Darragh Meaney: Starting OnMe and the Domain Purchase Journey | Saw.com

Speaker 1: 0:00

Today on the uncomfortable podcast, we have Derek Meany, co-founder of onmecom. Derek decided to leave the comfort and notoriety of his Google project management role and dive into the tumultuous waters of an entrepreneurship With his co-founder that did the same as in leaving Google as well. They didn't just step out of their comfort zone, they leaped. Listen today about what it's like to work at Google, how they raised money and launched his new company, onmecom. Derek is also a customer that acquired the domain onmecom from our company, sawcom, and we also cover the acquisition, why they liked the name, why they picked it, what it was like to be on the other side of the negotiation and what they were thinking during the process. And if you're thinking about it, onme is an online gift card company that is aiming to make your gifting experience more seamless and delightful. I look forward to seeing the future versions of this service and what they do with it, and you can always get alerts of our new episodes on sawcom podcast or follow us on Apple podcast, spotify, youtube and many others. And, as always, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Welcome to today's episode on the podcast in our spotlight. Today, we're discussing a the beginnings of a fascinating career journey. Imagine working as a product manager at giants like Whirlpool, credit, swiss Google and YouTube Sounds like some pretty cool dream jobs there. Now picture leaving that all behind to dive into the world of digital gifting. That's exactly what Derek Meany did and launched onmecom, and we're going to talk about that today and a little bit more. So here we are. So tell us a little bit about yourself and, you know, let's get into just the basics of your career and your experience, and then we can get into onme, your new, your new launched website.

Speaker 2: 2:14

Sounds great and we're a client of sawcom, so yeah, yeah we'll be here, jeff.

Speaker 1: 2:18

Exactly, we can certainly get into that part too, yeah of course, no happy to share.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Very glad to be here. My name is Darren Meany. I'm actually calling it from Dublin today. I'm just home for Christmas, first mobile.

Speaker 2: 2:29

But I was born in Ireland and I first studied in University College Cork. I then went to London for a small bit of time to work in the investment banking at Credit Swiss. It was all going fine when I was there. It's now obviously gone under and part of UBS, but I don't think it's downfall was because I left After that.

Speaker 2: 2:46

I then went to the US and did my master's at the University of Notre Dame thanks to a very generous scholarship from the Noctin Foundation, which was the kindest thing a bunch of strangers have ever done for me, and then I was leaving my master's that I basically went on and actually I started with the Google APM program, which will be probably one of the most famous of the APM programs that are now kind of like everywhere.

Speaker 2: 3:08

But it's an Associate Product Manager role, which is a very nice thing for a big tech company to do, whereby generally product managers came from junior engineers that really had a product focus, and Google was one of the first places to realize that. It's quite helpful if you just take a new graduate who's very fresh to the world and throw them in the deep end in the role, and it's an amazing program. I couldn't speak higher about it. I think it's well known among graduates in the US and kind of the world over, and it was definitely one of the best areas of career you could have, especially if you're looking at kind of an entrepreneurial future in some ways. And then I was actually based in Zurich, switzerland, for the last four years, two and a half of which I spent with Google, where I worked in Google Flights and then YouTube, so spent a huge amount of time in San Francisco, where I'm obviously based now, trying to build a company with my co-founders Zatar Haral.

Speaker 1: 3:59

That's quite a story, so let's just get into it before we get into your businesses. About what is it? What is it like working at Google compared to some of these other companies that you've worked for?

Speaker 2: 4:09

Oh, like definitely that everyone says it, but it's really true. Like the people you get to work with at Google are really incredible. Most places in the world, you know, you look under the hood and it's a lot of people trying to do the best they can. But, like normally places are quite chaotic and I think the best place I've ever worked was definitely Google. Like it's a large bunch of people who are just as kind as the nicest people you can find, who are all trying to do a really good job. And you know, I think Google offices are quite famous for, you know, there's like three great meals a day, there's a huge number of pool tables and all the fun stuff. You are quite busy when you're working there, but it's definitely like a. It's definitely a bit of a playground as well.

Speaker 2: 4:50

There's a lot of funny roles that people turn around. One of the funniest ones I heard was adult crush. It really made me laugh. But it's an incredible place to work. You get to work with incredibly, let's say, like 10-year-old and you know serious people in the computer science space. It's a really talented bunch of people. It's just.

