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On
the personal side you will learn how adopting a son
who was later diagnosed with autism propelled him from
utter disarray to an unexpected destiny as a champion
of families with special needs children (the Facebook
page for his influential AutismAwareness.com
website has over 250,000 followers).
Even
before that Dunn's life was a roller coaster ride of exhilarating
highs and stomach churning lows - a background that
we've seen before in our profiles of highly successful
people in this business. In an industry that is
constantly changing with new winners and losers minted
every day, that ability to adapt and make the
most of the hand you are dealt may be the
elusive key to success that so many are
seeking. Dunn shows us his cards in this wide
ranging interview and we can all learn a lot from
looking closely at them.
"Yes,
I’m a Newfie," Dunn began with a smile.
"Born in 1972 in St. John’s, Newfoundland,
which is the most eastern part of North America. It
has its own time zone, 90 minutes ahead of EST (yes,
the Newfoundland Standard Time, NST, is real)!"
St.
John's, Newfoundland, Canada (photo from Bigstock)
"I
was an ’80s kid and grew up in an amazing family.
Both my parents were teachers and my brother
(Paul) and I are only 14 months apart. Luckily, Mom
and Dad’s profession allowed us to spend a lot of
time together. In fact, Mom’s school was about 1,000
feet away from my school, and I remember my brother
and I would sneak up to the high school cafeteria
every now and then since the food was so much
better!"
Most
of my younger days were spent playing basketball,
hockey and soccer or listening to Motley Crue, Van
Halen and Poison and, of course, playing Atari
games. I remember spending weeks trying to earn a
badge on River Raid and dropping hundreds of
quarters on Pole Position. Basketball was my
first love, though, and we even went on to win a
couple of basketball championships. (It doesn’t mean
much now but I still have those gold medals!),"
Dunn smiled.
Long before
Alan Dunn (at far right in front row) had his
first "slam dunk" with domains
he was registering minutes on the hardwood for his
school basketball team.
All in
all it was a happy, care free life for Dunn until everything
changed, literally overnight.
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"I will
never forget the events that started on September
26th, 1986, when my father was rushed to
hospital," Dunn said. "Three days
later (almost like he was waiting to see my
brother, who had to be flown in from across
the province, before he passed), my father
died from a heart attack at 50 years
old. A few days later, hundreds of people
showed up for his funeral while I was still in
a world of shock."
"This was a
huge blow to all of us, and the blows just
continued over the next 11 months. In that
time, my Nan and Pop (grandmother and
grandfather), who lived with us, died, as well
as four friends in a plane crash (that I was
supposed to be on), and another friend on a
motorcycle. There are still many people I
remember spending more time with while
attending funerals than ever seeing
outside of them."
"The
next few years were very rough. Losing
a parent is hard—losing half a family and
friends at such a young age is something that shapes
you for life. It’s also something I
would never wish on my worst enemy. To this
day, I still cannot attend a funeral or wake
for others," Dunn said. |
Alan
Dunn with his 88-year-old grandfather. |
"I
was attending the high school my father taught at the
year after he died. On one hand, it was difficult to
have everyone know who I was. On the other hand, the
school and the Sisters were incredibly supportive of
me during my turbulent times coping with the loss.
It wasn’t until years later that I realized
how amazing some of these teachers were and, more
importantly, how strong my Mom was. She retired
early and gave up everything to focus on raising her
boys during the next few years. It’s a move that I
never fully understood the scope of until I became
a parent. They say you will do anything for your
kids, and my mom did.
Alan Dunn's
mom - nicknamed “Nana B”
with his son Alek and Sir Topham Hatt in 2016.
In 1990 it was time for Dunn to pick a college.
"I decided to attend the Memorial University
of Newfoundland, but quickly realized it wasn’t
for me," Dunn recalled. "After two years, I
enrolled at St. Mary’s University in Nova
Scotia, and quickly realized how great University
can be when you live on campus. I was lucky enough to
have a pretty diverse group of people on our dorm
floor, and some of my best friends today were made
during those college years. Then, when winter hit in
1995 (January 3rd, to be exact), I decided to move
south - an advantage of having dual citizenship (I
also gained Irish citizenship in 2002 to make it
three)."
"We
used to visit the west coast of Florida as
kids, however, I opted to move to South Florida
where I only knew one person. Actually, barely knew,
since it was my dad’s sister, who I may have met
once before. Within a couple of weeks, I landed a job
with the NHL's Florida Panthers working
alongside some of hockey’s greatest names, including
Bill Torrey, Chuck Fletcher, Scott
Mellanby, Brian Skrudland, Brian Sutter,
Denis Potvin and more. It was truly a magical
year—the year of the Rat Trick, a term coined
after Scott Mellanby hit a rat in the dressing
room one night before a game and then went on to score
a hat trick!"
