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Andrew
has been hitting home runs for over 25 years now.
In fact, he was featured in a 2005
DNJournal.com Cover Story about the
success he and his two partners at the time were
having. Their sales included Beer.com at $7
million, InsuranceQuotes.com at $6.5
million, Diamond.com at $6 million, Shop.com
at $3.5 million, CreditCards.com at $3.5
million and Telephone.com at $2 million
in cash + equity! There were many more blockbusters
completed under non disclosure agreements. All told,
Miller has been involved in over $600 million
worth of domain sales in his career.
Like
everyone else, I've been impressed by what Andrew has
accomplished and as a journalist I was also interested
in knowing what went into making it happen.
At one point we all start out as kids with a blank
slate just waiting to fill it in. Over the formative
years that follow, a wide variety of people, events
and influences play a role in how our story turns out.
The end result always gets the most attention but if
you want to see the full picture, you have to
start at the beginning.
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Miller grew up in
a professional family in the Boston
suburb of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
His father, Alan, was a successful
attorney with his own firm, so the family had
all of the material things they needed. Even
so, they would have gladly given those
comforts away if it
could have saved two of the tight knit
family members from a medical tragedy that
persisted across several decades and resulted
in losing them far too soon.
Andrew's two
younger brothers, Greg and Scott,
were stricken with the rare illness
Glycogen
Storage Disease (GSD) before
reaching kindergarten. They were among the
first children ever diagnosed with the disease
and were pioneers in developing treatments,
resulting in global news coverage of their
case and extensive studies at the Harvard
Medical School. Greg
died from cancer related to his GSD battle
in 2002, not long after his 30th birthday. Scott
passed
six years later from the same fight. |
Front
page story from The Boston Globe (December 24,1971) |
Having lived through the biggest challenge of
their collective lives, Andrew is proud
of how resolutely his parents did everything
in their power to make sure all of their kids had as
normal a life as possible. "Growing up, despite years of stress of
having such sick siblings, my parents did an amazing
job, still paying tons of attention to me,"
Andrew recalled. "My dad never
missed my games, drove me to school (private school 30
minutes away), often going out of his way to work, and
they were always present for me too. I was involved in
taking
care of my brothers when I got into high school and
looking after them in my college years.
It taught me a lot about the importance of
accountability, something that has played well into my
business career. Losing a brother is hard but losing
children is unspeakable and I admire how much
perseverance my parents have had."
Above:
Brothers Gregory Miller, Andrew Miller and Scott
Miller on a good day in Wellesley.
Andrew
noted, "My dad is 88 and
still plays golf! We play once a week and I believe it
has been an important bonding activity for both of us
since my brothers passed. I will not miss a week, no
matter how busy I am."
The
old adage, "like father, like son"
could have been written about Alan and Andrew. Mirroring the devotion he received from
his father, Andrew now makes his own kids, son
Bret and daughter Brooke, his
top priority. He told us, "My kids
are everything to me (although they are no longer
kids!) and
growing up, I coached both of them in two sports, and
never missed any event or marquee moment, a luxury and
one of the pros of being a domain investor, entrepreneur and working for
oneself. I cherish every day, every event, every phone
call, even as they are now college age and graduating.
My son had some health challenges for about a year in
high school - nothing like my brothers but still
unsettling, and like my parents, my wife and I were
ALL in until he was fine, which thankfully he is now."
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Andrew and
his favorite golf partner, father Alan,
in the gallery during a round of the U.S.
Open. |
Above:
A shot from the February 2, 2015 Super Bowl game in
Phoenix where the Miller family's beloved
New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks
28-24. The victory was sealed by a last second
goal line interception by Malcolm Butler that prevented
Seattle from scoring a winning touchdown. This shot
was taken immediately after that historic play. Left
to right are Andrew's son Bret, father Alan and
Andrew.
Miller
obviously has his priorities in order, making it all
the more remarkable that he has had time to
engineer so many historic domain transactions. Andrew
learned to manage the clock well early on while
juggling school work, helping care for his brothers
and planting the seeds of what would become an extraordinary
entrepreneurial career. The latter started when he
began making some money of his own by running
carnivals and pony rides and selling stamps and
baseball cards. However, the thing that would
propel him into the business world's stratosphere was intense
but invaluable training he
received when we went to Wall Street after
graduating from Cornell University.
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"I
was accepted into Drexel Burnham and Michael
Milken’s training program, an 18-month real world wake up
call, right after college. It was an
exciting time on Wall Street, and a different time. Some
of what you see in the movies like Wall Street was
reality. It was hardcore and from that, I |
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Andrew
Miller speaking at the 2005
TRAFFIC conference in Delray Beach, Florida. |
learned
discipline, important sales skills, and
how to network. It was an incredible learning
experience in
my 20’s and to start a career, and it provided the
structure and foundation that I have been applying
ever since," Andrew said.