Speaker 2: 5:11

I think it was one of the best places to start my career, especially in a product role where you get like a large oversight over like teams and how they work and you know you kind of start off in meetings with quite senior people, even as a very junior product manager, so you really get a sense of like how the business works from the early days. There's definitely, you know, tech companies in the last few years have really changed, you know. I think in many cases they're becoming they're no longer tech companies, they're just becoming companies where they now have to be profitable and do all the kind of regular company based things. But still, I think tech is an amazing place to work. You're treated incredibly well, especially as like a junior person, and when I joined there was a huge amount of attention given to like younger employees who are trying to grow and, let's say, get up to speed with everyone else.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Okay, so working there you mentioned, you know, entrepreneurship, and usually at a company of that size, that word isn't usually thrown around within it and usually people, when describing it, doesn't, it doesn't really work. And then you just mentioned it again that it's a tech company. So when you work at Google especially someone like you people are feeding you ideas or product ideas or pieces of a product every day, which, within an established business, even creating a new product is like being an entrepreneur within your own business, right, how hard is it to, if you had some new product line idea or some new widget at Google, to go to somebody and say, hey, what do you think about this? And actually it becoming a reality, cause that, like the company I worked for before, a unit registry. We got up to, you know, over a hundred employees.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Now, that's nothing compared to Google, but when I first started working there, there was 10 of us, right, and then it grew to that, and so by the time to get new things out, it took longer and longer and there was different. Oh well, it'll affect this, it'll cause this, this is, this is a lot of. And then the lawyers got involved and things, so I can't imagine the layers of approvals. So what was it like to take if someone had a good idea for something? What was the process in so many words, and how hard was it to get it done?

Speaker 2: 7:16

Yeah, it's a really good point. Google is definitely a very big ship and as the ship grows, your kind of rudder stays quite small and it's definitely not it's definitely not the most agile company in the world anymore and I think I graduated in 2019 and I went straight to Google. I definitely, if I was in the early 2000s, would have been a much better time to join for the kind of company that a lot of people who kind of really want to work in entrepreneurship role and kind of want to have so like. As you mentioned, google is an incredibly tenured company. That's obviously much later in its lifestyle. It really depends on what you're working on at Google.

Speaker 2: 7:52

I think you know from the outside Google looks like one company, but if you look internally, there's like 150 different products that people end up working on and they all kind of operate as their own mini company in different ways. So I worked first in Google flights, which is quite small and an amazing group of really talented people, and in that smaller space you work with one or 200 people and when someone has a good idea, it's somewhat agile to get moving and you can really you can speak to the right decision makers and you can put it on, let's say, a roadmap or a product timeline. That's within, like you know, six to 12 months and you've got a chance to get it out the door. And then I also worked at YouTube, which is obviously much bigger and you know there's a huge number of different kind of product people that are all full of ideas and all trying to get things out the door and in that case you're definitely competing with a lot more things happening.

Speaker 2: 8:38

It's still like a great place to have like quite a lot of impact. I think what you get is you get massive numbers of users that use your products, so, like you can make small changes to products that end up impacting lots and lots of people, whereas in a startup environment, you often get to make sweeping changes to a product that there's often not a huge number of people actually interacting with. So I think there's kind of a delicate balance there. I think that, yeah, it's much harder to Google doesn't turn in a dime and if you're full of great ideas and you want to see them implemented in the next number of months, it is definitely a more 10 year, 10 company where you have quarterly release cycles and lots of structure and you know huge things. There's also like massive reputational risk and you know endless expectations in a post IPO company and when you're set up you don't have any of that. So it's still possible, but it's definitely not as agile as a startup by any means.

Speaker 1: 9:30

Got it. So before we move on because let's talk about on me over Google, here is, since you've worked on YouTube and you've worked on flights is there any quirky part of the product or a little Easter egg in either of those products that most of someone like myself who uses both of those products, might not even know exists, that we could go and see after the show or something can tell us about it that we might be able to find or just not know about sooner than later?

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, it's a good question. Like I worked at flights in YouTube and my co-founder Citarell worked on like maps and photos, so I think those are better known for like Google Easter eggs, as they're often called, like small things that you find in places.

Speaker 2: 10:10

One of the small things that I think not enough people find is in Google flights you can actually search for like a continent.

Speaker 2: 10:16

You can put in, like you know, a country or a continent and it takes you to a whole new section of the product that's called Explorer, and Google flight hasn't done a good job of, let's say, showcasing this well enough in the product, but it's a really cool feature.

Speaker 2: 10:29

If you just search for, let's say, like Asia, or if you search for like South America, you normally get taken to a much more visual experience that shows you the whole continent and, basically, from your location, flights to every single city that you could go to, and I use it a lot for planning my own vacation, mainly because I know how to use the tool quite well. But it's an amazing way of, if you have a weekend free and you're in Europe, it's a great way to see like all the different cities you could travel to and like the different price for the flights. And then this is a kind of a power to move, but if you apply filters, it applies to everything within Explorer, so I often use it for I'll set like a flight leaving on Friday between 3pm and like 7pm and then coming back on Sunday night between, like you know, 6pm and onwards, and it's like an amazing tool for planning kind of weekend getaways.

Speaker 1: 11:12

That's sweet. And then you know what I didn't know about that and I bet you, a lot of people are gonna listen to this, don't either. So that's great that you said that. So let's talk about you know for myself included is that I always had that itch. When I graduated college, I didn't have the same opportunity to work at Google, but when you started working there and working in the working world was in the back of your mind, saying to yourself you know, I love this, these people are great to me, but I have an itch to go do my own thing. Or in the midst of working there, it just kind of came where you're like you know, I wanna go do something on my own and launch my own product. When did that kind of start to creep?

