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Neil
Bostick
Founder, Graen.com |
Bostick
told us, "I’ve
been a buyer, seller, & broker in the domain market since 2014 and
I’ve done millions in deals since then. Since the beginning, my
focus has always been on private deals (not disclosing prices) as
I work extensively in the high value investor space (where
confidentiality makes or breaks investments). A lot of my business has
been selling super premium domains to top investors reselling
2-letter, 3-letter, & 1-word .COMs to end users, so by
differentiating through private deals I’ve kept a low profile in
the interest of the buyers & sellers I work with. Graen.com
was formed as a higher technology alternative to what I do at my
brokerage, QEIP.com, that
specialize in the same types of domains that Graen.com does - 3-letter
.COMs and better. For more background on my brokerage business, see qeip.com/testimonials
for a small list of past clients and deals I’ve executed."
That's
the high altitude overview of where Bostick and Graen are coming from,
but the nuts and bolts of how the new platform can stand out among so
many well established options is |
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where
the rubber will meet the road. "I
agree," Bostick said, adding ,"there are way too many domain
marketplaces currently, so it’s valid to ask me ‘Why in the heck
would I start another one?!’ My answer is that out of the
50-100 marketplaces that exist, none of them do the single thing that
I (and most other high value domain investors), want them to do: be
private & not disclose sale or offer prices. In this, most
marketplaces and brokers disclose offer prices and make sales public
(for their own marketing value) and it is often at the detriment of
the buyers and sellers that trust them to represent them. In this, if
you are a seller offering a 3 letter .COM domain for a good deal on a
marketplace, broker, etcetera, and it doesn’t end up selling, the
offer price is still public and is liable to used against the seller
when a future buyer comes along." |
As
an example, Bostick said, "A
future buyer may say that you had ???.com priced at 50k two years ago,
so I can only offer 40k now, even though your price is 100k (and the buyer
might have paid that 100k if they didn’t know about the previous
sale). Beyond that, as a buyer who is making a big investment, if you buy a 3
letter .COM or better and the sale is public AND you try to resell in the near
future, all future buyers will use that sale price as a gauge to it’s value
(irrespective to what the domain’s true investor value is) so your
investment potential would be massively limited."
"So privacy is the first thing we changed," Bostick continued,
"but beyond that, we just tried to develop the perfect platform in
general specifically designed for high value domains. In this, we have buyer
exclusivity (no seller exclusivity), buyers need to accredit themselves
(via identity or fund verification) to unlock more than 5 listings, and we do
everything on the platform (appraisals, seller vetting, buyer sourcing, &
escrow) so that we can do deals faster than anyone else. We’ve closed
a couple deals safely in the 5/6 figure range within 24 hours (from offer
accepted to seller paid) using these methods - out of the 50-100 marketplaces
that are out there, not many can claim to be able to do such big deals so
quickly (or offers such full service for the fees we’re charging)."
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Asked
for more details on how Graen's buyer exclusivity (rather than seller
exclusivity) policy works, Neil said, "If
a buyer uncovers a domain, they sign an NDA and agree to not
share any details about the offering (or try to go around the
platform) for fear of legal action. We just ask that if the seller
lists their domain on other marketplaces (or with other brokers), that
they price their domain better than it’s listed with anyone else -
because of our low commission and private placement, most sellers are
able to. If we find a domain on our site with a price listed lower
somewhere else, we will likely take it down until pricing is changed. Exclusivity
is important as it maintains a place where buyers and sellers
take |
Image
from Bigstock |
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the
platform seriously - we just switched the model in being the first
platform to make buyer exclusivity a main differentiator. As
it is a huge ‘sellers market’ in domains right now, to be a
marketplace that is competing, you need to put your sellers first
and foremost. That is exactly what we are doing and why we have
almost 500 users on the platform already, within one month of
launch." |
As
we noted at the top of this article, Graen is not designed for everyone. Bostic
said, "To be clear, our
superior marketplace experience for high value domains comes at a cost for
other users - it is not a good match (or very helpful) for people selling
quality domains right now (and is especially not good for people trying to
list a lot of domains at once). That said, in the near future, we will be
offering new premium services for the everyday domain investors including
exclusive landing pages with broker representation for only 3-9% success fees
with no caps on prices or quantity of domains listed."
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Image
from Bigstock |
"We
are not a marketplace with brokerage options, we are a curated
marketplace (or application-only marketplace). This is a core
part of our strategy that differentiates us as it allows us to
maintain quality on our marketplace like no one else can. Another
problem with almost all marketplaces as a buyer (and as a seller) is
that they have too many bad quality domains. The effects of this
are that buyers don’t spend the time finding serious deals on there
and sellers won’t list good deals because they know that chances of
buyer coming through the cracks is low. Since we limit the amount of
listings, we can automatically get more serious user exposure to
each individual listing. Beyond that, since I still have my
connections and network as a broker, I see all domains listed and work
to get them sold outside of the platform (based on who I know is
buying). Through this model, we can maintain a sell-through rate light
years higher than any other domain marketplace will be able to,"
Bostick said. |
Though
Graen has just launched, today's Graen is unlikely to be the final iteration.
"Since launching a month
or so ago, we’ve changed the platform a lot based on buyer & seller
feedback," Bostick noted. "For example, we previously didn’t give
any ‘freebie’ investor passes (the things that allow you to uncover
listings), and we now we give 5. We also now have implemented new value
attributes (including comparable sales on each listing) and we have
implemented an affiliate program to incentivize users to band together
as a community and mutually benefit from referrals. We are still taking
feedback as one of my main assets is our full time development team that
includes our CTO and two full time coders - so if anyone has any suggestions
for the platform, if it fits our model recommend it and you may be able to
see it live within a week!"
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