Vacation.Rentals acquisition highlights its plans to disrupt an industry – With Mike Kugler & Brooke Hernandez

DomainSherpaApril 15, 2018 13

If you’re an entrepreneur who plans to disrupt an industry- or you want to learn to become one- spend some time listening to the out-of-the-box thinking of resort industry veteran Mike Kugler. Mike’s company, Vacarent, LLC recently acquired the Vacation.Rentals premium gTLD, purposely paying the most ever for a public gTLD acquisition.

Entrepreneurs like this who surprise and confuse us are often visionary thinkers. We don’t need to do the exact same thing, but we can definitely benefit from learning about Mike’s perspective and seeing where to apply that in both our domain name search and entrepreneurial endeavors.

Brooke Hernandez also joins us to give us insight from the UniRegistry brokerage perspective.

Review (70:57): Watch | Listen/Download Audio | Domain Lists | Transcript coming soon

Your DomainSherpa Review

Playback Speed:

This interview is promoted through a media partnership with DAN.com.

(Don’t have Twitter? Post a comment of thanks or share on Facebook.)

Your DomainSherpa Interview, Audio Only

Note: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. Or, listen on iTunes or in your favorite podcast app (here are the feeds).

Or, grab a feed for your podcast app, listen via Stitcher or listen on iTunes.

This Show’s Sherpas

Tess Diaz

Tess Diaz is SVP of Business Development for Buckley Media. Previously she was Executive Producer and host of DomainSherpa.com and Business Development coordinator for MediaOptions.com. With a passion for consultative sales and education, Tess grew to understand the domain industry during 7 years as Executive Accounts Manager at GoDaddy, while also serving on the Domain Product Sponsorship Team there.

A Massachusetts native, Tess enjoys hot yoga and hiking in the beautiful Phoenix desert.

More shows with Tess Diaz »

Brooke Hernandez

Senior Domain Broker at Uniregistry, Arizona native, World Explorer!

More shows with Brooke Hernandez »

Mike Kugler

More shows with Mike Kugler »

DomainSherpa Advertisers

Please visit the advertisers that support DomainSherpa and make our shows possible.

Watch Ad

Interview Raw (Non-Edited) Transcript

Interview Transcript in PDF Format (Right-click to Save As…) [View in Google Docs]

Watch the full video at:
https://domainsherpa.com/gtld-acquisition-for-disruption

FULL TRANSCRIPT COMING SOON.

Tess Diaz: Serious about online trading? Secure your funds, keep your merchandise safe, and use a company that keeps the buyer and seller protected the whole way through. That’s Escrow.com, payments you can trust.

Finally, if you’re a domain name investor, don’t you have unique legal needs that require domain name technical know-how and industry experience? That’s why you need Stevan Lieberman of Greenberg & Lieberman or Jason Schaeffer of ESQwire.com.

Go search for Jason Schaeffer or Stevan Lieberman on DomainSherpa, watch their interviews, and you can see for yourself that they can clearly explain issues, can help you with buy-sell agreements, deal with website content issues and UDRP actions, and even help you write your website terms and conditions. Stevan Lieberman and Jason Schaeffer are the lawyers to call for internet legal issues. See for yourself at ESQwire.com or Aplegal.com.

Watch the full video at:
https://domainsherpa.com/gtld-acquisition-for-disruption

More About…

Keywords: negotiation • new gTLD • new gTLD investment

Comments must be respectful and constructive. Read our comment policy.

13 Responses to “Vacation.Rentals acquisition highlights its plans to disrupt an industry – With Mike Kugler & Brooke Hernandez”

ben pedri says:

April 18, 2018 at 8:55 PM

Great show ,Mike is a real great guy and will probably make a lot of money with this company ,My guess is the company will be bought out for tens of millions in the future. In my opinion had he not shown him enthusiasm he may have gotten this domain for a fraction of what he paid.

In the future inexperienced business leaders ,trying to buy domains for their business should seek out professional domain brokers to negotiate their dream domain names.

Reply
Michael Kugler says:

April 17, 2018 at 6:25 AM

Tess,

I cannot thank you enough for doing this. I remember thinking to myself “Compose, think, DON’T BE STOOPID!” LOL.

You are a great interviewer and the experience was something I will never ever forget. I cannot thank you enough for the incredible opportunity you afforded us and will always recommend your company and site whenever possible.

For those out there blowing me up for making a stupid buy, relax. It’s my cash and I have never regretted the decision once.

TODAY – 04/17/2018 We are ranked #10 on Google for Vacation Rentals – Hand to God truth.

Our problem has not been getting customers – our problem has been getting a working (flawlessly) website up and going. It has been disappointing to be honest, but it reinforces much what I believe. We will be successful in the end.

With deepest respect, Mike Kugler

Reply
1. DomainSherpa says:
  
  April 19, 2018 at 7:06 AM
  
  Thanks Mike, you’re truly an out of box thinker and I’m excited to watch the development & SEO progress! It takes time and creativity to build, and it sounds like you have an excellent team. Can’t wait to book a vacation with you soon!
  