Above:
Alan Dunn with Florida Panthers President
Bill Torrey (left).
Below:
Alan with the infamous Hanson Brothers
from the move Slap Shot.
"Our
owner, Wayne Huizenga, also owned the Miami
Dolphins and the Florida Marlins, as well
as Blockbuster Video. It was a pretty surreal
experience when I think back; getting to meet so many
people from all different walks of life; Don King,
The Hanson Brothers, Dwight Gooden, Kelsey
Grammer and more. I even had the World Series
Trophy at my house for a couple of hours in
1997!," Dunn marveled!
Alan
Dunn took the Florida Marlins World Series
Trophy home for a few hours in 1997!
After
two seasons Dunn decided that, as much fun as it had
been, he was ready for a change. So in August 1996 he
moved to Vancouver, Canada - an area that would
later produce some of the world's greatest domain
investors. He didn't stick around long enough to see
that though. After just four months of incessant rain
he decided Florida was home and made his way
back across the continent. Even though he would leave
a future capital of domains behind he would find
another when he returned to South Florida.
"Unlike
the first time around, I knew a lot more people in
Florida now and had started developing a much greater
interest in the internet and domain names," Dunn
recalled, "However, domain investing
wasn’t even on the radar in terms of being a
full-time job, so I explored a few options. Because of
my love of finance, the mortgage industry
attracted me and soon I found myself working for a mortgage
brokerage company. The business was pretty easy -
translate: boring - but what fascinated me was how
much the company was spending on radio ads."
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"I think the
bill was around $60,000 a month and
although the ads worked to get the phone
ringing, I just couldn’t understand why
anyone would pay that much and buy ads on
afternoons and weekends. Later I found out
that this was a creative way for some stations
to offer the premium “morning drive” slots
to preferred advertisers and if you wanted to
play then you simply had to pay. I still was
perplexed why radio was the only medium
they were using. I mean, did that many people
still listen to the radio? I guess they did,
but there had to be something in this “internet”
thing also," Dunn thought.
"At the same
time, I also made my first domain name sale
(BadCredit.org) for around $8,000,
which solidified every feeling I had about the
future of "the internet. I |
Image
from Bigstock |
|
then purchased LoanApplication.net,
created a simple website using HotDog
by Sausage Software, and then a few
weeks later this guy called from Buenos
Aires and we ended up doing a multi-million
dollar mortgage for him in Miami.
As the expression goes, this just got real! |
"I
then started registering/acquiring a lot of
domains focused on the financial industry - like most
investors, I didn’t expand my scope broadly enough
to take advantage of all the deals and unregistered
domains back then! - and quickly amassed a pretty big
portfolio, including MortgageCalculator.net, HomeEquityLines.com,
CreditScores.net, JumboLoan.com, SuperJumbo.com,
LiborLoans.com, LiborIndex.com, HomeBuying.com,
Real-Estate.com and many more. For the next few
years I worked with quite a few banks, including Chase,
Fleet Mortgage and Wells Fargo, as I
developed out the properties and kept buying more
domains," Dunn said.
"I
was also young and in love and had, basically a
plan with no plan, some would say. On December 22,
1999, I married Kristin Antisavage at the
Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables with my
brother, Paul, as my best man."
Alan
Dunn and his best man, his brother Paul, on Alan's
wedding day.
Dunn
said, "Shortly after the wedding we were living
between Florida, New York and Milan
as Kristin studied fashion and worked in the fashion
world. In New York, we lived in Greenwich Village
(7th and Bleecker) and I still remember the morning
smell of Magnolia Bakery just around the corner
and the breakfast at Les Deux Gamins (it’s
now closed)."
"Everything
changed again once I acquired InterestOnlyLoans.com
somewhere around 2001. Although I was doing some lead
gen through various sites, nothing had the
same impact as this domain."
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"Within
days of launching the website we ranked in the
Top 3 for interest-only loans and the
quality of leads became amazing. NFL
players, C-level executives of Fortune 500
companies, all kinds of bond traders from New
York and more. My network was well-developed
at this stage, with a focus on higher-end
mortgages through properties like JumboLoan.com
and SuperJumbo.com. I remember talking to a VP
from AOL who was a client and he just
laughed when he realized 70% of the
first page results for almost anything related
to jumbo and super jumbo loans led back to
us."
