Instant Domain Search was built in 2005 by Beau Hartshorne after attending Y Combinator’s inaugural Startup School at Harvard. After the day of lectures, Beau was eager to launch a startup. He had a few ideas, but was frustrated with how slow WHOIS queries are–and how hard it is to find a good name. He found out VeriSign publishes a list of domain names in a giant zone file every night. Beau was able to index the millions and millions of .com domain names and built the Instant Domain Search website. Just start typing! If the domain name you are looking for is taken, you can click WHOIS to find out who registered it or the URL to visit the website.