Speaker 2: 11:52

in? Yeah, it's a good question. There's a lot of people who you know entrepreneurship became like really hot over the last few years and in some ways I think I'm quite allergic to the title of being an entrepreneur, mainly because it's been kind of taken around and shaken. It's a very loaded term these days, but I was always really interested in. I actually always loved business from being like a kid and I really loved anything you could do to make a buck or something like that I just thought was really exciting and I always just liked, you know, helping people and building things and like having something that you do. I always thought it was super fascinating and actually like when I was a university student, I remember thinking I was like I need a way to make enough money for like rent and random stuff during my week and I actually started an iPhone repair company. Never thought I'd be doing something like that and like the margins are actually really good and my seven, a very good friend, dave Kalnan, built kind of like what we call it was called shatterie in Ireland and we actually get explored really well and you know it actually led to the first ever kind of scholarship I got for like innovation entrepreneurship back in my home university, in University College Cork, and it was kind of coming out of that that really helped me get a scholarship to the US, I think always really involved in this space and you would always get back here.

Speaker 2: 13:08

I definitely I loved computer science.

Speaker 2: 13:10

I kind of studied computer science and economics originally and then did a few other bits and I knew, leaving that I'd love to get experience in, let's say, some big companies and then you know, with the guys of when a good idea comes along that you're kind of a bit more capable and a debt that actually executing on that.

Speaker 2: 13:25

And yeah, definitely think being a product manager is definitely one of the best roles you have in terms of you see all the right stuff, you really understand how the business works, how you liaise back with engineering teams and design teams and like all the people you need and kind of like the software development kind of side businesses. And yeah, when I was at Google I was always kind of keeping an eye out for something that would be interesting and like always wanted to get back to, maybe because it's over glorified and too many of you know you work something like you've got all of your friends kind of want to do the same. And if you spend enough time in San Francisco, you know way too many people who are getting funded to do all sorts of things and eventually you're like I really want to throw my hat in the ring and do the same. So I think I always knew I was here and I always find it really exciting.

Speaker 1: 14:10

So when I decided to leave a uni registry and become an entrepreneur myself and to start my own company, there's that moment when you either called or walked into your boss's office or sent an email who knows when you said I'm giving my notice. So when you gave your notice and hit send, or he answered the phone and you said it, did you have a holy shit. What did I just do? Moment Cause I did. What did you? You know what were you feeling? So you did it and they're like, oh, and then you know where is it. Did you already have your partner, your co-founder and him? Did you already have your relationship? You know, you'd both plan to do it on the same day, you know, did you both? And then, when you did it, did you call each other after and say, all right, we did it. Now what do we do, you know? So what? What was that like?

Speaker 2: 15:04

Yeah, like you're 100% right, Like everyone has that moment somewhere on the way for you, kind of go like what have I done? Yeah, yeah, and like in in honesty, like getting getting a good job at a university was like super helpful and like it gives you a bit of a financial base to kind of like you know, plan your next thing and you're leaving. A well-paid job somewhere like Google is not an easy thing to do and they also have a lot of like very clever internal tools that, like you know to project your, your stock growth and how your seller is going to go over the next few years, and there's a lot of very clever systems that really make you feel like you know your path to safety and everything else is staying in your, your comfortable tech job and turning with them. That is. It's really hard. It is.

Speaker 2: 15:44

One of my closest friends is a guy called Vera Wittem and we went skiing in Switzerland and a ski tour. It was what a five hour climb to the mountain called the Foulhorn and the whole five hours was just me annoying him about. Like what am I going to do? Am I going to leave Google? Should I pursue this idea or not?

Speaker 2: 16:00

And incredible guy and he kind of talked through the whole thing and he was like, look, it seems like a good idea, you should probably leave. And I was working for I actually met him for dinner recently and I was just going to go call him Ibrahim, who's now a director at Google slash YouTube, and he was incredible, like he was just a great manager. He knew that I was very passionate in the space and I think he was like, you know, just very sensible advice about these kinds of things. And then it was with him. I obviously said I was like, look, I'll probably be giving my notice. And then you write the email.

Speaker 2: 16:25

My holy crap moment definitely came, handing over your laptop and your badge at the very safe and comfortable reception in Google's Switzerland.

Speaker 2: 16:34

Because you know, we used to joke that it was like it's golden handcuffs when you're working in a tech company where you have, like this lovely income and everything's great and you have three meals a day and all your friends are there, and you used to call it actually the golden handcuffs within the golden cage. The golden handcuffs was Google and the golden cage was Switzerland, where everything just works flawlessly. And it was very stunning, but it was, it was all right, it was very difficult to leave. And then, I think, a few weeks out, you kind of you get a chance to think about it all and you're like, oh, this is fine, like you can always go back and get a job somewhere, you'll be fine, and then more like you need a bit of hunger, I think when you're going towards this maybe it was the same in your case, but sometimes you need, you need. You need something that really makes you want to fight for getting something over the line and getting something done. But yeah, I definitely had that moment as well.

