3 trends that are hard to miss at NamesCon this year

Well it’s official, NamesCon 2018 is here and the first day is just wrapping up. I got here on Saturday night so enjoyed a day at the conference yesterday and had a blast giving a talk about what startups need to know about raising a seed round in the afternoon. I also sat down with the NamePros team for a little interview which is always fun, here’s me with Edward yesterday:

morgan-linton-namescon-2018

I went to two events last night (before I got too hungry and went to go get sushi with Braden – an annual tradition of ours), the first was held by .CLUB in their sweet suite at the Tropicana celebrating their announcement of Names.club, a new marketplace for brandable new gTLD domains. After that I went over to the opening cocktail party (hosted by .GLOBAL) which was also a lot of fun, and had a pretty kick-ass band.

dot-global-party-namescon2018

So, after a day at NamesCon and probably 30+ conversations (yes you end up talking to a lot of people at conferences!) I’ve noticed three pretty clear trends that are hard to miss. Here they are:

  1. Crypto – love it or hate it that isn’t stopping people from talking about it. I think it’s safe to say that crypto came up in almost every single conversation I had. On one side I heard people talking about how stupid it is and how they hope it doesn’t make people less interested in buying domains. On the other side I heard people talking about how much they love it and how they think that people making money in crypto are actually going to put more money into domains as they want to put their profits into something more reliable. This is a huge topic for Domainers as they know that whether they believe in it or not, it’s making an impact one way or another, and common, it’s pretty fun to talk about isn’t it?
  2. Weed – and not I don’t mean just talking about weed and weed domains, everyone smells like weed this year. Now that pot is legal in Nevada it’s clear that Domainers have decided to add it into the mix. I also talked to quite a few people who have been doing well with marijuana-related domains so it’s clear this is another trend to keep an eye on and like crypto, it’s probably only going to grow.
  3. New gTLDs – there’s a lot of buzz around new gTLDs again this year at NamesCon. I think everyone now agrees they are here to stay and I had a number of conversations with people about which ones they believe in the most. I don’t currently invest in new gTLDs (I dabbled a bit a while ago but haven’t bought any in quite a while) but I was inspired to hear stories of people who had actually been seeing some pretty solid results. My takeaway is – only the most premium names are what most people are investing in, buying a bunch of new gTLDs hoping one will be your ticket to retirement probably isn’t going to work, duh.

Okay well I missed the whole day time portion of the conference today because I’ve been sitting in my room working but it’s almost 6:00 and it’s time to get ready for WaterNight! If you’re at the conference and aren’t going to WaterNight, change you plans and come, it’s definitely going to be a night to remember and every dollar goes to an incredible charity, hard to beat that.

Hope to see you there!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton