Jay Westerdal (born 1978) is a domainer and entrepreneur, best known for his work creating DomainTools.com, a web service that looks up historical ownership of a website. The whois service was integrated into Google's onebox in May 2008. He later sold the company in 2008 for a reported $16â€"$18 million. He is a prominent technology blogger and a frequent speaker at industry events. Jay was quoted in an interview in 2008 that to become a successful domainer, one should "buy domains names from existing owners, monetize them to cover renewal cost, then sell them strategically".
Career
Westerdal started Name Intelligence/DomainTools in 2002 in his parent's garage. In May 2005, Jay started the domain conference "Domain RoundTable". He later sold DomainTools in 2008 to Thought Convergence, Inc. The following year, after being acquired, he left TCI. He later became a limited partner at Founders Coop, a Seattle venture capital firm.
Writing
Westerdal's personal blog covers a wide range of topics, focusing mainly on technology, his mobile lifestyle, and search engine optimization from a personal perspective, in contrast to the DomainTools blog, where he wrote in an official capacity. He contributed to the EPP Protocol RFC 4930.
References
External links
- Official website