Speaker 1: 17:18

Yeah, I mean I think for myself. I love the. I love the beginnings of a business, I love building new things and processes and creating revenue streams and teaching people and adding people to the team. And then when you kind of get to that point where people say start talking about the good old days, you know you've really built a successful business because they're talking about, you know, the early 2000s. Well, in the early 2000s Google was still possibly going to be like a Yahoo where their stock tanked or bad things happen, but obviously it's been. You know this way so. But that's great. Yeah, there's always that, there's always that moment. Now you said each of the products are kind of like their own business within the company. So how did you meet your co-founder if he was working on totally different products, to make that relationship? How did? How did you meet?

Speaker 2: 18:11

him. Yeah, it's, we actually we're in the same kind of like star program, the the APM program I mentioned earlier, and there's like this kind of 45 people from all over the world that are in this and it's great. There's like a lot of trips and everything else. And he was actually working on a feature on Google Maps at the time where you could like share location with one another. And we were on a skiing trip in Tahoe in California and he was like, oh, we should use a new feature and we kind of shared location with each other and we were always really good friends of the program and we'd always kind of stayed in touch and whenever I was in California, we'd like, you know, just grab lunch and stuff. So we became like really good friends through that.

Speaker 2: 18:44

And randomly, just after I left Google, a friend of mine was, I think he was in Greece for a month, so he gave me his apartment in New York. So I was just living in New York for a month and I opened my Google Maps one day and I just saw a little pen next to about two blocks over. That was like Satara's location and I was like, oh, my God, he's not really a basic California. It was like what are you doing in New York? And he was like, oh, I just left Google here visiting some friends. And I was like, dude, we should totally go for coffee and be in for coffee somewhere on like 4th Avenue. And we basically just sat down. He was like what are you up to? And I was like, oh, I've got this like idea to start building something in the space, and you know, I've already laid out most of the groundwork and I'm kind of looking for like a technical co-founder and started studying computer science at Cornell. And he was like, like, literally at the table, we're kind of like we should do this. And you know he'd just left.

Speaker 2: 19:30

He was kind of making some of his plans as well. And eventually we were like, look, he was like I love the idea, like Satara is really funny, like he always wanted to be an inventor, he loves building things, he loves making things. And yeah, just, we just kind of click from there. And then there was a few others were kind of wait at the time or like, look, we should just, we should just get all in and do this. But yeah, and I think to your point about like, let's say, you leaving university and doing these things.

Speaker 2: 19:53

You get such an amazing network when you join a big company and like there's lots of young people, everyone's really hungry and that kind of stuff, and that's really stood to us. Like half my friends are people from the APM program even today and like Satara obviously I always joke he's like my work husband, where you spend some of your co-founders, like you get to know every corner of everyone and like there's no hiding when you work that many hours like close together and it's incredible. You really need a strong base and there's the skills that I definitely do not have, that he's incredible at and I hope there's a few that I have that he's lacking, or else he'll get rid of me pretty quick. But no, we went through that and it was really great.

Speaker 1: 20:34

So you obviously had a few years since college. He has two. You're in the same program. Okay, I mentioned when I sent you the survey before interview that you guys raised just under $2 million from Mastercard. I'm going to probably destroy this company's name or person's name to Lara Hippie. Yeah. How do you pronounce that?

Speaker 2: 20:56

Yeah, I did it right, yeah, I think, lyra, the American tournament hippo is originally from the French side.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Okay, and then focal or focal right. So typically, and from my I've never done a raise before. But for you to get that much money, especially from a company like Mastercard being involved, how do you? How did you go in there and pitch them? And without the experience of leading, you know, massive teams or building a business or working at you know I know you have worked at Google, but you're a product manager. You weren't managing teams, you weren't launching the products yourself, and same with your colleague. You know you're two recently college grads. So how did you, how did you get their attention when so many others are going to them with their ideas? What was that like? What was that like?

Speaker 2: 21:44

Yeah, it's a good question. It's funny, I would probably say, like a product manager it's kind of modern sense in a tech company is probably the best role you can actually have to kind of like prepare you for definitely like your fundraising journey where, like normally as a product manager, you're kind of put in the hot seat, where you're kind of responsible for about. You know, depending on how senior you are, there's lots of levels to this, but you're normally responsible for like an engineering team and a design team and lots of other affiliated teams and like what they all work on. Like you're supposed to be the person who's designing the entire roadmap of products and features of like I'm working on Google Maps and we should spend the next quarter building better navigation features and more depth maps and colors and all these things. So you're you're kind of used to being the person that's dreaming up the future and effectively communicating at the back with all of the necessary teams to kind of do these things. So one of the best skills you actually want to learn as a product manager really is like how do you align teams along a vision, how do you get by and how do you like really captivate people with something that's exciting to build, that motivates people to want to build it.

