Persistence & Startups go hand in hand.
And, how we purchased wedgies.com from a felon.
On a sweltering 4th of July weekend two years ago, Jimmy and I sat down at my kitchen table and built our first piece of software together. It was a prototype for monitoring realtime social sentiment through Twitter polls. The prototype would be the seed for what would eventually turn into our company, wedgies.com.
We toiled our way through a weekend of working around a kitchen table, while dozens of friends waltzed through our workspace asking us if we wanted to go to different BBQs or go and play outside. We kept passing on their offers and kept our heads down on our new project.
Towards the end of the weekend, we realized we’d have a product that was close enough to done that we could launch it to a small beta community of 200 or so friends. We also came to the understanding that if this product was going to be seen, it would need a name. We hemmed and hawed for a little while, and looked through our GoDaddy accounts for long-lost, already registered domains that might work for this project.
Towards the end of the alphabet we came across one that we’d registered after a long night of drinking in Las Vegas - http://www.wedgi.es . We’d registered it as a joke. A friend had given another friend a drunken wedgie, and we thought it’d be funny to own the a spanish domain descriptive of the highschool prank.
So, we picked the name wedgies for our new product. We didn’t think it would really catch on, so we didn’t put tremendous thought into it. We just went with our gut, and pushed our new web app live along with an email out to our close friends to check it out. Little did we know we were about ready to sign our fate over to the name “wedgies” for years to come.
Right away our friends started making wedgies - read polls - and sharing them to Twitter. And, at the same time, they started lighting us up with compliments on the name. “These wedgies are really fun,” or “hehe, I’ve never really enjoyed taking a survey until now.” Right from the get go we knew we’d lucked into something - the key to great engagement on a survey or poll, is that it must be enjoyable for the participants. If it’s not, than they’ll never want to participate. By giving our product such a light-hearted name, we’d given it a disarmingly fun way into participants minds.
After one weekend of work, and a lot of compliments, Jimmy and I were feeling pretty good. We thought, “Hey, we built something, and people actually like it!”
So we kept working on our project, improving it, learning from people using it, and started finding some customers that would even pay for our services. We were much closer to building a product that we could build a business around, but we still had some clean up to do from our original weekend of hacking.
Namely, our name. Our voters, the poll creators, they all loved our name but they could never share it with your friends. We’d say things like, “We’re wedgi.es, with a period between the I and the E,” or “our domain is wedgies, with no dot com.” It got tiresome after a while, and it was limiting our potential to grow with our name. We knew we had two options, rename our service and company, or figure out how to purchase the .com.
I’d tried to contact the owner of wedgies.com, to no avail, my emails would bounce and all of the contacts numbers I could scrounge up went to disconnected numbers. Even more infuriating, the same landing page had been live on the site since 1996 when he’d purchased it - effectively saying the domain was for sale.
Out of desperation, I emailed the owners web host, and asked him if he’d pass a message along for me. The host said he didn’t have any other information for the owner, but he hadn’t been able to contact him either. The last step for the host was to suspend the owners account and see if he contacted us.
Immediately, I reneged and said I didn’t want anything to do with suspending the account of someone I was trying to purchase a domain from. The host assured me I wasn’t associated and that he’d pass along the owners information if he ended up finding it.
A few short hours later, the host had emailed me the owner’s information with a quick note saying he was interested in selling. I immediately fired up the chat-machine and got Jimmy on the line. Good news, we’re finally going to figure out how to buy wedgies.com.
At the same time I emailed the domain owner, and low and behold he was super responsive. But, right off the bat he threw us a curve ball. His first terms to get the ball rolling - he wanted $500 from us just to continue the discussion of selling the domain.
This set off all sorts of alarms with Jimmy and I. It really seemed like a scam. But, we really needed to buy the domain name too. At the time it seemed like a make or break piece of our puzzel to pursue our startup aspirations.
With some trepidation, we paypal’d $500 bucks to owner, and he said he’d think about selling and getback to us in the morning. That’s it. Ay.
Now that we had the owners email address we could start doing some serious research on the circumstances we’d just put ourselves in. Quickly, through Facebook we found that the owner had a chipin page live. If you don’t know what chipin is, it’s like a low cost Kick Starter for personal issues. The chipin page was for $300 and was the deposit on the ankle tracking bracelet so the owner of our domain wouldn’t skip bail on his felony charges.
Rutroh. What’d we done. I just sent $500 of my hard earned money to someone out on bail, so I could buy a domain that was rooted in highschool pranks! Jesus christ!
After a night of light sleep I got an early morning email from the owner, he’d like me to name a price that I’m willing to buy for. I email him back, looking for a price that he’d sell for.
This goes on for dozens of emails. Finally we settle on $5,500. Which is, and was, a lot of money, but seemed reasonable given the circumstances. Hell, I’d just worked a day job for the last 4 years saving up money so I could do something like this. It seemed like the perfect way to start shredding through my savings.
With the offer agreed upon, the owner than says he’d like to set up an auction for the domain at the same price we’d just agreed upon. If he can get more through the auction he’ll go with that offer, if he can’t he’ll take mine. Effectively he’s going to get his cake and eat it too.
With all of my cards in his hand, I can’t do much but agree. The auction is set at 2 weeks. 2 of the more anxious weeks of my life. I had to go to the desert and go climbing to burn off some steam. When I got back, the auction was 24 hours from completion with no offers.
The owner emails me before the deadline, and says, I’ll shut down the auction if you agree to sell it for $6,000. I immediately agree, and we exchange money in escrow.
After a lot of tribulation, Jimmy and I finally own the name that we’ve been chasing after for the last year. It’s just the brand we need to start chasing our dream of giving the entire world a wedgie.
What’s the moral to this story? The moral is - this is one of hundreds of stories Jimmy and I tell about wedgies, and that’s just it. Every moment that you’re trying to build something new and unique, you’re going to face challenges. If you continue to persist your way through those challenges you just might find your definition of success on the other side.