"I maintained many
relationships, from
becoming a speaker on the Internet and domains at
Milken Global Conference, arguably the most
prestigious business gathering in the U.S., to
supporting the Prostate Cancer Foundation, by
traveling to multiple baseball stadiums with Mike
Milken and the late Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Tommy
Lasorda, on Mike’s plane,
for his PCF Home Run Challenge. Ironically, I also
helped Milken acquire the PCF.org domain name for the
foundation! Some of my closest friends remain from
those investment industry days; Mike "Zappy"
Zapolin, who was my
original partner when I ventured into domain names
(we were co- Keynote speakers at Rick Schwartz’s
second ever T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
conference in 2005), to my buddy David
Lazowski, whose company Fairway, acquired
Home.com from me in 2022. Ironically,
I am now overseeing the sale of the
WallStreet.com domain name asset as well!" |
Armed
with that training, Miller embarked on an
entrepreneurial career that would lead him to
domains and that request to speak at
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. " My
first kick at the start up can after I left Wall
Street was a cutting-edge television production and
live event company and that was a blast. We produced
programs in partnership with major brands, NFL
Teams,
the PGA, Diana Ross, Itzhak Perlman, the
Grateful Dead, and even put on the first ever major cybercast
of a concert, the Allman Brothers Band from the
Beacon
Theatre in NYC, with AOL and Microsoft as partners.
Wild times. It is also where I first discovered the
Internet and domain names."
"With
respect to domain names, there were 3 Eureka!
moments," Miller continued. "The first was Beer.com, our first domain
name, which we acquired and flipped for millions of
dollars four months after buying it, followed quickly by
Diamond.com and the same result. The second was one
week after we acquired CreditCards.com, and one of our
team members came to me to say we had made $12,000 in
commissions in the first week from type in traffic
and affiliate banners. This led to building successful
financial lead gen companies with both CreditCards.com
and a few years later, InsuranceQuotes.com. The third,
most recent and most important in many ways, was in
2021 when I had my 2nd ever, eight- figure domain name
sale, as an advisor, and of course the resulting
benefits from that result. I remember saying to my
wife,” this may never happen again”, and then four
weeks later, I had another, followed by three more from 2022 to
here in 2024."
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Andrew
Miller getting ready to rock in his first
entrepreneurial enterprise with MarkeTVison |
"26 years
later and Eureka! is still happening with this
unparalleled asset class," Miller marveled.
"Back when I was a Senior at
Cornell, I was trying to figure out what the heck I
wanted to do for a job after college, and I met with a
close family friend, who is a multi-time New York
Times best-selling author and known as the
“stockbroker to the stars”. He said to me, “the
reason I love this business and you will too, is that
every single day when you come into work, it is a
different day. On any given day, something monumental
may happen, good or bad. The markets and stocks are
never the same day to day”. That is why I
applied to the Wall Street training program, and it
still resonates with me at the highest level. Every
day with domain names is a new and different day. I
have woken up to emails with seven figure offers for a
domain that I owned or was advising on for years. That
one morning, which can be any morning, was different
and every hour and day in domains that possibility
exists, and it is awesome!" Andrew
declared.
Unlike most of his contemporaries in those early days
who focused on the easy money that domain monetization was
providing, Miller was laser focused on acquiring and
developing maximum value from these assets. He has
worked tirelessly ever since, sharing his vision with corporate leaders and convincing them to
make sizeable investments in domains. We had
to ask how he won over so many that had not previously understood their
value?
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"You are asking for
the secret sauce!," Andrew
laughed. "First,
I have been posting something on LinkedIn every Sunday
for 107 straight weeks now, called Random Thoughts, and it is read by
over 5,000 people a week.
In that, I try to share war stories and real-life case
studies and pointers on the most valuable domain
transactions. I am going to try to answer this
question from a macro perspective. It is my strong
belief that every one word .com domain name, most
likely has 1, if lucky 2, and if a perfect storm, 3 |
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people or companies that will acquire it in each
window of time, which I define as day 1 to 4 years.