Speaker 2: 22:43

And I think in a software world it's really hard to build things and you need really crystal clear ideas of what you actually want to do and you know the. The joke in any tech company is like an engineer can work a certain and you know working hired in a software. Let's say, our information world is a very hard thing to kind of grasp, and people who feel motivated and bought into what they're building work 100x. Someone who's kind of like, oh, I'm just doing this to get it out, and that's one of your biggest jobs as a product manager is to really paint an exciting enough future that your software engineers feel like compelling to get over all of the hurdles. That's needed to get somewhere. And so I think those skills you actually learned really well in modern tech, especially in the product role, and that really stood to us when we went back to companies.

Speaker 2: 23:27

What we're basically doing as young founders is we're saying we have this crazy vision and this is our plan to get there. And yeah, we, basically we actually when we first started we thought we could bootstrap most of this Like we actually we had a really great contact that introduced us to MasterCards, who I met it's funny enough, skiing in Switzerland and they really love what we were doing. Obviously, we we'd no idea that like someone like MasterCard would be that interested in what we were building. But we've like a lot of interesting stuff in the payment kind of back end that we wanted to bring to market. And we started speaking to some of the guys, definitely David Galvin, who's the one of the directives kind of fintech partnerships at MasterCard. We got kind of networked to quite early and he really loved what we were building and yeah, we've actually had an amazing kind of relationship with their data and services team and yeah, we were kind of almost surprised as well that they were that willing to work with a small company.

Speaker 2: 24:15

And once we got kind of MasterCard on board and we had like a really solid base for what we were building and we knew exactly what we were going after. Then we kind of were able to carry that forward to kind of like other investors. And you know it's I think if you're building any company, there's about 100, 100 difficult yeses you need to get from people along the way Definitely one of the reasons why building a company is a little bit easier in the US. I think people are much more willing to take a shot in a small company and you know it's it's like rolling a snowball down a hill, like you get the first one and you can use that to unlock number two and then number three and by the time you get to number 15, you've kind of got like a small mound behind you that you kind of carry in as a bit of momentum and then when you get to number, you know 100, you've got like a small village of people who are kind of helping you in all these small ways and package.

Speaker 2: 24:55

And we definitely saw that. So we, we got moving for four or five months and we kind of got. You know, we got the MasterCard on board, we got some other things. And then we went to institutional investors. We actually had, like you know, a very well put together kind of plan. We industry experts across the board who kind of looked at what we were building and we're able to kind of like pitch that back to sophisticated kind of like VC investors like Lyra, hipaa of, I think, 1.2 billion in assets under management. They backed a Venmo, so they were kind of used to fintech ideas like this. We were kind of working with a few people there that were like really great.

Speaker 1: 25:27

So I'm sure some of the listeners have done that, are going to try to do this for their own ideas. What would be like two of the best tips that you learned if you knew it going into it when you're going to do your pitches that you you definitely learned because it was your first time. What will be those two quick tips?

Speaker 2: 25:44

Yeah, I think there's a really great advisor, who's also a small angel by angel investor in our company. He's a good friend. He's a Swiss guy called Andreas and he gave me some advice before I did an institutional fundraise and if I listened to him a bit closer, I think it would have saved us like a small bit of time. And like, bear in mind, we raised money in H1 of this year where, like fintech investments were down 85% and he was like raising around is all about momentum. He was like you put together a very good narrative, you bring it to lots of investors and you you get a deal over the line. I think it's really true like no deal is perfect. I think every deal that gets like a VC check has like one or two things that are a bit weak about the overall idea. Maybe it's the team, maybe it's something else, and you need a bit of momentum to kind of get your deal over the line. And I think what you really want to do is you want to go out and speak to a lot of people quite quickly not in in that kind of way but I think you need to have a small bit of excitement about your deal or something like that to get it over the line. And I think, you know, vcs are always looking for really talented people with like huge ideas and you know, in their space talent moves fast and they're always looking for that like one in a hundred deal. And you know the idea of when I first kind of you know, when I was going to market, I thought it would be much more like it's all about kind of like quality and you can speak to one and then do you know the one next week and then do another one the week after and you'll meet the right people along the way.

Speaker 2: 27:00

But I think in that space, you know, people really want to see that there's lots of other interests and there's lots of other people looking at this deal and it's really like hot in that space.

Speaker 2: 27:08

And I think we started we just started speaking to people and like people were very interested and you know people really wanted to kind of do follow-ups. We spoke to like lots of the really big name VCs in this way, but it was when we kind of started speaking to more at the same time and created kind of a lot of momentum with what we were trying to do that things actually progressed really quickly and yeah, we were really happy to meet like great investors who've been really really helpful thus far and like, yeah, having good investors has made a huge difference in like connections and you know everything. Really, they're just like really well connected people who are incentivized in your success, and I think that's what you're always trying to do in small companies is like, how do you find really powerful people who can really help out and make them want your baby slash company to succeed as well?

