Jay Westerdal is a domainer, entrepreneur and VC investor best known for his work creating DomainTools.com. DomainTools is a service that looks up historical ownership of a website. The whois service was integrated into Google's onebox in May 2008. He later sold the company in 2008 for a reported $16–$18 Million. He is a prominent technology blogger and a frequent speaker at industry events.

Career

Westerdal started Name Intelligence in 2002 in his house. He was fired from the company in May 2009. Additionally, he is VC partner at Founders Coop, a Seattle venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 firm.

Westerdal, originally from Bellevue Washington, worked at a Seattle web startup Interland before founding DomainTools in 2002.

Writing

Westerdal's personal blog covers a wide range of topics, focusing mainly on technology, his mobile lifestyle, and search engine optimization

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid search results...

 from a personal perspective, in contrast to the DomainTools blog, where he wrote in an official capacity. Contributed to the EPP Protocol RFC 4930.

External links

• Jay Westerdal personal blog, blog.jaywesterdal.com
• Conference Review, dnjournal.com
• Modern Domainer interview on YouTube
  YouTube
  YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
  
  , youtube.com
• Interview by DomainsIntoDollars on YouTube
• USA Today article titled "Google combats domain name loophole", usatoday.com
• Seattle Times, seattletimes.nwsource.com