Jay Westerdal - Bio
BIO:
Jay Westerdal is a serial entrepreneur from Seattle. He graduated in 2000 with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics, two years later he started DomainTools and quickly sold it in 2008 for $20 million dollars. His passion is investing in and helping other entrepreneurs build and scale. Several of his early investments have now reached the $1 billion dollar validations include Zevia, Zipwhip, Outreach, BlueCore, and Remitly. Early on he worked within the ICANN community on both technical and business issues and he served on the board of ICANN registrars. In 2012, Jay started several top level domains like .Feedback and .Realty to compete with .com domains.
Currently Jay is the CEO of Spider.com, CEO of 800.com, and Senior Venture Partner at Startup Haven. Startup Haven invests in about one seed stage company per month. Jay has structured business development deals with Google, Yahoo, CitiBank, SEMRush, and Microsoft to name a few.
Jay relaxes by spending time boating with his family, training as a private pilot, scuba diving, and skydiving, Jay’s philanthropic foundation focuses on empowering the homeless population to receive education, training and free/affordable housing.
Jay can be found on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn , Angel List, and Twitter.
Some of the early companies founded by Jay
A domain search and whois lookup service.
A hosting company formed to host all the computers of DomainTools but also independent for thousands of other customers.
A Wiki designed to cover all domains. Seed funded by eNom and DomainTools and run by Ray King. Series A funded by Voyager Capital with $2.5 million.
A domain conference with hundreds of companies from the industry. Sold along side DomainTools in 2008.
A call analytics company with a texting platform build on the foundation of thousands of toll-free customers.
A data gathering service that powers large companies.
Other interesting links around the web regarding Jay
RFC 4930 (EPP) - The Registry-Registrar Protocol used by ICANN Registries.
Countries Visited:
Australia, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, France, Fiji, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Kingom, United States, and Vatican City.
Countries seen: 32 out of 193.
States Visited:
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Washington,
Interesting Ideas I like:
Get rid of the penny & nickel. Ranked Voting. National Popular Vote. FairTax.
Contact Jay by direct messaging him on Twitter.