The crazy story of how we got our .com domain

Roboflow, a computer vision dataset management tool, successfully acquired the domain roboflow.com after it had been owned by the German fluid control company Bürkert since 2001. Initially, the domain redirected to Bürkert's homepage after they acquired a company called Robolux in 2005, which had a product named Roboflow, but the product was discontinued and its trademark expired in 2009. Despite initial doubts about obtaining the domain from such a large company, the Roboflow team decided to pursue it as their startup grew, strategically reaching out to Bürkert before announcing any funding to avoid a price hike. After navigating through company contacts, they were eventually offered the domain at a reasonable price, which they accepted, marking a significant milestone in their journey to democratize computer vision for software developers.