  Reply
2. Richard Morris says:
  
  April 19, 2018 at 7:53 AM
  
  Mike…there was a time in my life, I would have done exactly what you did. I’ve already commented about your purchase, and I’ll do everything I can to help and support you. Of the 1,350 domains I own, about 800 of them are nTLD’s. After your purchase was announced I spent about four hours searching for .rentals domains I wanted to own, and unlike .loan(s), I only found a couple, but I did register 20 .online domains that tie to vacations of all kinds from Beach Vacations to Ski Vacations to European Vacations to even NudeVacations. If you think they would be helpful to drive traffic to your site, I’d let you have them, and if they work, you could compensate me later. Finally, I know you’re busy, but we should meet. I sent you an invite to join me on Linkedin, and I do hope we have an opportunity to meet and shake hands. After all, I own a number of “HandShake” domains that are simply common sense like Vacation.Rentals. Thanks again.
  
  Reply
3. Platey says:
  
  July 1, 2018 at 2:53 PM
  
  thank for agreeing to do the interview on ds
  
  Because we think alike on the seo front eg gtlds
  
  I have no qualifications but I used to scan manually pages and pages of lists of uk number plate eg licence plates etc which people pay big money for in the uk but Internet search engines made what I could do the hard way easy and the easy way even easier which is why few can beat me in a search engine because to buy a domain name I want to buy before me a person needs to have had the idea I am thinking of and the vision behind the idea that I have and then be able to type the keyword of the idea in to a domain name search engine and buy it before me etc
  
  Bought a few gtlds early on
  
  I used to own motorbike.world gtld but didn’t have the vision behind it etc
  
  But I knew very early on that not much can beat a gtld for organic seo which will save you a fortune in seo and no need to pay for ppc ads etc
  
  If you made all. listings free and took your money from ad £”s there isn’t a company on earth that can stop you from being number one in Google for the search term
  
  vacation rentals
  
  and number one in Google images for the search term
  
  vacation rentals
  
  So much so that the only way that the two huge companies in the top five listing in vacation rentals in Google is to buy your company
  
  And they would need to be to be looking at 500m minimum because 20 years from now your website will still be top listing
  
  Google search doesn’t recognise the
  
  Dot
  
  as it reads your domain as two keywords
  
  They just happen to. you can be two of the biggest industry keywords on earth lol
  
  I used to own media.careers gtld
  
  I bought it for reg fee as I pre ordered it but let it expire the follow year lol
  
  But I own a few gtlds as I have
  
  Reply
  1. Richard Morris aka Bulloney says:
    
    July 1, 2018 at 6:13 PM
    
    Thanks Platey…I own a couple of nice .vacations domains as well as rx.rentals. When you see who else is in the prescription rental business you’ll see why I own it. The real key to success in the new GTLD arena is to have a plan for it’s use. Once you have that figured out, the world is your oyster:)
    
    Reply
  2. Richard Morris aka Bulloney says:
    
    July 2, 2018 at 7:40 AM
    
    Interesting Patey…I commented on your post yesterday but for some reason it didn’t show up. I just searched “vacation rentals” on Google and it came up on the first page, but #5. That’s still pretty good imho.
    
    Thanks for chiming in here, and it looks like Mike’s doing a real good job. What he’s doing is very encouraging:)
    
    Thanks
    
    Reply
Magnus says:

April 17, 2018 at 5:02 AM

Very interesting interview.
Gives me a “push” to look at the new Gtlds domains differently.

Many thanks for input

Reply
1. DomainSherpa says:
  
  April 19, 2018 at 7:08 AM
  
  Glad you enjoyed the show, Magnus. Yeah, the advertising video Mike created is a great visual for how the new gTLDs can be leveraged…
  
  Reply
richard morris says:

April 17, 2018 at 1:11 AM

Great interview…after nTLD home.loans was sold for 500K, I went on a buying spree and have purchased around 75 .loans domains from; HomeEquity.loans to TaxRefund.loans, to Elder.loans.
I have a similar, but little different strategy with regards to Vacation.Rentals. Congrats Mike Kugler…I’ll be in touch.

Oh, I just purchased CommonSense.Domains, and without question, Vacation.Rentals makes COMMON SENSE!!!

Reply
Chad Ellis says:

April 16, 2018 at 6:04 AM

Thanks Tess and Mike!

What a great interview and insight. Good for you Mike, looking forward to seeing whats in store and love the business model!

P.S. Go Branson!

Reply
1. DomainSherpa says:
  
  April 19, 2018 at 7:09 AM
  
  Hey Chad, I knew you would like this show a little extra!! Sounds like you & Mike have a lot in common…
  
  Reply
John Harrison says:

April 16, 2018 at 4:01 AM

Thanks Sherpas!

That was a great insight into behind the scenes of selling and on the front line of using new gtlds. Congrats to buyer and seller and very much looking forward to another instalment from Mike in a years time to see how his business has grown.

Reply