Smartynames: Revenue, team and how it was built
Smartynames (AI business-name and domain-name generator, United States): About US$1K a month, May 2023. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 1 founder and 1 employee in May 2023 (Starter Story profile); the founder called himself "a one-man operation". Launched December 2022; closed later.Added 31 October 2026
- Outcome
- About US$1K a month, May 2023
- Evidence
- D reported, not verified
- Launch
- December 2022
- Status
- Closed
- Team
- 1 founder and 1 employee in May 2023 (Starter Story profile); the founder called himself "a one-man operation"
- Outside funding
- None reported
- Main channel
- Launch sites and deal sites
What is not verified
The only revenue figure, about US$1,000 a month, rests on one statement: Kirill Zubovsky's own interview on Starter Story, published 15 May 2023. The July 2023 Chinese newsletter is a translation of that interview, not a second source. No payment processor, registrar statement or later figure confirms it, and the founder did not split it between commissions, ads and paid plans. A reader could look for an affiliate-network statement or a later post by the founder. The headline number is grade D: one claim or one estimate, with no second source. Aiolum shows it because the story is useful, and marks it so that it is not mistaken for a verified figure.
Smartynames was a domain name generator. A domain name is the address of a website, such as example.com, which a person rents each year from a registrar, a company licensed to sell those addresses. You typed a description of your business, the site asked an AI model from OpenAI to invent names for it, checked which matching .com domains were still unregistered, and showed only those. When a visitor bought a domain through a link on the site, the registrar paid Smartynames a referral fee, a commission for sending the customer.
Kirill Zubovsky, an engineer whose earlier company with his wife had been funded by Y Combinator and closed about ten years before, built the first version in one weekend with Ruby on Rails and launched it on Hacker News in early December 2022. He wrote that the Hacker News launch brought 8,000 users and cost him over US$800 in one day for a paid API after the free limits ran out. In a Starter Story interview published on 15 May 2023 he said that four months after launch he was making about US$1,000 a month from domain sales and ad revenue, and that this covered the hosting on Heroku and other costs but not his time.
That figure is the only revenue number in any source, a single founder statement, so this page grades it D. The site stopped selling upgrades by August 2024, answered with a server error from October 2024, and today its domain does not resolve. Starter Story lists the business as ended in 2025, with the reason "Shut down". The page also shows earlier companies that tried to pay for a free service with advertising and referral money.
How much revenue did Smartynames make before it closed?
Each row shows the evidence grade and the source numbers from the list at the end of this page. The grades are explained in How Aiolum verifies.
| Fact | Value | Grade | How we know | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per month, May 2023 | about US$1,000 | D | Founder in his Starter Story interview, published 15 May 2023: "Fast forward four months and I am making about $1000/m from domain sales and ad revenue, and growing steadily." One statement, not checked by anyone else. A Chinese newsletter repeated it in July 2023: "四个月过去了，我从域名销售和广告收入中达到了月收入1000美元" (four months on, I reached US$1,000 a month in revenue from domain sales and ad revenue (translation)); that is a translation of the same interview, not a second source. | [1, 2] |
| What the money paid for | hosting and running costs, not the founder's time | D | Founder: "We've got about $1000 in monthly revenue, which is enough to cover all kinds of expenses, like Heroku costs, domain validations, and occasional ads. It doesn't cover my time yet." | [1] |
| Run rate from the May 2023 figure | about US$12,000 a year | calc | Calculated: US$1,000 times 12. The founder did not state a yearly figure. | [1] |
| Where the revenue came from | registrar referral fees, advertising, and later paid credits | C | GeekWire, 28 January 2023: "Zubovsky gets referral fees from domain registrars when people buy domains that they find on the site." The archived page code shows paid links to GoDaddy through an affiliate network, to the domain broker Lumis (campaign named March 2023) and to Jasper. | [3, 4] |
| Users from the Hacker News launch | 8,000 | C | Founder in the Starter Story interview. | [1] |
| API cost on launch day | over US$800 | C | Founder: after free limits ran out he moved to "a very expensive paid API" that "cost me over $800 in expenses for just that one day." | [1] |
| Domain suggestions by late January 2023 | more than 1 million | C | GeekWire, citing a blog post by the founder that week. The May 2023 home page claimed "2 million domains created since launch". | [3, 5] |
| Team, May 2023 | 1 founder, 1 employee | C | Starter Story profile. The founder wrote that he did not want to compete head-on with large registrars "as a one-man operation". The 2024 pricing page said the company was "run by a small team" without a number. | [1, 6] |
| Outside funding | none reported | C | No source mentions money raised for Smartynames. The founder's earlier company, about ten years before, was funded by Y Combinator, SV Angel and 500 Startups. | [1] |
| Time from launch to the May 2023 figure | 5 months | calc | Calculated: December 2022 to May 2023. The founder counted four months at the time he wrote the interview. | [1, 3] |
| Closure | ended in 2025, reason "Shut down" | C | Starter Story note on the interview page, read 31 October 2026: "This business is no longer running. It was started in 2022 and ended in 2025." On 31 October 2026 the domain smartynames.com did not resolve. | [1] |
How to read this table: grade D is a single founder statement that nobody has checked; grade C is a statement by the founder, the company's own pages, or a journalist reporting what the founder said; a "calc" value was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.
| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free search | 0 | basic name generation with .com availability | |
| Basic | 69 | 500 search credits; billing period not stated | |
| Standard | 99 | 1,000 credits, faster generation, logo, tagline and press-release generation; billing period not stated |
The generator itself was free. The pricing page did not say whether the two plans were one-time payments or monthly, so both prices sit in the monthly column as shown. On the same page the company wrote "We have suspended account upgrades till further notice." Most revenue came from registrar commissions and advertising, not from these plans.
When did Smartynames launch, and how did it grow?
From a weekend prototype to a closed site in about two years. Each entry carries its grade.
- Early December 2022CZubovsky builds a prototype over a weekend with Ruby on Rails 7 and a GPT-3 model from OpenAI, and launches it on Hacker News. It gives 12 .com names per description. 8,000 users arrive; the launch day costs over US$800 in API fees. [1, 3]
- December 2022CA TechCrunch writer covers the launch after a cold email from the founder. Through that article he meets people at Identity Digital, a company that runs more than 300 domain endings. [1]
- 28 January 2023CGeekWire publishes a podcast interview. The site has suggested more than 1 million domain names and earns registrar referral fees. [3]
- May 2023CThe home page offers a premium generator, an availability validator, a reverse search and all domain endings, and claims 2 million domains created since launch. [5]
- 15 May 2023DStarter Story interview: the founder says he makes about US$1,000 a month from domain sales and ad revenue, four months after launch. [1]
- July 2023CThe Chinese weekly 独立开发变现周刊 (Indie Development Monetization Weekly (translation)) no.97 publishes a translation of the interview. [2]
- July and August 2024CThe about page says the site "runs completely autonomously" and that most of its blog was written by AI. The pricing page lists plans at US$69 and US$99 but says "We have suspended account upgrades till further notice." [6, 4]
- October 2024CInternet Archive captures of the home page from 12 October 2024 onward record a server error (HTTP 503) instead of the site. [7]
- 2025CStarter Story records the business as ended, reason "Shut down". On 31 October 2026 the domain no longer resolves. [1]
Why did Smartynames work?
Four causes, in the order they mattered. Each one is a reusable lesson.
One input, one useful answer
Older domain tools asked for keywords and returned taken names. Smartynames asked for a plain description and returned only names whose .com was free. The founder said the simplicity made the value easy to explain and made the tool impossible to use wrongly.
Launch day press
A Hacker News post on launch day, a cold email to a TechCrunch writer, and a GeekWire podcast brought the first large wave of users and contacts in the domain industry. The founder wrote that launches and blog coverage were his best source of customers.
Paid by the registrar, not the user
The tool was free. The founder said in May 2023 that money came from domain sales and ad revenue: commissions when visitors bought a domain through a link, and paid banners such as one for the domain broker Lumis. He wrote that revenue rose directly with traffic.
Low running cost
No user accounts at first, Auth0 for login later, one Rails app on Heroku, and DNS lookups instead of paid availability checks. The founder said in May 2023 that the revenue of about US$1,000 a month covered those costs.
How it was built
These details come from the founder's Starter Story interview, the GeekWire article and archived copies of the site. They are grade C. [1, 3, 4, 6]
- Ruby on Rails 7 with Turbo and Stimulus, built over one weekend mostly from code copied from the founder's older projects.
- Names come from OpenAI's GPT-3, according to GeekWire. The site named itself and drew its own logo with its own generator.
- Hosting on Heroku. Login through Auth0, added in a ten-minute integration.
- Availability is checked first against DNS records, which the about page says saves a lot of money compared with paid lookups.
- Buy links to registrars through affiliate networks (the founder lists ShareASale and Commission Junction), and paid banners for Lumis and Jasper.
- Google Analytics dashboard that showed week-over-week changes; the founder found that visitors without an account brought more money than logged-in ones.
- By 2024 the about page said the site ran "completely autonomously", including a blog written mostly by AI.
Tools named in the sources
Each one opens its page in the Tools tab, with every story that uses it.
Who tried this before Smartynames, and why did they fail?
Four companies in our database of failed startups offered a free service and tried to pay for it with advertising, sponsorship or partner money, or helped small businesses get online. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.
GeoCities
The promiseFree websites for everyone, paid for by advertising.
Why it diedYahoo bought it for US$3.57 billion, and users moved to social networks such as Facebook.
Ziddu
The promiseFree file sharing paid for by ads.
Why it diedLarge technology companies offered the same for free, privacy laws changed, and a late pivot to cryptocurrency failed.
Guvera
The promiseFree unlimited music streaming paid for by brands that sponsored playlists.
