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The Domain Data Moat, An Article from Morgan's Dad, and some Expiring Domains

The Domain Data Moat, An Article from Morgan's Dad, and some Expiring Domains

A Happy Easter to Everyone Who Celebrates

Shane Cultra
April 20, 2025

Things are about to change—and fast.

The businesses making money by prettying up and redistributing other companies’ data are about to have a crowd. If you don’t own the data, brace yourself. Because soon, thousands of others will be doing exactly what you’re doing.

APIs are opening up. AI is lowering the barrier to entry. Creative people with real skills are building on top of existing platforms and moving product. I see domain companies leaning into this—letting others build interfaces and tools on top of their inventory, as long as it drives sales. Commissions will drop to offset server costs. Doesn’t matter. Sales will increase anyway, thanks to third-party sellers pushing better experiences.

The money is in the data. If you’re just repackaging someone else’s, your runway is short.

But if you’re a buyer or builder looking for inventory? We’re entering a golden age. Real-time alerts for new listings. Smart algorithms tuned to your tastes. Unified views of auctions, marketplaces, and even built-out sites with contact forms. This is where we’re headed, and it’s getting easier by the day. The moats that protected the big marketplaces? They’re drying up.

It’s good news for users. And great news for people who know how to move product.

There’s one caveat. If you’re building a model trained on someone else’s data, you’re playing a different game. The winners here will be the ones with the best training sets.

You can already see it in sports tech. Running and training apps are crushing it—because they’ve got the data. TrainingPeaks has decades of it. Others bought Strava data and turned it into gold. But that kind of data? It’s hard to get. Expensive. And that’s a whole different model from just sitting on someone else’s inventory.

A FEW INTERESTING LINKS

Would you buy a Safari Porsche made at the factory instead of aftermarket?

A Reminder that this is a great time to buy Winter Gear

Something I’ve Never Seen. Godaddy registrations of .com going down and NameCheap is getting close to matching them

A Medium Article from Dr Bruce Linton, Morgan’s Dad. You can see why Morgan is such a good man