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Andrew Rosener (@andrewrosener) is the founder and CEO of MediaOptions, which has been the #1 domain broker in the world for the last six consecutive years. Since 2008, Andrew has been involved in more than $600 million dollars in domain sales and has played a pivotal role in numerous high-profile domain-name transactions, including X.com to Elon Musk, Zoom.com to Zoom, and Prime.com and Podcast.com to Amazon, as well as thousands of others. 

Andrew is an inductee of the Domain Name Hall of Fame; he was named Domain Investor of the Year by TRAFFIC; and he is the creator of the Rosener Equation, a formula for objectively valuing domain names, widely adopted by the industry.

Andrew is also the owner of DomainSherpa.com, the industry’s leading educational podcast. 

Please enjoy!

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[07:06] Who is Charlie Tuna, and what are his tenets?

[30:11] Presidential ham and the value of owning coveted domains.

[34:35] Tess Diaz enters the picture.

[39:25] A domain industry overview.

[43:14] Domain investors vs. domain squatters.

[46:21] Getting a late start in the game.

[50:16] Brokering the sale of pizza.net.

[56:50] Why relocate to Panama in the midst of building a business that needed to make $250 per day?

[1:00:40] Leasing vs. buying a domain as a startup.

[1:10:36] Leasing vs. selling a domain as a holder.

[1:13:42] How important is securing your brand as a .com?

[1:15:50] Negotiating equity in lieu of cash.

[1:19:35] Are we in the early stages of a digital real estate boom?

[1:22:03] Why did Andrew buy Fuckyourself.com?

[1:25:29] Anger management.

[1:31:18] Email management.

[1:33:57] How will AI affect the domain industry and SEO business?

[1:39:53] Alternative uses for domains.

[1:48:35] Finding Andrew and his projects online.

[1:49:28] Pursuit of happiness.

[1:55:08] Avoiding attraction to unnecessary pain.

[2:03:13] Three most important influences.

[2:06:05] Parting thoughts.

[2:08:15] Hunting bigger fish.

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For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.

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Freshpet co-founder Scott Morris helped transform pet food by sidestepping traditional kibble and cans, and making slice-and-serve meals that almost looked palatable enough for humans. When Scott and his partners launched the business in 2006, the concept of fresh pet food was so novel that retailers balked at installing special refrigerators for it. So Freshpet provided its own refrigerators, a logistical nightmare that nearly ground the business to a halt. More than 30,000 refrigerators later, Freshpet has a 96% share of the fresh pet food sector, with a customer base of 10 million dog and cat households.

This episode was produced by Carla Esteves, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Alex Cheng.

Our engineers were Gilly Moon and Maggie Luthar.

You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.

This episode is brought to you in part by Canva, the easy-to-use online design platform for presentations, social posts, videos, websites, and more. Start designing today at Canva – the home for every brand.

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Amanda Klane and Drew Harrington are childhood friends, and co-founders of Yasso; they defied the advice of experts by creating a recipe for frozen Greek yogurt treats, and building Yasso into a $200 million dollar brand. When Amanda got the idea in 2009 to freeze Greek yogurt into popsicles, she reached out to Drew, who had already started a business selling—and there’s no way you could guess this—inflatable beer pong tables. The two friends set out to make a high protein, low-calorie yogurt bar, and despite initial bad reviews from family, and a series of “No’s” from prospective manufacturers, they eventually landed Yasso onto the shelves of Costco and BJ’s. It wasn’t long before they faced competition from the top players in the freezer aisle, but Yasso continued to grow, and was recently acquired by one of the biggest consumer goods companies in the world.  

This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Katherine Sypher.

You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.

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Over a nine-year period, Spencer and Jeff Jan grew Solo Stove from a DIY project into a 9-figure brand. Their original idea was modest: work a four-hour week and earn a passive income from a DTC camping stove, which was easy to use and as sleek as a spaceship. When they launched the business in 2010, the brothers lived thousands of miles away from each other: Spencer in Shanghai, where he located the manufacturer for the stove, and Jeff in Dallas, where he managed logistics out of his garage. Using all the tools at their disposal—Kickstarter, Amazon, and Starbucks for office meetings—the brothers grew the brand to where it attracted a 9-figure acquisition. Which actually happened twice—making them both wealthy enough to enjoy a 0-hour work week.

This episode was produced by Carla Esteves, with music by Ramtin Arablouei.

Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Casey Herman.

You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com.

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In 2003, David Baszucki wanted to go viral. He had already sold a company that made educational software, and now he wanted to build something with mass appeal; with build-your-own avatars and myriad opportunities for users to compete and connect online. So in 2006, he and his co-founder Erik Cassel launched Roblox, a platform where you can play millions of different games, set in a wide array of virtual worlds.

You can adopt a pet, escape from jail, build and run your own restaurant, or solve a murder mystery; you can even create games of your own. During the start of the pandemic in 2020, half of the kids in the US were keeping in touch via Roblox, and today, the company is worth over 28 billion dollars.

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When Saeju Jeong moved from South Korea to the U.S. in his mid-20's, he barely knew anyone, didn't speak much English, and had only $5,000 in savings. Today, he's the CEO of Noom, one of the most popular weight loss/wellness apps in the U.S. Inspired by his late father—a doctor who criticized the profession for treating people only after they got sick—Saeju and his co-founder built their first fitness product in 2007. Several pivots later, they arrived at Noom, an app that carefully tracks what you eat, how you sleep and when you're stressed out. Noom has hinted it may go public this year—if so, the valuation could be as high as $10 billion.

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Everyone knows that tech stocks performed amazingly well amid the coronavirus crisis. In the last few months, there's been a little bit of a cooling off. But for the most part, betting on tech has been a fantastic bet for a really long time. This week's guest says there's a lot more to come. On this episode we speak with Ram Parameswaran, the Founder and CIO at Octahedron Capital — which does VC investments and invests in public equity — on what he learned over the last year, and the big things he's betting on now.

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