Speaker 1: 27:49

And yeah, it's been basically that All right, so let's so for our listeners here. The reason or the way that you and I have met was you inquired to purchase the domain on mecom that we had for sale. You worked with my colleague, rob Watson, to acquire it. He was representing the seller. You came showing your interest to purchase the name. What were some of the other domains that you were thinking about, or the names of your company that you were thinking about? Or was it just on me all the way, that what you guys were married to?

Speaker 2: 28:22

Yeah, no, it's a really good question. We we actually like it's really hard to name, like I haven't had time to choose what we do that well, but we actually build gift cards around hobbies and interests and yeah, with that, like we really want to make. Like the future digital gifting, in our view, is much more like it's based on the things that we really care about, you know, like golf, or calligraphy, or skydiving and and all of these really tangible things, and therefore we work with like multiple brands on each gift card. And then with what we do, we actually have, like you know, multiple different products. Like our golfing gift card, like golf on me is very different from like dinner or restaurants where we do dinner on me, and these are two very different kind of products.

Speaker 2: 29:01

And we had a huge challenge where, like how do you name something that works for 150 very separate things? And we had different names. Like originally we're thinking of calling this like wish card or something more, like magic card or magic pass, and there were so many names that have been thrown around that you know we'd like a spreadsheet of names and eventually I was so allergic to looking at anything they were naming. I was like we need to be focusing on like building infrastructure and all this stuff that needed to get this out. And we sent a survey out and eventually we tested like 10 names and all of our friends kind of gravitated towards on me. And you know, in the American context people say to like. You know, like, oh, dinner's on me or like hey, come on, it's on me, and people just really like that and it's kind of a natural fit.

Speaker 2: 29:41

And one of the biggest challenges we actually had was like at the start we're like great, it's a four letter dot com with two real words. It's going to be a bit of a challenge to get this one over the line, but we kind of the seller met Rob and yeah, it took a few months but like we were quite happy in the outcome in the end. But yeah, naming was definitely a challenge we're very happy to have like the dot com we really wanted. We definitely looked at a few other domains but like dot com obviously comes with a huge trusted element and I think when you're a small company, it's one of the things you're trying to get. You can put your logos of investors and everyone else down. You're trying to make yourself look as reputable as possible, but definitely having like a clean dot com is there's no other way around it. We did look at like five or six other variants but we're like, take the head off the snake, get the what you can, your exact name, dot com and, like you know, hope you go from there.

Speaker 1: 30:30

And in the decision making process, did the investors get involved with the discussion? Or was it really up to you two guys to make that decision and say, okay, we're going to spend this money on this and that's it?

Speaker 2: 30:41

Yeah, like we can always touch base of their investors just like chats about you know what you're doing. Some of the times their advice is really helpful on matters like this. I think we're obviously in the consumer space. We do a lot of B2B as well, but we definitely have a consumer consumer arm and we wanted a name that was like just really easy for people to remember and, you know, somewhat snappy and normally you need like something to happen someone's head for, like they receive a gift card and it's like oh, it's called like dinner on me and it's on me dot com and I think, oh, that's quite clever and like just a small bit of a joke that replays in someone's head and the chance of them actually remembering it. So I think it was it kind of made sense for us and when the name came up within a price point, that like made perfect sense, given like what we'd raised and everything we're like and you know you don't want it to, you don't want someone else to take it. And when Rob kind of mentioned it was like oh, like we know the seller and they're interested in selling, we're like okay, like let's see where this goes. And then we were quite happy when it came up we're like, okay, let's just do this now and like we can call that done and march forwards.

Speaker 2: 31:35

I think we had internally we'd actually we owned on hyphen me dot com and we had internal war no end about hyphen. Honestly, I was. We were so happy to pay the money to get the team fully aligned and like branding and naming and all this stuff, just like it's funny you think the things will like suck small energy from the founding team and kind of people will be like all sorts of stuff. This hyphen became such a contentious point in the company that in the end we're like if this solves that problem, it's also quite helpful. So we're very glad.

Speaker 1: 32:06

In the in the, I've noticed the Europeans. They don't mind the hyphen as much. But in the United States you rarely see hyphens being marketed, especially to consumers. Maybe a B2B product you might see it, but a B2C the companies that end up getting the hyphen end up having to buy without the hyphen, you know, later on in their in their journey and then obviously they get to pay a lot more Usually when that happens, wow, was there a point? Was, was there a point? If the seller was unwilling to negotiate, would you guys have bought it anyway and bit the bullet? Or were you pretty at your, at your end of you know your budget and willing to walk away and and stick with what you had was there? Was there that kind of conversation, or or was it? You know how did that go?

Speaker 2: 32:53

Yeah, now the deal is done, we can, we can be more honest about all of these things. Yeah, in our case, we had a few different domains we're looking at on mecom, like clean was definitely the the one that made the most sense. But that said, like you know, when you're when you're very small company, there's lots of other things that you can spend capital on that might be better to do and I think we had a price point in mind that kind of made sense for us. And then, yeah, you know, for example, when we're, when you're a consumer company, we're actually working at the moment. Obviously we just launched pre Christmas. So, like this, like 16 gift cards or so are part of our like first offering that are live at.