Why? A company needs to know exactly why they want the
domain and what they will do with it (regardless of
whether that plan later succeeds or not); the timing
needs to align so that is the right time for THEM,
regardless of the right time for the domain owner who
is selling the domain; and they need to care enough or
believe in its value enough to pay the asking price or
enter into a zone of a potential agreement, which is
something I also refer to often." |
"I would say that my
many war stories either involve decision makers who
did not understand the strategic importance of owning
a domain but to be fair, sometimes it is not black and
white and other times it is and it’s the ones where
it is that fall into the “leaders who don’t get
it” category," Miller noted. "I spend so much time trying to inform,
and even educate investors, Boards, and management
when it is one of those scenarios. As far as those
that I have “won over”, I never would attribute
that to just me but to them equally. Some leaders get
it from day one and those deals become negotiations
more than sales efforts. Others come around and when
they do it is exhilarating. Sometimes, a buyer will
come around because the concept of owning a domain
made sense, but the timing was not right for countless
reasons. I would say that many of my most successful
deals fall into one of those two categories. My most
rewarding “turn around” was with Home.com, a story
I shared on both the Namescon stage in 2023 and on my
Random Thoughts Podcast Episode 1, both times with
David Lazowski, who was instrumental in Fairway’s
acquisition of the Home.com asset.
Above:
Andrew Miller
(Hilco Digital Assets), at left, and Larry Fischer (GetYourDomain.com),
sharing the never before told story of their 2021 sale
of Home.com with an SRO audience at the 2023
NamesCon Global conference in Austin,
Texas.
A
lot of water has gone under the bridge since we first
introduced DNJournal readers to Andrew in 2005, so we
asked him to reflect on the nearly two decades that
have passed since then. Andrew began by noting, "I have been a
serial entrepreneur for many of those years, with
both wins
and losses. The wins were fantastic and successes big,
and the ones that did not work out are always hard.
Startups are hard and most fail. That is just the
facts. I have learned that from both my own career as
a founder and as an investor, where even the most
promising, well-funded, top VC backed ventures can go
the wrong way. I would not trade those years and the
wins and the tougher times for anything though. One
constant has been domain names. I have been very
fortunate to have mostly success with regards to name
investments and overseeing and advising on
acquisitions and sales. I continue to believe that
domain names represent
one of the best performing
standalone asset classes and am privileged to have
built a 26-year track record as an expert and leader
in this category."
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Andrew
added, "After doing this on my own for
so many years, I joined forces with Hilco Global in
2022 to build a digital assets advisory and investment
business together, with a primary focus on the most
valuable premium domain names. It was the first time
in a few years that I both built a team and was part
of a very senior one, and it reminded me how much
enjoyment and more success comes from collaboration |
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with smart people. Hilco is a
powerhouse across many
asset classes and the combination of my network and skill
set with the Hilco team, relationships, and capital is
phenomenal. The partnership with Hilco is almost two years old and has been a fantastic decision. We have
already built a strong company within Hilco and have
major momentum." |
"On the
life front, just as many
startups fail, I have come to see many marriages do as
well. Marriage is hard work just like building a
business and I feel lucky to have an amazing life
partner. My kids are grown up and with that, life and
responsibilities evolve, and all the hard work in
business is rewarding but there is nothing more
important to me than the responsibility of being a
parent. On a lighter note, when you last wrote about
me, my Patriots had only won 3 Super Bowls, and since
then, I have had the luxury of experiencing many more,
with 3 more wins, and watching one of the greatest
sports dynasties of all time unfold up close and in
person!"
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Image from
Bigstock |
After
reminiscing about the past 20 years, we asked Andrew to switch gears
and give us his take on what is happening in
the domain business now. As
of this writing, AI is all the rage, so much
so that
it has made an obscure ccTLD, .ai, a hot
commodity. We wanted to know what he thought the artificial intelligence boom means
for domains, as well as in the broader context of a
company’s operations and building of their brand.
His predictions from 20 years have held up
well, so we asked him to peer into the crystal
ball once again.
"There
has been a lot of buzz on .AI domain names recently
and for the past several months, I have emails from |
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many asking my opinion on .ai domains," Andrew
noted. " In full
disclosure, I have been one of the most outspoken
experts that devalue non .com TLDs going back 25
years. At least I am consistent. I have friends making
good money on .ai right now, and I have end user
clients who have made large, longer-term investments
in a handful. My thoughts are in line with what they
have always been; that any TLD that is not .com (or
.org) surfaces due to something happening in the
broader environment around it. I have seen it with so
many and often sarcastically refer to them as the
"TLD du jour". Historically, I have been
much more right than wrong. There is no doubt that AI
will have a transformative impact on business and
life, one maybe only rivaled by the Internet itself
and the Iphone. That undoubtedly will lead to a bubble
in AI investments, as everyone rushes to get in and
VC's follow others, as they have the most FOMO of all." |
"There WILL be .AI success stories, whether they are
from start ups or established companies. With that
said, one benefit of having been involved with domains
and the Internet since the 1990's is I have seen it
all. If you want to invest in AI domains, do so, hey
I
may too selectively, but do not lose sight of the
likelihood that they are not necessarily tied to the
importance of AI as a platform and they too, like 100%
of those TLDs before them, will be grossly
devalued in time and likely sooner than later. In the
words of Bob Dylan, "don't say I didn't warn you
when your train gets lost," Andrew smiled.
