MarkUpgrade serves as custodian for a curated portfolio of Strategic-Grade domain name assets.
Joined September 2018
- Tweets 18,315
- Following 251
- Followers 2,074
- Likes 1,873
4,881 Photos and videos
Jun 12
80% of Americans have never considered registering their own name as a domain.
Which means for most people, the first time they think about it is when they need it.
hostingadvice.com/studies/st…
56
Jun 10
Fundraising soon? Before investors ask about the .com get the valuation, ROI, tax, and board-ready math you need
grails.com/tools#intent/fund…
2
2
47
Jun 9
A six-figure domain name sounds expensive until someone measures the alternative
grails.com/blog/domain-upgra…
3
2
99
Jun 8
Domain name upgrades usually become difficult conversations because the numbers are scattered across branding, finance, and long-term strategy.
The Board Slide Generator Tool by Grails compresses that discussion into a single board-ready slide built around company-specific financial inputs, strategic risk, and projected value impact.
grails.com/blog/board-slide-…
1
1
50
Jun 8
Election-related domain registrations are surging, raising concerns around phishing, impersonation, fake donation pages, and misinformation.
The lesson for every brand: when your domain strategy is weak, trust gets expensive.
#Domains #Cybersecurity #BrandProtection
pbs.org/newshour/amp/politic…
1
56
Jun 5
The tools you can run on any name you are considering - yours, a competitor's, or one you are about to acquire.
grails.com/for-entrepreneurs…
1
2
46
Jun 4
How Much of Your Business Do You Actually Own? 15 questions on how much of your traffic, audience, and revenue lives on platforms you don't own.
grails.com/tools/brand-indep…
2
2
60
Jun 4
Domain quality is one of the cleanest leading indicators in venture. Grails gives you the audits, benchmarks, and target lists to read it across your portfolio companies and a broad set of funded startups in the market.
grails.com/for-vcs
1
2
47
Jun 3
Smart move
Jun 2
We're finally shedding the .so (thank you Somalia!), and using the .com for @NotionHQ. And for this beautiful moment, I want to share a fun story:
Back in 2018, I had just joined Notion, and one of the first things @ivan asked me to do was figure out how we could own notion.com. I had never done a big domain purchase before, so I reached out to a few domain brokers to understand the landscape. We tried different brokers, kept things anonymous, and attempted to surface a price the seller might consider.
A year went by… nothing. Meanwhile, it was pretty clear this was only going to get more expensive as we grew. We needed a different approach. A fellow founder connected me to a broker who took a very different tack. Less transactional, more long-term relationship builder. He spent months getting to know the domain owner. Turns out owner was a fellow entrepreneur in the west coast… and a huge Grateful Dead fan.
So we figured, why not get creative? Something beyond just price. So I called up our investor Ronny Conway and asked if there was any way he could help set up a private meeting between the domain owner and the Grateful Dead. Ronny is one of those people who somehow makes impossible things possible. A week later he calls me back: “New York City. Halloween. 15 minutes after the concert. Done.”
The broker went back to the owner with an offer: some cash, some equity, and a private meeting with the Grateful Dead. That got his attention. He didn’t take the band meeting in the end, but he did lean into the equity (great call, in hindsight). We shook hands, and a few weeks later, the deal was done.
I’ve been waiting years for the day we move our product to notion.com. Looks like 2026 is finally the year. Safe to say I’m unreasonably excited about this update!
1
62
Jun 1
Investors will look at your domain name before they look at your deck. Don't be the one to find out what's wrong in the meeting
grails.com/tools#intent/fund…
2
2
47
Jun 1
The domain that got you to Series A is probably not the one that gets you to Series C.
Most founders find that out at the wrong moment.
grails.com/blog/domain-name-…
1
2
31
May 28
Your domain might be the most expensive line in your marketing budget.
It just doesn't show up as one.
grails.com/blog/domain-conve…
2
2
94
May 28
Most companies have no idea what their domain is actually costing them. You may have opinions. But have you looked at the data?
grails.com/research-methodol…
2
2
86
May 27
The Grails founder toolkit gives you a fast, self-serve read on a name. The other end of the spectrum is a deep-dive deliverable, researched and written by the Grails team, that surfaces the risks and blind spots in your current namespace
grails.com/insights/bespoke-…
1
39
May 27
Domain quality is one of the cleanest leading indicators in venture. We give you the audits, benchmarks, and target lists to read it across your portfolio companies and a broad set of funded startups in the market.
grails.com/for-vcs
1
1
41
May 27
A founder deck can say one thing while the namespace signals something else entirely.
How does yours match your vision?
grails.com/blog/pre-pitch-do…
2
39
May 25
You already know you have a domain name problem.
You just don't know which one yet.
grails.com/tools/finder
1
1
49
May 22
Domain name quality is one of the cleanest signals in a cap table.
Portfolio audit across all your companies in minutes👇
grails.com/for-vcs
1
1
52