Why it diedBrands would not pay enough per user, while record labels demanded large payments up front.
Sosh
The promiseA drag-and-drop website builder for getting a business online.
Why it diedToo complex for beginners and too rigid for professionals.
The failed startups come from our database of 1,749 dead startups, retold here in our own words. Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so these cards carry no evidence grade.
What changed
Each predecessor gave something away and hoped that advertisers or partners would pay enough per user. Ziddu and GeoCities lost their users to large companies that offered the same thing for free; Guvera found that sponsors would not pay the cost of each listener. Smartynames had the same structure: the founder said in May 2023 that revenue grew with traffic and came from commissions and ads, and traffic came in waves after press articles.
What was different was cost. The predecessors raised millions and spent them on servers, staff or licences. Smartynames was one Rails app built in a weekend, with an AI model doing the creative work that a naming agency charges for. That let one person reach break-even, by the founder's account, within months. It did not make the business large: the founder said in May 2023 that the money did not yet pay for his time, and general AI chat tools could soon suggest names for free.
Can one person copy Smartynames now?
Easy to build, hard to make pay well.
A free AI tool that answers one narrow question and sends buyers to a seller with a referral program can be built in a weekend and launched in a day. The founder's own account shows the limit: by his statement in May 2023, commissions and ads came to about US$1,000 a month, which covered costs but not a salary. Copy the build and the launch; plan a paid product from the start.
Where it is still open: Narrow pre-purchase helpers in markets with good affiliate programs: hosting, software tools, travel. Each needs a paid layer, because general chat assistants now give the free answer.
- 1Pick one question that people ask before a purchase (which domain, which name) and answer it with an AI model in one step.
- 2Check the answer against a free source of truth, here DNS records, before you show it.
- 3Add affiliate links on launch day; the founder lost a day of commissions by launching without them.
- 4Launch on Hacker News and email a few journalists yourself, one by one.
What could go wrong for Smartynames?
The risks are the mirror image of the causes above.
What is not verified
The only revenue figure, about US$1,000 a month, rests on one statement: Kirill Zubovsky's own interview on Starter Story, published 15 May 2023. The July 2023 Chinese newsletter is a translation of that interview, not a second source. No payment processor, registrar statement or later figure confirms it, and the founder did not split it between commissions, ads and paid plans. A reader could look for an affiliate-network statement or a later post by the founder.
Why it closed
No source gives a reason beyond "Shut down". The archived pricing page of 9 August 2024 says "We have suspended account upgrades till further notice." Internet Archive captures from 12 October 2024 record a server error (HTTP 503) instead of the home page, and Starter Story lists the business as ended in 2025. On 31 October 2026 the domain smartynames.com did not resolve.
At the money floor, and partly ads
About US$1,000 a month is exactly the lowest figure that this site accepts. Part of it was advertising and affiliate commission, which depend on traffic that came in bursts after press coverage.
Names for sale that nobody bought
The 2024 about page said that names found but not bought by visitors were "automatically enhanced and listed for sale" on a premium-domains page. The page said "Millions of Unique Domains Available Right Now", which suggests unregistered names sold through registrar links rather than domains the company owned, but no source says which.
Sources
The grade next to each source is the best grade that the source can support. "Read in full" means that the text of the page was downloaded and the numbers were checked in it.
- D Starter Story, 15 May 2023: I Spent A Weekend Building A Site That Generates Domain Names For Businesses Using AI (interview with Kirill Zubovsky)Read in full on 31 October 2026. The founder's own written answers. The only source for the revenue figure; also the source for the launch, the tools, the team count and the closure note.
- C 独立开发变现周刊 第97期 (Indie Development Monetization Weekly, no.97 (translation)), July 2023, item 5: 周末开发一个AI域名生成网站，月收入1K美金Read the Smartynames section in full, downloaded 31 October 2026. A Chinese translation of the Starter Story interview, so it repeats the same founder statement.
- C GeekWire, 28 January 2023: Putting the AI in domains: Why the new era of artificial intelligence inspires this startup founder (Todd Bishop)Read in full. Journalist's account. Source for GPT-3, the referral-fee model, the early December launch and the 1 million suggestions.
- C Smartynames home page, Internet Archive copy of 9 September 2024, with its page codeRead in full, including the script that sends ad clicks to Lumis, GoDaddy and Jasper and the Google Domains buy button.
- C Smartynames home page, Internet Archive copy of 1 May 2023Read in full. The product at the time of the revenue figure, and the claim of 2 million domains created.
- C Smartynames about page (23 July 2024) and pricing page (9 August 2024), Internet Archive copiesRead both in full. The about page copy is at https://web.archive.org/web/20240723085020/https://smartynames.com/about. Source for the plans, the suspended upgrades, the DNS checks and the AI-written blog.
- C Internet Archive capture list for smartynames.com, read 31 October 2026Read in full. Captures return HTTP 200 until 9 September 2024 and 503 from 12 October 2024.
- C Database of failed startups, local exportLocal export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.