Speaker 2: 33:27

On mecom, what we wanted to be spending your money on is like real doesn't make your beer taste better, is kind of the. The joke in the entrepreneurial community is like is that making your direct product better and is this helping you get to like your? You know, like users and traction and like really clear ground evidence of like traction as opposed to all your other metrics? And the answer that was probably like no in the very early days. And then when we were working with Rob. He was very helpful, kind of just saying like look, this is kind of you know, this is the domain that's for sale. It's probably we'll go to someone else if you guys don't buy it.

Speaker 2: 33:56

And we had a price point in mind and we were kind of able to negotiate quite well with the seller and in the end we were like where we got to, we were kind of like okay, this now makes perfect sense for us.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Or even with where we are, we think it's worth investing. And you know, in your consumer space you're trying to get people and you're really trying to like hold them and you're like one of the big things we spoke a lot about was like you know, internally is like someone can really love your product and if they're sitting down in a coffee shop speak to their friend, you want them to like quickly communicate exactly what it is. And you know and sounds super sexy when someone says like, oh, go to on hyphen mecom and your hyphens hidden someone in your auxiliary or your auxiliary keyboard and someone has to find it. And I think what we really want to go okay, we're gonna be working on this consumer experience. You want it to be instantly, and so we're gonna see across tables on mecom. You go from there, and it just made a lot of sense really.

Speaker 1: 34:47

Okay, that's great. And then one more question about the domain purchase experiences. Usually when we talk to startups like yours and let's say, the price is pretty out of reach at the time or you don't want to put up the capital, I'm sure Rob offered you a payment plan at one point or another. Was that just not an option for you guys and if so, why?

Speaker 2: 35:11

Yeah, I don't think we spoke too much about payment plans. I think we we had a price point and range, that kind of like. That worked. That made sense and I think you know what we're really looking at also as a small company is like this will sit on our books as an asset and you're also going to want to defend it to vote yourself. Obviously, I'm the CEO of the company, but there's very little power when you're a small company. That means absolutely nothing like satires or CTO, but like everyone's exactly the same.

Speaker 2: 35:33

When it's when you're a small group of people and I think you know in my head I was basically looking at the economics of this is like this is going to sit on our books as an asset and I had to sell it. Is it still worth? You know that amount kind of vibe, and you just put it like you know we've great investors on board and you want to be able to make sure that you can defend any decision to them. If they asked you about it and I think in this case it hit a space that it just really made sense for us we were like, okay, this is. You know, it's a four letter dot com with two real words, and it came in at a price point that we were happy with and we were like look, this is both advantages to the business and it should hold its worth. If not, like grow into the future, makes perfect sense to just pull the trigger at this price point, and that's kind of what we did.

Speaker 1: 36:11

Got it. I was looking at your website and I'm not just saying this because you're one of our guests, but I love it. I think it's very clean, the colors are nice. I think it's very obvious what you're offering is and understanding how it can work and how people can use it. My question to you is is that would you you said you're going to be having a bigger release next year in your next release, would you do something that focuses on some fundraising, Kind of like a go fund me, but with using this product? Is that in the cards? Is that a possibility?

Speaker 2: 36:51

Firstly, thank you so much for the call out and our UX designer. Honestly, he's one of the greatest in the world. He's incredible. In terms of fund raise, you mean kind of like doing your own fundraising on onmecom and not take investors. I'm saying like so.

Speaker 1: 37:07

For example, I was actually talking to a friend about this a couple of weeks ago and him and I were both kind of chuckling saying with go fund me. When it first came out I liked it and I liked the idea in the premise, but now I feel like when someone wants to go fund me, there's no accountability there and there's nothing there that makes me feel good about giving money to these stories that a lot of the time potentially are bullshit, to be totally honest. Right, but like if my kid is doing a fundraiser for trying to help kids buy sneakers or they need books for their school and there's a certain limit that you're going to do and you need 500 bucks to raise money for school and it's for books, well, maybe Barnes and Noble you could buy a $500 Barnes and Noble card and you know it's going to go to books. It's not going to just go cash to these people and then they just go buy puppies and jewelry with it. They actually do.

Speaker 1: 38:08

It's automatically done the way it's supposed to be and I can set those up and then I could advertise this that you know sawcom is doing a raise to help buy turkeys and there's a grocery chain called Publix near me. So buy your Publix gift card or all these different gift cards to these four grocery stores and then we're going to go buy turkeys with them, you know, like something like that, rather than just throwing money at sawcom. There's because we're not a nonprofit, there's no accountability. They're just going to take their 20% and give me the check and then who knows if I'm going to buy any turkeys, right? So I was thinking there's an element for you to be able to, you know, offer that. Is that part of the release or is that far out of the span of reality?