"It
also helped that I was one of the first 100 Google
Adwords specialists and understood how to
leverage AdWords arbitrage well before the
quality score came out. Someone asked me one
time for advice on online marketing. My
response was, “First, you have to lose
LOTS of money to learn what NOT to
do.” I’ve paid those dues," Dunn
said.
|
Image
from Bigstock |
"It’s
important to note that was this before interest-only
loans became a popular thing. Our success was due to
not just our SEO and PPC coverage, but
also because almost no main lenders offered these publicly.
It was primarily Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and
Merrill Lynch (from what I remember) who had much
of any public “interest-only” product offerings
that were easy to access. So, we ended up (for the
most part) with the spill from private wealth clients
who were looking for more information on these types
of loans. We also had a long list of wholesale lenders
who offered them, so as long as the profile was good,
we were certainly able to accommodate most qualified
people."
Early
in his career Dunn (2nd from left after Frank
Schilling) combined the best of both worlds -
domain investing and domain developing. It was no
surprise in 2012 when he won T.R.A.F.F.I.C.'s
Developer of the Year Award (presented by Rick
Schwartz and Howard Neu). Two years later he was also
nominated for the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Hall of Fame).
"For a while, our business was consistent and
predictable, then all of a sudden the tidal wave
hit. It seemed like America had turned on the
switch for “interest-only loans” and everyone was
applying. It was a really strange shift since these
loans were (in my opinion) initially set up to provide
high wealth clients with a preferred option to invest
in real estate. The strong loans consisted of 5, 7 and
10-year fixed rates with interest-only payments. Then
someone, somewhere, got the idea to create a wealth of
products with teaser rates," Dunn said.
"Very
few people could foresee the mess the industry would
become, but for the moment servicing all the loan
requests was our big issue. Our leads went from
primarily triple A clients to almost everybody. I
found a solution pretty quickly for the triple A
clients by partnering up with a branch of RBC
Mortgage in Boca Raton; for smaller loans
and second-tier applicants, we partnered with a few
companies and simply sold the leads."
"I
had 12 or 15 people who worked the “Dunn Leads,”
which resulted in more than $200 million a year
in closed mortgages from all over the country. To put
it in perspective, in 2004 our network had:
-
6,000,000+
unique visitors
-
$13
Billion+ in loan requests
-
25,000+ leads
-
An
average lead/mortgage request of $420,208
One
of our sites had a single page for commercial loans. I
still remember the day when Alicia at C-loans
called to say we made $21,500 from a visitor
who converted into a closed application - simply from
a referral
link!," Dunn said.
"This
was also where I met some of the greatest people I
know and saw the importance of work culture for the
first time under the leadership of a great company
founder, Alan Reichstein. Even years later,
some of the many friendships formed at RBC have
continued into the domain name space."
"Everything
was working great and I spent a lot of time the next
couple of years traveling with Kristin and some of my
closest friends. From Santorini to Cuba
to Peru to Vegas to the Bahamas
to Malta we used to fly half-way across the
world for a few days of fun, at a time when many of us
could. Some of my best memories were 36 hours overseas
and the best thing is most of us were all friends from
high school or before."
Above: Friends
Walter, Russ, Robbie, Dante with Alan (4th from
left) on a visit to Atlantis circa 2007.
Below:
Alan Dunn and brother Paul in Berlin circa 2008.
"Then everything changed again when the
mortgage industry imploded," Dunn said.
"This not only affected everyone financially, but
also became a challenge. We had been in the middle of
raising some venture capital and, well, the brakes
were put on that pretty fast. We were fortunate to
have some properties acquired by QuinStreet,
ZipRealty and others, but there was still a big
question of where to find liquidity in the domain
space."
"It
was a question that intrigued me since so many domain
auctions happened every day, but there were so
many critical flaws in the industry that (in my
opinion) still greatly affect the market today.
Different platforms have different audiences,
different auction houses have different exclusive
feeds, different venues have different levels of
access (some private, some invite, some closed). It
became a mission of mine to understand how to sell at SnapNames
and NameJet, rather than relying on the
arbitrary acceptance and rare opportunities of live
auctions. The real volume happens every day on GoDaddy,
NameJet and SnapNames," Dunn said.
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"As luck
would have it, SnapNames had just opened a private
seller program, and within a few weeks we
listed a large set of names. My theory was
right—domain name investors would almost
always pay more in an auction than in a
private sale. In fact, I ended up learning the
nuances of offering |
|
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friends domains
for sale and having them say “no,” only to
see them buy the domains in auction a month
later! Eventually, I gave up even asking and
let automation take its course." |
"I
then explored other venues and took a data approach to
selling—analyzing every day what was closing, what
similar names were being sold to bulk buyers, and
more. The findings were pretty crazy. There were
people spending tens of thousands of dollars monthly
on aftermarket names but who, for some reason, had never
hand-registered similar domains. It sounded too
good to be true, but I tried this and from Day One it
was an instant success. Once I found a pattern
I would then register similar domains, upload them to
SnapNames and, within a couple of days, a significant
percentage of those domains would sell. Liquidity
wasn’t only available, it was available in
bulk,"
Dunn said.