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"As far
as the future of domains, and specifically one word
category defining or exact match domain names, I
continue to believe that they are a better investment
than any other asset |
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Image from
Bigstock |
class, and
especially when that
investor is a successful company that can leverage the
asset into its business. Over the years, there have
been many alleged " ends" to domain names, or to
.com
dominance and they all have been proven wrong. The
most valuable .com domains have stood the test of
time, and the extension has become embedded into
culture and society in a way that would take a very
long time and something that I do not see yet,
including AI, to overtake it. With that said, it is
important to always be three steps ahead in case
anything changes but I do not see that in the near
future or in my remaining window of times in this
business," Miller said.
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You've
probably all heard the old adage - "all work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy." So, we also wanted to know Miller loves to do
as a
break from the business world. "I love
sports, and I love to take chances," Miller
said. "I have been an
avid bettor since I was 18 and now, it is legal and
accessible in our back pocket all day every day. I
have had some success playing daily fantasy sports on
DraftKings, having won several high dollar tournaments
over the years. It is a passion that I do not see
becoming less interesting to me, at least until I win
the elusive “Millionaire Maker” contest, which is
$1 million to first place. I do it relatively responsibly.
However, I see the amount of betting being done by
college students and society in general, and I am
certain that this will lead to a serious set of issues
and challenges down the road. It took decades to make
sports betting legal in more than half the states, but
I believe there will be a strong push to revisit these
laws, and amend them, or in some cases even retract
them, as these issues become more prevalent. I am
certain there will be change but my guess is sports
betting is here to stay."
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Another Miller
passion is kind of a combination of
work and play as it involves some strenuous
exercise. That is Soulcycle.
"I am closing in on my 750th
ride," Andrew said. "I began
riding at Soul in 2016 when it was apparent
that I needed to find a workout that I
loved, to take the place of Squash, which
I had played competitively for so long. I had
torn my calf twice and slipped my L5/S1 disc
and it was time. Soul immediately became a
place to sweat like crazy for 45 minutes
or more, get lost in amazing music, no phone,
and the best instructors and people in the
world. It always sounded corny to me before
but the community and friends in that room on
bikes that go nowhere is about as
special as it gets. No matter what you are
clearing your mind from, no matter if its good
times or hard times, which in a room of 56
people, everyone is experiencing something, it
is a place to get my shit together!" |
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Last
but far from least, there is that obsession Andrew has with The
Grateful Dead. If you went back and read
our 2005 Cover Story you saw that the first
two words in the headline, referring to him
and his then partners, were "Dead
Heads." Turns out some things never
change, "Oh for sure!" Andrew
declared. "I am a 103+ Grateful
Dead show guy and as many deadheads do,
guide a lot of my business and life
philosophy based off of the lyrics and
spirit of the music. In March 2023, I oversaw
the epic sale of Chat.com, one of the most
important domain transactions ever considering
the timing and significance of AI/ChatGPT.
The buyer, Dharmesh Shah, is the
Co-Founder of Hubspot. The other
Co-Founder of Hubspot, Brian Halligan,
whom I have known since Hubspot was started at
his apartment, was so influenced by the
Grateful Dead that he wrote this awesome book
- Marketing
Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every
Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band
in History, to which he
credits so much of the Hubspot way."
"I
too, credit so much of my approach to life to
the “Grateful Dead way”.
Some Dead quotes that are especially relevant
to me are "All good things in all good
time" - a Jerry Garcia line from
the JGB Bands' Run for the Roses album
with
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Andrew
Miller and his son Bret at a
2023 Dead and Company show. |
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lyrics that I believe
are so important to investing in, advising on
domains and really any business. It levels
the impatience in me and reminds me how
important patience is. Also, "If you get
confused listen to the music play"
and "Once in awhile you get shown the
light in the strangest of places if you look
at it right" are both lyrics that
are essential to my day to day philosophy."
Andrew's
devotion to his favorite band reminds me of my
favorite quote about the power of music - one
that comes from what may seem like an unlikely
source - Oliver Sacks, a Professor of
Neurology at the NYU School of Medicine
(and a best selling author). Sacks said, “Music
can lift us out of depression or move us to
tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange
juice for the ear. But for many of my
neurological patients, music is even more – it
can provide access, even when no medication
can, to movement, to speech, to life. For
them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.”
If Oliver ever needs an especially persuasive
case study to prove his point, Andrew
Miller is his man!
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