Shark Tank shark Marcus Dantus launched his first tech startup in 1993, dedicated to selling email addresses and registering digital domains. But the dotcom bubble finally burst and his first failure came when lawyers contacted him to cease and desist from buying Internet domains for brands he didn't own.

He bought more than a thousand domains, including mexico.com, which he sold for millions of dollars. Listen to his story of failure in our eighth anniversary about his first steps in the Internet business and how he became president of mexico.com.

We interviewed him after his appearance at Fuckup Nights to find out what he did after his failure. Marcus shared some of the worst pitches he was presented with and gave some recommendations on what NOT to say when pitching.

‍

‍

The story: I registered thousands of domains

"I started thinking about what domain could really represent me. I knew that "México" had to be part of it, but also the Internet was very slow in those days. Remember we used to connect with modems? So I thought speed was very important. What really represents México and speed? I registered speedygonzalez.com.

By some miracle it wasn't registered, but as I was about to put my website up at speedygonzalez.com I received a cease and desist letter from Warner Brothers lawyers asking me to return the domain. I was in my early twenties and didn't want to fight with the big corporations, so I gave them back the domain. All my friends said, "You're an idiot. You could make money. It would cost them to sue you.

‍

Out of spite I registered andale.com, it was generic and also represents Speedy Gonzalez, México and speed. Before I uploaded my website to andale.com, I received an email from a couple of guys from Sillicon Valley asking me to sell them my domain, I didn't even know it was possible. They were offering me 10k and I thought it was a joke, I thought they were joking, so I said "Ok. Give me 20k I'll give it to you" They deposited 20k in my account!

I thought 'this is amazing, this is the best deal ever'. Over the next couple of months I registered a couple of thousand domains. They were all generic. I registered nations, states, cities, sports, everything you could think of in Spanish. No one was registering domains in Spanish. Finally, I registered Mexico.com.

Listen to the full story in the video above.

"What does México and speed really stand for? I registered speedygonzalez.com ".

‍

After the Screw-Up: How NOT to Pitch on Shark Tank

‍