Introduction: Puberty!

We think we’re a pretty open and transparent company. After all, we do invite you inside to tour our offices, give us feedback on upcoming redesigns, and if god forbid something happens and a server goes down, we’re on the front lines of Facebook and Twitter letting you know the play by play.  Today however we kick open the doors and begin the discussion that every grown up has to have: we’re going to talk about our company vision. More specifically, our journey to discovering our vision, what a vision is, and why having a solid, defined, clear vision is important for the success of any business. As we go through this process, we’re going to turn ourselves inside out. We invite you to follow along.

First, get to know us a little. Name.com is an 8-year old startup. We’ve been successful by offering an easy and accessible user experience with little upsell and a ton of customer service. It’s been good to us, but sometimes we joke that we are in the awkward teenager phase trying to figure out who we are, what our strengths are and what we need to work on. We need to define who we really want to become. The short answer is that we’re here to make money (just being honest!), and in order to do that we must deliver excellent products and services, at competitive prices, and provide stellar support. That is great but we want to be better than great – we want to be the best. So how do we get there? First we have to figure out where ‘there’ is…

Next up…Finding Our Vision! Is that you and your company? Let us do the hard work and follow our road to one Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal!

1- Make the site much, much easier to use. We’re systematically going through the site page by page, click by click, and making it simpler. You deserve that.

2- Give our current customers lots of new friends, so they can look back and say that all the new guys are just “jumping on the bandwagon” and that “we were customers of Name.com before everyone knew about them.” Hey, it’s cool to be first. We’re going to help make sure the whole world knows how cool you are.

3- Help you. We work hard to make sure we have what you need, but this year we’re taking it to the next level. From video tutorials and guides on every page to educational blog content to 24 hour support (this will be the last half of the year… takes a while to staff!), this is going to be a banner year… for both of us.

That’s why the title of this blog post is “hello world.” In much the same way that those words marked the start of something great, something that would eventually change not only the world but the way we live our daily lives… this year is the start. The start of Name.com making the internet even easier, the start of getting the word out about our legendary support, the start of Name.com as a household name… the start of something great.

hello world… here we come.

I’m also one to make it worse with errant attempts at humor. I mean, just after you meet someone it’s best to fly low and keep it simple. I try. However, out of my need to fit in, I shared with a new co-worker that I just tore a hole in my pants. That was on the initial handshake, and I’m sure there’s something wrong about touching someone you’ve never met and telling them about your crotch. Now, I sit here behind this Mac computer the size of a car door and quietly admonish myself.

How did I end up here? I’m a radio guy who got out of the industry to care for my mom. If there’s anything you should do it’s take care of your mother. One unintended side effect is that after doing what could be the best thing you can ever do, you have no idea what to do next. You find yourself sitting on the edge of her daybed with fifty-some years of sewing patterns and boxes of pictures of distant relatives. I don’t write this to be melodramatic, only to illustrate the process. You have to find something really darn good. It can’t be just any old gig because suddenly your soul satisfaction has gone all high maintenance.

And then your wife reminds you that the kid we just had needs pants. Oh, that.

So I scurried to the government sector where I discovered all my old radio tricks would help the government save some taxpayer dollars. And then those same taxpayers went crazy for a smaller government and my hopes for a permanent position wafted away with the winds of change.

There I was again, but now with two kids who needed pants. Inspired in kind of a Jack Nicholson Shining sort of way, I spent day and night sending out cover letters and resumes. I didn’t hear a thing back, but at least my friends were supportive and would say things like, “You’ll never hear a thing back.” That drew cause for contemplation. I had been hammering out run-of-the-mill application material, but I’d never been hired for anything run of the mill. I’ve never even used that phrase “run of the mill.”

Newly epiphanized, I went to the DOCC, or Denver Open Coffee Club, a biweekly gathering of tech and media geeks, and asked about a good, local company. A hip-looking dude glanced up from his bathtub of coffee and said, “Name.”

“I have a friend who works at Name,” he said between sips. “And she really likes it.”

I went home and took a gander at the site. Looked cool–a company doing great things with a product of infinite possibilities. I started a cover letter even though I loathe cover letters because you go on and on touting all your greatness and end up feeling like a bad guy in an 80s movie.

