Directory >> Key People of the Domain Name Industry >> Entrepreneurs
The most prominent figures in the domain name industry are often pioneers who launched ventures in the 2000s or earlier, typically as web hosting providers. This includes the Indian billionaire brothers Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia who founded Directi, which still owns Radix, Masatoshi Kumagai, founder of GMO Internet, Octava Klaba, co-founder of OVHCloud, and Jonas Dhaenens, founder of Combell and CEO of team.blue.
Successes with similar profiles are also notable in the domain registration space, such as Richard Kirkendall, founder and CEO of Namecheap,Todd Han, who founded Dynadot in 2002 and Xavier Buck, co-founder of EuroDNS. ll remain active in the domain registration business today.
Others have switched to the NgTLD space, such as Ray King, who now focuses on Top Level Design, Jay Westerdal who sold DomainTools and now runs Top Level Spectrum, and Paul Stahura, founder of Enom and now with Identity Digital. The NgTLD sector also counts several new successful entrepreneurs, such as Daniel Negari who founded XYZ and owns 35 TLDs, or Lars Jensen with ShortDot.
In the blockchain domains space, Nick Johnson founded the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and Matthew Gould, UnstoppableDomains. Fred Hsu, who co-founded Oversee.net, now invests in D3, a web 2.5 project.