It’s a story told a thousand times: founder of a company ousted by investors. It’s a story so common you can find it any day of the week as a minor headline in a tech blog. Not much of a story at all really, until it happened to me.

Minds + Machines, the company I founded in 2009, informed me last week that I was no longer wanted as CEO. Without going into details, which I can’t, there were differences and disagreements. Still, it was a surprise. All the plans, the hopes—pfhhht! into thin air. It sucked.

Now what? New gTLDs are barely birthed. The industry is very young. Twelve million new gTLD names have been sold in just about two years. That’s nearly 5% of all domain names out there. What reasonable person doesn’t expect that to rise to 20% or more within the next few years? There’s a lot of opportunity in the field.

And yet there are some signs of desperation out there. Demand for new gTLDs hasn’t been what anyone expected. Many single-TLD registries, though not all, are hurting. Many registrars still do not fully support new gTLDs that aren’t plain-vanilla .com clones. ICANN continues to treat registries and registrars as unpleasant necessities despite the fact that its sky-rocketing budget is underwritten by domain name sales. No breakout awareness of new gTLDs has yet occurred and until it does marketing new gTLDs may feel as useless as pushing a piece of string.

Even so, the larger players in our industry continue to be very bullish: .shop went for more than $40M, .app went for $25M and a secondary market in new gTLDs is heating up fast. Existing registries, and companies outside the space, are on the prowl. Despite the perceived lack of demand, some people are clearly seeing a lot of value in new gTLDs.

Why the disconnect? It’s a matter of perspective, and cash. Owning a registry, or even better a portfolio of them, is a fantastic long-term business. Those who can’t think long term (no cash) or won’t (no vision), will not be well served by what’s to come.

What kind of registries are out there, and how will they fare? Below I’ve listed some of the major types of commercial models (non-brand) that exist today, and what their prospects are; there are also hybrids of these models.

• Registry as a technical function, concerned with infrastructure and service levels; this is what ICANN would prefer, but it’s a commodity function with little on-going value. Increasingly, this will be an outsourced service with lower and lower prices.
• Registry as a domainer play: the registry is essentially an unlimited portfolio of names, and like a domainer you can price your inventory, park it, and wait for the right buyer to walk through the door. This model is concerned with understanding the value of each name and pricing it for maximum return. It also requires staying power and self-sufficiency; impatient investors are going to have a hard time with this model.
• Registry as supermarket. Sell it super-cheap or give it away and try to win on large volumes with low margins. Because low prices disproportionately attract fraudsters, this approach is problematic but in the short term at least it seems to be profitable. In terms of resale, however, it may be a poisoned well.
• Registry as small business. Make some nice signs, tell some friends, try to get good shelf space at the local store, take out some stands at trade shows, get some testimonials, keep the costs down, and build the business over time. This can work if there are no investors, or if they are angel investors looking for a nice ongoing income in the future. Having a single TLD instead of a portfolio is actually an advantage here.
• Registry as part of a bigger plan. Naming is part of a vaster ecosystem that includes the branding, positioning, marketing, selling and licensing of companies, goods, and services on the Internet. And, importantly, it includes Internet governance. It takes no great power of observation to see that being a big registry, essential to commerce and communication on the Internet, contributing substantial amounts to ICANN, gets you a privileged seat at ICANN, at the center of things when it comes to deciding what the Internet will look like in 10 years. That’s actually worth a lot, but it’s only available, or useful, to the biggest players.

2016, I predict, will be filled with new gTLD acquisitions. Buyers of new gTLDs see bigger players coming to gobble them up down the road, paying a premium for size, diversity of portfolio, and market leadership. They think TLDs are still a bargain, even in the aftermarket, and they are out there trying to make deals. If a registry, of any size, is not a buyer, then pretty soon they will either be a seller or a small player.

Existing portfolio registries have basically two ways to go. One option is to build up the TLDs in the existing portfolio, treating them as a collection of small businesses, and hope that they become self-sustaining and will fetch a decent multiple of profits in an eventual sale. A better option would be to treat today’s highly fragmented ownership of new gTLDs as an opportunity to continue the portfolio-building that began with the first applications, acquiring good TLDs that are selling cheap now, keeping focused on the long-term value.

Back to me getting fired. It still sucks, but I’m seeing some silver linings already. I’m going to take a break, re-connect with friends, and consider what’s next. If you have condolences, thoughts, ideas, or just want to reach out, my new email address is [email protected].