So instead I sent them a limerick:

There once was no place for a name
That wasn’t at all a bit lame,
And then from the throng
Came a company strong
A Denver-based master of Domains.

And then, with the same compulsion that has me telling someone I’ve just met that I’ve torn a hole in my pants, I continued with a Haiku.

Boom goes the Daddy
Shooting an elephant at night
and himself in the foot.

You might recognize that reference. If not, then shoot me an email and I’ll tell you about it.

Within a few hours, Paul Carter, Name’s Veep of Operations, sent me this:

“You have my attention :) What does your schedule look like next week to speak?”

We spoke. And now here I am.

Right now I’m feeling a bit small, you know, with the breach and all. But I look forward to big things. Probably even a new pair of pants.

Name.com gets a snazzy new look! Yes it’s true, we have not been hacked and this is not a phishing site, this is the new us! It’s been 8 years of orange, so with this big change we feel refreshed and revived! Clearly we’re pretty excited about it and hope you are too.

So why the change? Why not!? Around here, we pride ourselves on pushing the envelope and staying fresh. We’re certainly not your average registrar, so we’ve updated our look to express that better. We think of our brand as an actual living, breathing thing that will be constantly evolving and changing as we go. We invite you to join the process and share your thoughts, feedback, and ideas at whatsup@name.com, you can also let us know what you think of the new design on Twitter using the hashtag #newname.

In the coming weeks and months you’ll notice more of our pages flipping over to the new design with some added functionality updates as well. As we design our new pages we’re going to count on you guys to give us your feedback. We also have some great products coming your way soon, including an easy and awesome website builder, SEO tool, iPhone app & more.

We’re pretty stoked on opening ourselves up to let our personalities shine through a little more, and we’re really glad to have you guys on board and contributing along the way. Cheers to a better Name!

Spring is almost upon us! Surely the green beer will be flowing toward the end of the month and as we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day we thought we’d share a shortcut to the end of the rainbow:

Use the promo code, ‘SHAMROCKS‘ to receive:

$8.75 COM/NET registration and renewals

We’ve noticed a lot of momentum around .TV so we’re going to continue our special pricing;

$10.99 .TV registrations ($9.99/year when you register for multi-years)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day from the Name.com team! Watch out for those leprechauns! ;)

Oh yeah and be sure to check out our video. I’m sure you’ll quickly see we’re not professionals. We did the best we could in the time we had and we hope you enjoy. While you’re at it, share it with a friend. :)

Help us get more views than the GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial! from Name.com on Vimeo.

The new space has a modern look and feel. It was important to Bill, who is an artist at heart, to be in a space that fosters creativity and aids in the process of ‘making things’ whether that be ideas or products. With our new central location already members of the Name team have decided to leave their cars parked at home and hop on a bike or hit the pavement by foot to get here. Personally, i’m going to wait until the snow melts :)

Check out the pictures below and tell us what you think! Feel free to take the virtual tour as well. WARNING: Video will more than likely make you dizzy (It was my first video and my footage is really shaky. My apologies, I’ll get a better one up soon!) New Office Digs!

Video edited, compliments of Joshua Ciampa from Name.com on Vimeo.

Zach is the latest addition to our development team at Name.com and what an addition he has been. Although he’s not quite as intense as he looks in his photo. ;)

He may be a recent graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder, but Zach already has a number of years experience in systems administration, security, and product engineering. Zach is also a Colorado native (a rare occurance these days) and in addition to building cool stuff on the internet he is quite the musician, as you can see by his website. He’s recently found a way to combine these two passions by building and designing MySpace pages for local bands. Oh, and he also designs album art.

Name.com is a company full of people who wear many hats, so we are very excited to have a Jack of all trades like Zach on board. Please join us in welcoming him to the team!

Hey everyone! We’d like you to meet Ashley, our new Marketing Coordinator here at Name.com. Ashley is an east coaster who went to school in Boulder, CO, then returned to the east coast after some time in Chicago. There she realized that she missed the awesomeness of Colorado and she returned to join in the awesomeness of Name.com.

She’s already been initiated to the team with an appearance on Beer Fridays, a costume contest, and other shenanigans — with her willingness to goof around in front of a camera, she fits right in here. In addition to beer, Ashley enjoys rockin’ out to live music and skiing.

Please join us in welcoming Ashley to the team! \m/