Featured Startup Pitch: As domain names become increasingly more valuable, DomainSkate is focused on helping SMBs protect themselves against domain infringement

By David Mitnick, DomainSkate founder and CEO

Elevator Pitch: DomainSkate is a service for protecting small- and mid-sized businesses from infringing domain names that can negatively impact brand recognition and revenue.

Product/Service Description

DomainSkate is an online brand protection service that is tailored to small- and medium-sized businesses. We search the entire domain space for domain names that are similar to our user’s brand names or marks. We provide users with services to deal with domain disputes and to help prevent them before they happen.

Founder’s Story

I am an intellectual property attorney by trade, spent two years living in Japan and working in finance before law school, and did a lot of brand protection work during my time as a practicing lawyer. I came up with the idea for DomainSkate when I saw that thousands of new domain registries would be added online and thought that someone needed to help businesses navigate and protect themselves in this space.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We are doing a combination of grassroots outreach to small businesses and law firms to teach them about DomainSkate and the new domains coming online, in addition to public relations and marketing efforts in the B2B and B2C realms.

Market Opportunity

The brand protection market is over a billion dollar yearly business. It has been growing annually by more than ten percent over the past three years and could hit $3 billion by 2016. Competitors in the space are a wide variety of companies, but most are geared toward serving the high-end of the market (large cap and international companies).

How We Differentiate From the Competition

DomainSkate focuses on one thing: Giving SMBs the ability to police their brand names online at a price that makes sense. Our competitors are focused on the high-end of the market—large companies with big brand portfolios that need comprehensive protection across a variety of platforms. This model does not make sense for SMBs. Instead, we provide users with essential and timely knowledge they need to monitor their brands/names. No fluff.

Business Model

We have three different payment plans that users can register for to fit their personal needs, starting as low as $9.99 per month, or $95 per year.

Current Needs

We will be looking to raise capital in the near future to expand our operations, develop new features on our platform and increase our reach in the market.

# # #

Headquarters: New York City