Speaker 2: 38:53

No, it's a really good point and there's like, there's so many, there's a million ways you can go. There's a like we talk a lot about, like what money is internally and this, but like there's like a spectrum of money and if you give someone like cold, hard cash, yeah, it's like it can be used for anything and that's one of the, obviously, principles of money. But you're so right, like the idea, one of the use cases of, let's say, like the gift card industry in that whole space is like you're giving this to this person because, like, and if you think about it quite deeply, it's almost like you want your recipient to be able to spend this guilt free for like one of their hobbies and interests. So, like, if you give someone who's a runner like a Nike gift card or a running on me, obviously we should promote ourselves they can go into that store and spend a kind of guilt free. But one of the other things you get as a sender is you're basically saying, like they're going to spend it on what I want them to spend it on and you know it's. It's a positive piece, because what you're basically saying is, like I know you love running and like you will get to spend this guilt free, but what you're also saying is like you will actually spend this on running. So it's like a gift and it kind of pigeons holds you into that kind of like area and it's really important.

Speaker 2: 39:53

And yeah, there's a whole use case of kind of that like loose accountability and it's it's a. It's something we've spoke a lot about. It's very similar to what we call like group gifting, where it's like you have a friend that always wanted to try painting and you know four friends want to come together and put 50 bucks each on like a painting on me or a painting gift card, and you know you put 200 bucks together where that person can use it and again they're like they're going to be using it within their hobby interests, where they'll get to enjoy and do all these things. But like, yeah, the the accountability arm is like quite important and, as you mentioned, there's a really great use case there as well, where it's like you know a business wants to help out employees and they're going to be giving them, let's say, gift cards this way, just with the kind of like knowledge and when a lot of B2B kind of stuff as well, you can't really give people just like cash, because it could be used for like all sorts of purposes, even for, like we do, ux studies or fill out surveys and stuff.

Speaker 2: 40:39

It's just a really kind of safe way of you know B2B, like incentive management kind of thing. And yeah, there's a huge use case for like what you mentioned and like a few others kind of around it that we're definitely looking into, especially kind of the B2B space, that are really exciting for us. Again, it's like your kind of product manager role of phasing all these things incorrectly to, let's say, like get your initial base and roll that into kind of something else and how do you unlock this next piece. So it's definitely on the roadmap, but we probably won't get there for a few months yet.

Speaker 1: 41:08

I'm sure, I'm sure, and there's always these, all these. That's the other problem with starting your own business is prioritizing what's actually going to make you the money and kind of cutting through the noise right, and it's like I could come up to you right now with excitement and give you that idea and then you go as a product manager, you know that you need to pick where you're going to put your resources into right, because you can't just do everything at the same time and you can't just push aside your strategy that you've set forth unless it's tried and true and you're going to do your math and figure out if it's the right decision. I mean, you're, you know you're making a major change.

Speaker 1: 41:46

The other thing I was thinking about is and I think this is the domain, or in me, is the use of subdomains and you're talking about the different categories. So you could do dinner dot on me dot com or, you know, shoes dot on me dot com or sports dot on me dot com. Is that? Would subdomains be something that you would, you could categorize and then if you were to market different verticals, you know you could use those. Did you guys ever think about doing any of?

Speaker 2: 42:13

that? No, 100%. We actually we initially had that plan like from the get go. We're like, oh, it'll be like so sexy, you get your gift card and it goes straight to like you know, like running dot on me dot com and we're like it's going to, it's going to look, yeah. The only thing that it doesn't work great for is Google treats every subdomain as a entirely, let's say, its own website. And because we have like 100 and you know, I think we're at the moment where it's 70, we're kind of planning to get to like much more than that, to be more specific and nuanced in what we can offer in terms of gift cards.

Speaker 2: 42:42

And when you're a small company and you want to build your kind of CEO or sorry, seo, let's say equity or presence, you really want to have things consolidated. So we you know it's it's difficult to build strong SEO for one website. If you shared that into 70 different websites, it becomes extraordinarily difficult. So I think for now, keeping everything as the on me dot com slash, like running it definitely sounds really nice and it's kind of something sexy about seeing the like running on me and sentence case like all, like normal. But at the moment we're like mainly for SEO. We need to keep everything together in the future. If we get big, we get lots of nice backlinks and everything else that puts us away to the top. It's definitely something you can implement, but at the moment, mainly for SEO purposes, we're trying to keep it more together.

Speaker 1: 43:27

You don't have any connections at Google and pull a couple strings to get yourself to the top of the rankings without having to do much. Is that not possible over there?

Speaker 2: 43:36

Unfortunately, like the not, we tried everything we could, jeff. No, unfortunately, google, you know when you're, when you're pulling in tens and tens and tens of not hundreds of billions of dollars from a piece every year. People get unwilling to help their friends with this moment of kickback in that way.

Speaker 1: 43:55

But yeah, I hear you. Awesome. Well, thanks for your time. We really appreciate it and enjoy your time in Ireland and good luck with the business.