Interview with David Castello of Nashville.com

David Castello, COO of Castello Cities Internet, Inc., spoke at the nascent GeoDomain Publishers conference about the future of city.com sites. This interview fleshes out his own plans to build out Nashville.com and his thoughts on partnerships with local media.

What do you see as the next step for owners of city.com names? 

If Geodomain owners truly want to compete against traditional media such newspapers, cable stations, etc, I suggest they strongly focus on a single market and drill deep. Very deep. The days of a Geo owner running multiple sites and monetizing low hanging fruit are over. Traditional media has geared up their Internet presence. They have finally woken up and realized they have a real fight on their hands.

How has the economy affected your industry?

My position has always been that advertisers may be bad off now, but they would be far worse off without us. We’re not running charities here. The ROI from Geo brand traffic makes them an essential part of any serious advertising campaign.


Who do you see as your top competitors?
The Convention and Visitors Bureaus aim for tourists (and they receive their city’s bed tax – must be nice). The newspapers, cable stations and radio get the locals. We own the brand. Therefore, we target both. (Google Local targets both but does not have a local brand.)

You've taken your own advice and are looking for capitalization to build out a large market.

We already have the capitalization lined up. We have chosen four of our Geo markets and that means we will have our hands full: Nashville.com, LagunaBeach.com, PalmSprings.com and WestPalmBeach.com. They are all well established sites in their respective markets.

Tell me about the investment captial you are looking at acquiring.

There are two different paths and we have to make a decision. One is a straight loan and the other brings in investors who will acquire a small percentage of ownership as the first stage towards an IPO. We’ll make our decision by November 1st.

How many empoyees and revenues does your company have today?

We have less than ten employees. I won’t reveal our exact revenue stream, but its over seven figures.

How will the investment capital be spent, and how many people do you think it will take to build out Nashville.com?

Most of the investment will go to hiring writers and sales people. Fresh content is king and your sales people generate the revenue. For example, I believe it may eventually take ten people, five writers and five sales, to ramp-up Nashville.com alone. With ten people you can really cover your bases and future expansion would be based upon revenue.

How do you find a specific niche you can own in a city like Nashville that has both a strong daily like the Tennessean and Nashville Scene, or do you?

Of course you do, but it all circles back to the fact that we own the brand. We have this never ending daily stream of virgin brand traffic. People from all over the world intuitively type in Nashville.com.

In any business, those who get to the customer first wins. We need to have enough of a user experience that we keep them coming back for more by creating content that's compelling and exciting. That’s what drilling deep is all about. The user experience has to be enough so that we achieve brand loyalty in the first round. Put it this way, no one ever has to search or remember a brand like Nashville.com. The name matters. Always did. Always will.

Do you see more city.coms partnering with newspapers?

Probably down the road. Newspapers still see us as the new kids on the block, but the truth is that we would both massively benefit now – smack in the middle of this horrific economy. However, most newspapers won’t consider partnering until we start eating well into their revenue. Of course, by that point we will have already built our infrastructure to the level that we won’t need theirs.

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