Getting to the starting line
After you’ve decided to apply, the next step to starting a new top-level domain is getting ICANN to approve it, and that means filling out the ICANN application.
The application itself seems simple at first, with quick-response informational questions: name, address, phone number, and so on.
But then it gets complicated, with sections on community-based TLDs, your business and financial merit, and your technical chops. That’s where we can help. Following is a quick summary of ICANN’s current Application Guidebook and notes about what we can do on your behalf as a Minds + Machines client.
Questions 1 – 17 — Applicant Information
These are requests for information – name, address, phone number, payment information, applied for string, and so on.
Question 18 — Mission/Purpose
This question asks about your mission, but it’s really about your performance. You must submit quantitative and detailed answers. Your response will be used in post-launch studies to verify that the introduction of new gTLDs has promoted competition and consumer choice, and that your new TLD has been a benefit to the public, rather than a harm.
How Minds + Machines can help you with the mission statement
This is a potential mine-field. Your response must walk a tight-line between optimism (public benefit!) and conservatism (our numbers are reasonable!) in order to avoid the GAC’s “gotcha” in post-launch studies.
If you’re a community TLD, you will need to restrict (somehow) your registrations to your community. So you need to be careful here to craft policies that let you score high by being restrictive, but not box yourself in to something unworkable. Also, restrictive policies, where tried, have been consistently shredded by sharp minds who game the policies. Furthermore, how and when restrictive policies are applied has a lot to do with their success.
Questions 19 – 20 — Are you a community?
These questions have to do with whether you choose to apply as a community or not. If you’re not sure what a community is, well, neither is ICANN. It’s up to you to define it, and the easier it is to define, the more likely you are to be accepted as a community. An obvious community is the population of a city; a non-obvious community might be all Readers Digest subscribers, or members of the Democratic Party. The more tightly you define your community, and the more restrictions you have on who can get a domain name in your TLD, the more likely you are to be considered a community.
Why would you want to be regarded as a community? Because in a contention for a TLD between a community-based application and an open application (ICANN considers anything that is not a community application as “open”), the community application wins automatically. On the other side of the coin, an open TLD can sell names to anyone; a community TLD must adhere to its restrictions. This remains true even after ICANN approves the application, and cannot be changed, even if there is no contending application.
How Minds + Machines can help you decide if you should apply as a community TLD
We believe that the choice of whether to apply as a community is a critical one, and depends on a number of factors:
- Whether your TLD represents a community in the common-sense definition
- What ICANN’s definition is
- Whether you will face an objection to your application from other members of the community
- Whether you are likely to face contention
- Whether they are likely to represent themselves as a community
- Whether you can afford an auction
If you really do represent a defined community, your choice is obvious. If you’re doing .mp3, it’s equally obvious that you’re not a community TLD. But there’s a big middle ground where things are not so clear.
Questions 21 and 22 — Geographical TLDs
These questions are relevant if you are applying for a geographical name. This could be the name of a country, a state or region, or a city. In the case where you apply for a TLD that matches the names of a country, state, or region, you will need to get permission, in the form of a letter from the relevant country and region, either giving you explicit permission to apply for the TLD, or stating that they don’t object. In the case of cities, only the city government’s permission is needed.
A geographical name could also be a continent (.africa), or a subcontinent (.southasia), or a multinational region (.centralamerica). The governments of the world have decided that they need a way to approve of these designations as well, even though it’s unclear if they have any particular authority to do so.
Getting permission from governments could be long, arduous, and expensive. Furthermore, a TLD matching a country, state, or city name is by definition a community, according to ICANN. Therefore your plan for a getting a geographical TLD should include not only a plan to convince the government, but also some outreach to the relevant community.
How Minds + Machines can help if you’re a geographical TLD
One of our team is applying for .NYC, and the City of New York has announced their support for .NYC, so our experience here is relevant. It’s important to remember that you represent a community, so you need to work with that community, especially through its elected representatives. You should be able to clearly explain how your TLD benefits the community, and you should have a plan to give back to the community. To succeed with a geographical domain, you need to convince ICANN, but you also need to convince the government that represents your community. We can show you the steps you need to take.
Questions 23 – 44 — Demonstration of Technical and Operational Capability
This section has to do (mostly) with technical questions. Here you need to describe your network architecture, database capabilities, DNS capabilities, security, IPv6, DNSSEC, failover plans — in other words, how your registry will be run technically, and how your technical provisioning will safeguard registrant interests. The questions are open ended and without some familiarity with how other registries are run, can be confusing.
How Minds + Machines can help with the technical section
Since we’ll be running the registry operations on your behalf, we’ll answer most of these questions for you. There are, however, policy questions embedded here, concerning “anti-abuse” policies — how will you handle phishing, spam, etc. We’ll consult with you about these questions and let you know what the options are and how you can answer these questions without precluding future technologies that will do the job better than the ones currently on hand.
Questions 45 – 50 — Financial
This final section has to do with financial capabilities. These questions may appear to be very unfair at first (audited financials for the company you just created to start a new TLD), and they may well be, but they must be answered. Effectively the panelists who examine this section will make a judgment about your business plan, without necessarily knowing anything about the market you’re addressing or the business model you’re proposing. In our opinion, this is the most difficult and dangerous part of the application, and where our efforts to get ICANN to make changes are the most forceful.
In this section, you will have to provide audited financials, pro-forma projections, costs, funding, revenues, financial contingency planning, and how you will continue to run the registry if your money runs out. Although the domain name market as a whole rises at a high rate each year, it’s very difficult to predict adoption of a new TLD, so volume and revenue projections are always somewhat provisional. Most of these answers will be kept confidential when the applications are published.
While it’s easy to become a millionaire with some rosy assumptions and formulas in an Excel spreadsheet, it’s important to have a reality check here. You want to be conservative as you can possibly be while still satisfying your investors, who want vast multiples of their investments in the shortest possible time frame. ICANN’s evaluators are going to look at your volume and revenue projections and view them with a skeptical eye — remember, they want to avoid failures — and they will want to see funding and cost projections commensurate with your optimistic assessments.
If you’re a corporate TLD who isn’t envisioning many registrations, and you have the full backing of a major business, this section probably isn’t a problem. For everyone else, it’s critical.
How Minds + Machines can help with the financial section
We’ve seen a number of TLD launches, and we follow the numbers on TLD growth. We see most TLDs doing quite well, but perhaps not as quickly as they would like. We’ve seen how auctions have performed. We understand the cost structures. In our view, the non-technical aspects of the application are more subjective and more difficult than the technical ones, and the business-case questions — effectively, your business plan — need to be handled with special care. We think Minds + Machines is uniquely qualified to assist you, with candid advice and solid, professional work on your behalf.