"In
fact, I remember one night when I hand-registered
about 20 domain names, uploaded them to SnapNames with
“buy it now” prices ranging from $888 –
$4,588, and then drove to Tampa in the
morning. By the time I checked in later that
afternoon, I had sold $26,000 just from
spending around $200 the night before. This
went on for a while and for the next three years I was
were the No. 1 private seller on
SnapNames—simply by analyzing public data, price
points and trends. It’s something a few people
eventually caught on to and repeated: I won’t
mention their names, but they certainly got their
start (or a really big kickstart) by doing the exact
same thing."
"However,
all good things come to an end," Dunn
noted. Parking revenue dropped and many of the bigger
buyers in the auction markets slowed down (or
disappeared). Furthermore, SnapNames introduced a
change in their search filters that allowed buyers to
“uncheck” private owner domains. It was a change I
constantly railed against as wrong, but with no luck.
Even today you will see many auction providers use
other terms such as “pre-release” to incorporate
private owners, expiring domains and more. Good
domains are good domains, after all, but that’s
another story."
"In
2011 I was approached to join Domain
Holdings. It was a good time for me to
work with a company since it was just after our
divorce and personally I wanted to get out of the
house more. It also helped that some of the
industry’s greatest people like Chad Folkening,
Monte Cahn and others were involved. The move
felt natural, especially being surrounded by people
who actually understood domain names!," Dunn
said.
Part
of the Domain Holdings team at the 2012
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Florida (left to
right): Joe Uddeme, Co-Founder John Ferber,
Alan Dunn and Co-Founder Chad Folkening.
"Over
the next few years working with Domain Holdings turned
out to be much more fun than I expected. The
company become also like family to me as we managed to
grow from around $8 million to $40 million
annually in sales. We also introduced more
transparency to the industry with our quarterly sales
report and were able to build a team of some of the
greatest people in this industry including Mark
Daniel, Giuseppe Graziano, Tracy Fogarty
and more. These years also re-inforced how important culture
is in today’s workplace and in 2015 I decided it was
time to move on."
"Outside
of work, in 2007 Kristin and I started exploring the
idea of adoption. After some investigation, we
found a great team of people to help us through the
process and quickly decided to adopt from Russia.
It was a long (and sometimes heartbreaking) process,
but in 2009 we finally met and adopted a boy who would
change our lives forever."
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"Words
cannot describe the feelings associated with a
successful adoption. We were now parents
and fully responsible for this amazing little
person, seemingly overnight. Over the next few
months, however, a new, previously unknown
challenge arose and we found out Aleksander
had autism. Truth be told, it was rough
for a while. Neither of us had special needs
in our family, nor did we have any family
support in Florida. To say it was a
challenging first year for me would be an
understatement. Alek was almost 5 years old
and couldn’t speak (English or Russian), had
constant physical meltdowns and I didn’t
know what to do. I’m not ashamed to say I
dropped the ball at times as a spouse and was
in denial for a while. I wasn’t prepared for
this and honestly had no idea how to handle
Autism (on top of financial stress still
existing from the mortgage industry meltdown
and other things)," Dunn recalled
ruefully. |
Image
from Bigstock |
"Even
when asking for help you realize how many
“professionals” there are just to take your money
and how the world of autism is still a puzzle
with no clear definition even today. At the beginning,
it felt like I was constantly looking for guidance and
information, but nobody had built the road
yet—although they certainly had built a lot of toll
booths. Feeling lost and defeated is an
understatement."
"Two
things happened that really provided me light on how
to embrace these new challenges in our life. The first
was a quote I heard by Dr.
Stephen Shore: “If you’ve met one
person with autism, you’ve met one person with
autism.” These words helped put everything in
perspective pertaining to the parenting challenges I
had in front of me."
"The
second was a trip to Nashville, when I saw this
picture and completely lost it looking at the
unconditional love in my son’s eyes."
Alan
and son Aleksander at ICE at The Gaylord Hotel in
Nashville 2009 - a visit about which Alan wanted
to send this message, "Thank you to Brian and
Charlie for inviting us, this trip meant more to me
than you will ever know!"
