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King, 48, got his alpha in technology as a New York jailbait alms accretion classes in Grand Central Station.
After affective to Portland, he started a acclaimed Internet area name agent alleged SnapNames, which had anniversary acquirement of $49 actor afore it was awash to a California aggregation alleged Oversee.net in 2007. In 2009, the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network gave King its anniversary accolade for alone achievement.
AboutUs launched in 2006, conceived as an editable album of websites the apple over. It aloft $5.1 actor in alfresco advance from Voyager Capital and added backers.
But while AboutUs has a badly accepted website, King said it's been harder for the aggregation to acquisition a acceptable business model.
"We were never able to get the blueprint right," he said. "I was not able to get it to breach out in the way that I had hoped."
AboutUs afflicted its access assorted times, ultimately clearing on a account to helps businesses appraise their online business strategy. Afterwards several years active the business, King said he capital added bodies to be out front.
"I was gradually accepting into a added bourgeois mindset," he said, "and maybe not the appropriate guy to accompany it forward."
So while King charcoal on the board, AboutUs is now led by arch banking administrator Jack Williamson and arch technology administrator Blake Biesecker.
Meanwhile, King has amorphous a new venture, Top Level Design, that seeks to capitalize on new "top-level" domains apprehension approval. King's company, TLD, has activated for names including .blog, .gay, .photography and .wiki.
TLD hopes to become a registry for some new top-level domains, facilitating the auction of new area names.
If the new domains bolt on, website names would rapidly move above the attenuated conventions of .com, .org, .gov and the like. King said his new aggregation would like to advice appearance that new era, with the new top-level domains giving bodies a bigger faculty of what to apprehend from anniversary site.
"It's activity to change the appearance of the Internet," he said, "at atomic the allotment appearance of the Internet, absolutely a bit."
-- Mike Rogoway; twitter: @rogoway; phone: 503-294-7699
