World.com, Asia.com, USA.com and Japan.com are just a few of the marquee names the former investment bankers have snapped up. At last count the two owned more than 1,000 URLs, many representing geographical areas (Singapore.com, Europe.com) or professions (Lawyer.com, Scientist.com).

With the dot-com craze still blowing strong, this portfolio of names is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Just the top 16 URLs, if sold on the open market, could fetch nearly $45 million, according to Forbes.com estimates. Not bad, considering that some were purchased for just a few bucks.

Says Millin: “We registered, traded, bought as we worked our way to a dominant position. Some names were bought in the thousands and some for $5 (million) to $10 million apiece, but we believe they can be billion-dollar properties.”

Gorman, 45, and Millin, 30, met while working at the investment banking division of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. They began acquiring URLs back in 1995, with the acquisition of e-mail services company Vanity Mail Services. Vanity Mail had registered 544 names–mostly for free or $50 a pop–but didn’t have the cash on hand to pay off the $50 annual charge for so many names.

Gorman and Millin began by offering expanded e-mail services under the brand name iName. The idea was that certain corporations and individuals would want an e-mail address such as johndoe@journalist.com. Initial reaction was so positive the two began investing in additional names, acquiring email.com, Asia.com, Singapore.com and Europe.com.

In January 1999 the firm, backed by venture capital firms Cleveland-based Primus and Princeton, N.J.-based Sycamore, changed its name to Mail.com    mail   . Mail.com currently comprises 14.6 million e-mail boxes, more than 8,500 corporate customers and outsourced e-mail services of some 50 Web and ISP partner sites such as Bell Atlantic    bel   , CNet    cnet   and iWon.com. The company has also provided programs for over 300 advertisers to reach targeted audiences.

Sounds impressive, but Mail.com’s services come pretty cheap and the company remains a long way from profitability. In the most recent quarter ended March 2000, Mail.com lost more than $23 million on sales of just $10 million.

This of course makes one wonder why Mail.com execs don’t simply liquidate their domain name portfolio and pass the proceeds on to their suffering shareholders. (Mail.com closed on Thursday night at $5.69, more than 80% off its 52-week high of $29.) Amazingly, despite receiving offers as high as $30 million for domains like India.com, Mail.com insists that its online realty is not for sale.

“We could have taken the path of least resistance. But we decided to do it the hard way,” says the Australian-educated Gorman. “Our core competency is to develop these properties quickly and in turn create shareholder wealth.”

He likens the strategy to owning a vacant lot in midtown Manhattan: Each would be worth more as developed properties. “You can either sit on it or develop it,” he says.

Beginning with World.com and Asia.com, Mail.com is building its properties into standalone properties that focus on content and services in the areas of business-to-business, business-to-consumer and e-commerce. Over the past few months, senior Mail.com executives have been scouring the Asia-Pacific region, looking for incumbent firms with which to add some fat to the domain names.

Eventually, the hope is to spin off the individual sites as independent public companies. Millin says the firm plans initial public offerings before the end of the year for several of its overseas properties, among them Asia.com and India.com. While Millin says that the firm hasn’t made a final decision on which markets would be approached, he doesn’t rule out a dual listing on Nasdaq and Hong Kong’s new Growth Enterprise Market (GEM).

Some observers endorse Mail.com’s approach of building up its Internet realty.

“URLs are going to become less important as addresses. Today’s and tomorrow’s search engines make sites easily findable to the average Net user.”“They are obviously very valuable,” says Jon Whelan, co-chief executive of AFTERnic.com, a New York-based domain name marketplace. “A developed site is more valuable than an underdeveloped property.”

Undoubtedly. But turning even a handful of Mail.com’s successful e-businesses will require heaps of time, money and commitment. Clearly the firm should consider selling some of its major domain names and concentrate on developing maybe five properties.

But Mail.com may have already missed the boat. With tech stocks still in the tank and the IPO market as dead as disco, one prominent Asian Internet executive says that if the company were to put some of the names on the market today, strong returns would be unlikely. “Given today’s sentiment, I think people are less willing to pay a big sum for a domain name,” says Kee-Lock Chua, president and CEO of Singapore-based MediaRing.

Other factors to consider: The introduction of new top level domain names (new addresses that end in suffixes other than .com, .net, .gov, etc.), possibly later this year, could threaten the value of existing cyberrealty. Also, smarter Web browsers–which will find what you are looking for without the user having to tap in a cumbersome URL–mean that dot-com names won’t be as attractive as they once were.

Says Canadian Internet guru Don Tapscott: “URLs are going to become less important as addresses. Today’s and tomorrow’s search engines make sites easily findable to the average Net user.”

Some believe Mail.com has been slow on the switch in terms of entering the Asian market. Incumbents crowding its space include such powerhouses as Singapore-based Pacific Internet    pcntf   , which, using its acquired ISPs in the region, has launched ambitious plans to create B2C and B2B Web portals in many of the markets Mail.com is eyeing.