In 2023, after about five years of being a lead developer at a creative agency in Seattle, I started Underlost.xyz, my own web development consultancy. I built the site in a weekend, applied for a business license, and got to work. I’ve been lucky enough to see a very successful year and a half so far. But it’s time to change things up a bit and expand.
You see, I never really planned for Underlost XYZ to become anything long-term. To be completely honest, while I wanted to pay homage to my online persona, I also picked the xyz part as a slightly cheeky poke at SEO. While Google and other search engines haven’t come right out to say it, the XYZ domain extension is notoriously bad for SEO because of the number of phishing sites that exist also using the extension. I wanted to pick something that I could thrive in spite of.
It’s also the domain extension of choice for Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which uses abc.xyz. The original founders said, “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.” I wanted to apply this to my own company as well. I never want to take a conventional approach to anything I build.
Last year, I also started development of my new project, Boredable, a concept for a nonprofit social network. In an effort to simplify and consolidate things, I’ve decided to make Boredable my sole company, with different divisions. Through the commercial side of Boredable.com, I’ll be able to offer consulting and development services to clients while also hiring other designers and assistants to work with me. I never intended for Underlost.xyz to grow beyond just me or to manage as many clients as I do. The name was always meant to be personal, and I didn’t want to bring others in under that brand.
On the flip side, because of the success of Underlost.xyz, I can now also focus on smaller consulting projects at Underlost.net, allowing me to work with smaller, more creative projects in a one-on-one environment.
Meanwhile, I’ll be able to operate Boredable.org as the nonprofit side that will own the social network. While growing XYZ has been my main priority for a while, I’ve gotten to a good place where I can finally shift some focus to an effort I truly believe in: creating a service that benefits others. I’m excited for what’s next and can’t wait to see where this new direction takes me.