"I “really” saw my son for the
first time that day and have never looked
back," Dunn said. "He is my best friend and
my world, and I will battle for him every day no
matter what the cost. This picture is also my daily
reminder of why it’s so important to help other
parents who may feel lost and need help (no matter
how small) understanding, appreciating, coping and
rising to the challenges of life. I know it sounds
corny, but every day I want to change the world a
little."
"In
2011, Alek’s mom and I realized that we were better
friends than spouses and talked about the next move.
We both knew the first priority had to be Alek
and, after many conversations, we realized Florida
wasn’t the best place for us to raise a child with
autism. With a large network of family support located
in Pennsylvania (and vast special needs
resources), Alek and his mom moved there and for the
last six years I have commuted between Florida and
Pennsylvania, determined to never miss a single moment
of school, birthdays or holidays."
"Alek
is also somewhat of a local legend at Fort
Lauderdale Airport. For the first four years
(while I worked at Domain Holdings), every second
Friday I used to fly to Philly, pick Alek up at
school, and fly him back to Florida. Then on Sunday
night, I’d fly him back to Philly and then fly back
to Florida. Six plane tickets every two weeks.
Thankfully, he loves flying and American Airlines
has been nothing short of spectacular for him—with
pilots always making time to show him the cockpit and
flight attendants sneaking him extra chocolate chip
cookies when Dad isn’t looking! Today I split my
time between Newtown Square and Delray Beach,
with a residence just a few minutes away from his mom.
We also try to sneak trips to St. Martin and
D.C. in every year—Alek’s favorite
places!"
Top
photo: Alek in the cockpit of an American Airlines
jet. Below left: In St. Martin
Below right: Alek and Alan in Washington D.C.
"We
are extremely lucky that Alek is higher functioning,
but my eyes were now opened to the challenges of
special needs (for parents, families and children). In
2012, I launched AutismAwareness.com.
Initially, it was more for self-therapy, but it has
since blossomed into something pretty incredible, with
a community of over 250,000 people on Facebook.
That’s almost the size of Orlando!,"
Dunn exclaimed.
"We
expect to hit 600,000 by next summer and just
acquired the domain name A.org for a non-profit
to be announced later this year. Out of everything
(besides being Dad to our incredible son), this is the
most rewarding thing I have ever done. We not
only help create awareness, but also provide a
platform for other parents to share and discuss their
life stories. Just a few weeks ago, The Huffington
Post used one of our articles; another article
was shared over 500,000 times. Then we had a
parent who just received their child’s autism
diagnosis earlier that day comment on a story how she
felt alone. So many parents commented to reassure her
that everything would be fine, and offered her their
support and strength from far away. I cannot express
in words how important this is to me, and how thankful
I am for so many people in the domain name community
who pushed and helped make this happen. I have to also
thank Carolina and Rachel – two people I
probably couldn’t survive without - they know who
they are!" Dunn said.
|
"Of
course, non-profits do not typically result in
profit, so after leaving Domain Holdings in
2015, I started NameCorp,
a company focused on domain name management
and acquisitions for brands. We have a
pretty extensive client list and focus more on
corporate projects (such as valuations, domain
name management and acquisitions)." |
|
"I’ve
also gotten back into writing, contributing to sites
like Business Insider, TechCrunch
and other popular destinations. Our industry is
amazing, but it’s also an industry where there is
way too much noise and the great stories sometimes
never get told. For example, I thought the story
I published on TechCrunch about .ME now
accounting for 2% of all exports for Montenegro
was a great story. More generic stories about how the next new
gTLD can change the world… maybe not such a
great story," Dunn opined.
"So
far it’s been a phenomenal ride in the domain
name industry, and I believe there is a lot more to
look forward to. We are an industry that essentially
provides the digital foundation for brands, so unless
the internet and human behavior change, I’m pretty
sure it’s only going to get better every day."
"Of
course, you need to understand the difference between making
a buck and building a career. The explosion
of the China market in the last few years has
much in common with other rapidly rising markets. A
wealth of “experts” arrive and then, eventually,
when the quick money is gone, so are they. It’s a
natural evolution of markets, so the trick is to
understand that and look for people who have value,
provide logic and can show you a track record of
success. I can’t express enough how many people want
to tell you “how to sell” or “what to buy” in
this industry while barely ever having sold a domain
themselves. Due diligence is important no
matter what industry you’re in, and even more so in
unregulated markets like domain name sales."
"The
good news is every day I hear people say, “all the
good names are gone” or “I wish I was here 10
years ago.” The irony behind all of this is that
probably half the industry started less than 10 years
ago, so while you keep wishing, more people
will likely pass you by."
In
closing Alan said, "My only recommendations are
to always remember two quotes:
“Family
first.” and “Never wrestle with a pig. You
both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
…also,
always
laugh like no one is watching!"
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