO buyer, which can take weeks. He doesn’t do LTOs on adult domains.

Domains are valuable because they enable customers to find you, Joseph Çiprut said. “Every digital strategy starts with a name,” Joseph said. Rick contrasted domains with collectables such as baseball cards. He owns some collectables. He said a $30M baseball card needs to be protected with an insurance policy that could cost $300,000 per year.

Like NFTs, baseball cards don’t produce income and the owner can’t use such an investment to expand. The card is practically useless and has to be kept locked in a vault.

Like NFTs, baseball cards and other stores of value can never serve as the world headquarters of a business. They don’t earn income. They cannot do anything. Rick has started allowing a few people to represent a small number of his domains for a period of 1-2 years.

He describes these representative arrangements as “slow burns.” He sets a price minimum for each domain, and everything above that Rick will split with the rep who sells it. He chooses his reps on the basis of their connections in the industry vertical that each domain represents.

Alex Verdea is representing property․com and properties․com. In representing Rick’s names, Alex will protect the asset, Rick said. Betty is the name Rick gave to his AI agent advisor. He named her Betty because the name is associated with Betty Flintstone and Betty Boop, who are seen as trustworthy mom types. Rick bought Betty․ai, which has a PPC lander. The AI runs on ChatGPT and cannot be reached from the lander. “She” read everything about him and is his AI agent. He bounces ideas off her. Betty isn’t publicly available, but Rick might lease her out so she could answer questions from others, using Rick’s voice.

“She’s indispensable.” He urges everyone to train their own AI agent. He uses Betty to introduce him to other AIs.

The introductions that Betty prepares are one to two pages long. We’re 1-3 years away from being able to put an agent like Betty into a robot. The adult sector will soon figure this out and exploit it first, he said. Rick currently has about 6500 domains. 700 are meaningful, super high-value ones. Some of the others are moats, which protect a primary, high-value domain in his portfolio.

One of his moat domains was Teem․com that he bought by mistake, but which he ended up selling for $1.5M “My job is to collect intersections. It’s impossible to know when it (the domains) will be needed.” Domain flippers often don’t understand their inventory, he said. They don’t know the value or potential applications. He can’t always estimate the value of brandables, he said.

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