Wrapping up an extremely successful ICANN meeting, people are continuing to ask me how .xyz has scaled so fast. After presenting .xyz’s growth and achievements at ICANN’s Registrar, Registry and TLD Applicant Joint Session, attendees have approached me asking why we are doing so well. And here is why.

(If you are interested, my presentation can be found here.)

My vision
My vision for .xyz began with my ambition to provide competition and choice for the next generation of internet users. Whether you’re an individual, small business or corporation, an online presence is essential in today’s world. However, the available options have been limited and the next generation of innovators and internet users are left with scraps.

 Why should the next generation be at a disadvantage? Emerging markets – populations just getting online today – should not be forced into a 3, 4, or 5 word domain name nearly 30 characters long that puts you at an inherent disadvantage in your worldwide marketing efforts.

As many of my readers know, the original extensions carry specific meanings: .com for “commercial”, .net for “network”, and .org for “organization”. Why would the next generation internet user be forced to categorize themselves as a commercial registrant, a network, or an organization?

My vision has been to create that global alternative with .xyz. A domain extension with NO specific meaning or categorization. The meaning of a .xyz is what you make of it. You can be a blogger, startup, lawyer, artist, non-profit, app developer and grow your presence with .xyz.

.xyz gives users the flexibility to make it what they want it to be, untethered by the associative meanings that come with other domain extensions.

The believers and doubters (haters)
At the time of launching .xyz, many people bet against me and laughed at my bold projections of 1 million registrations within the first year. Some even went to so far to say that I would be lucky to sell 1,000 .xyz domain names.

As the CEO from a top 3 registrar told me, “Haters gonna Hate”.

Now fast forward 4 months later, when we are receiving 6,000+ new registrations a day from all over the world.

In nearly every relevant metric for success including registration numbers, utilization statistics, gross sales, brand recognition, and customer satisfaction, .xyz leads the pack. To top it all off, .xyz has even been recognized as one of the lowest spam zone on the internet [Source: Architelos .xyz Case Study].

For every person that bet against us, we were extremely fortunate to have hundreds more who believed.

It is you, the believers, who have made .xyz the success that it is today. You have come on and built innovative websites:

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…and have made .xyz the global alternative to .com.

.xyz is YOUR domain name, YOUR extension.

The Team
Some may call us crazy, but I am proud to acknowledge these crazy people as the pioneering members of Team XYZ. So what about Team XYZ makes us successful?

Team XYZ is a passionate, loyal, creative, amazing team of 35 believers. They believe we can change the world together. Together, we will make a difference. Together, we are disrupting the namespace and creating competition and choice for internet users around the world. Together, we will foster innovation and entrepreneurship all over the world.

.xyz is the largest and fastest growing new domain extension because of our team’s innovative approach. As a young group of Generation Y’ers from a diverse set of backgrounds, we are tackling .xyz and domain extension marketing in ways the industry has never seen – and it’s evident in the .xyz brand that we’ve proudly built.

We each have distinct expertises and points of view, and we excel because of the mutual trust we’ve developed. Many of the founding members of Team XYZ, including myself, were founding fathers of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity at the University of Southern California, Gamma Tau chapter. Our brotherhood instincts have allowed us to create .xyz as the first true competitor to .com.

We continue to grow our dedicated team that lives and breathes .xyz.

We also would not have been able to accomplish this without the support of our forward-thinking registrar and reseller partners.

For the non-believers – #StickIt.

To the fellow Trojans out there – we are hiring!

And on a final related note – we are also hosting a .xyz tailgate at USC’s homecoming this Saturday against Colorado. I welcome everyone to follow the purple person and come by our tent to say hello.