Manager Memo podcast · Len Samborowski, MBA Associate Professor, Nichols College

The Domain Broker @ Saw.com

·38 min·2 clips

Jeffrey Gabriel describes a deal where he introduced a seller and buyer, and the founder of GeoCities gave away a domain and joined the board.

Jeffrey Gabriel joins Manager Memo as a world record-breaking domain broker, e-commerce expert, and founder of Saw.com. He starts by explaining the job in plain terms. He says it is like being a realtor for domain names. People come to him when they want to buy a specific name or sell one they already own. The clients can be entrepreneurs, organizations, or major companies. A charter business might want CaptainJim.com. A Fortune 500 company might want a name tied to a new product or service. The conversation then turns to the old economics of domain parking. Jeffrey says portfolios could get enormous because owners were earning from traffic and parked pages. He describes working for someone in the Cayman Islands who owned 365,000 domains. That portfolio, he says, once generated millions of dollars a month in parking revenue. Over time, ad payouts from Google and other companies declined. As the income fell, the owner had to lean on sales to support the portfolio. Jeffrey says the owner asked him to move down and help sell the names. He brought his book of business and built a team of brokers there. At one point, he says, about 50 brokers were selling domains for the company and for customers. The operation handled more than a million domains for sale, which he says grew to roughly 1.2 or 1.3 million. He says GoDaddy eventually bought the business and he moved back to the United States. When tax comes up, he notes that Americans still owe taxes on the money they make from a deal like that. He also answers a question about Network Solutions, saying it is owned by Web.com and that the Web.com golf tour was part of that company's history.

As heard by us

A straightforward domain brokerage story about parking revenue, portfolio scale, and how the business shifted when payouts fell.

The episode treats domain names as assets that can be bought, sold, and parked, and Jeffrey Gabriel explains that world in plain terms. He walks through the broker role with enough clarity to make the business legible, from helping companies and entrepreneurs chase specific…

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Hear how a world record-breaking domain broker helps buyers and sellers treat names like high-stakes assets.

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