FormulaBot.com: How a Microsoft C&D Led to a Better Domain
David Bressler was eight months into building ExcelFormulaBot.com when the letter arrived. Microsoft's legal team wanted to talk about his use of the word "Excel."
It was a cease and desist. And it looked like a disaster.
The Excel Formula Generator
David had built ExcelFormulaBot.com to solve a common problem: people who use Excel but struggle to write complex formulas. His tool used AI to generate the exact formulas users needed, translating plain English requests into working Excel functions.
The domain was descriptive and perfect for SEO. When people searched for "Excel formula help" or "Excel formula generator," ExcelFormulaBot.com was exactly what they were looking for.
For eight months, David built the product, acquired users, and refined the platform. Everything was going according to plan.
Then Microsoft's lawyers showed up.
The Microsoft Problem
The cease and desist was clear: Microsoft owns the trademark for "Excel," and David's use of it in his domain name violated their intellectual property rights.
For a bootstrapped founder, facing off against Microsoft's legal team is terrifying. This wasn't a negotiation between equals. Microsoft had unlimited resources and an army of lawyers. David had a small SaaS product and a domain he'd invested months of work into.
The options were limited:
- Fight Microsoft in court (impossibly expensive)
- Rebrand entirely (lose all the SEO and recognition built up)
- Find a better domain and pivot (risky but potentially salvageable)
David chose option three.
The $500 Solution
David found FormulaBot.com available for purchase from an individual owner. The price? $500.
It was a fraction of what the domain might have cost on the open market. More importantly, it solved his immediate problem: he could rebrand without "Excel" in the name, making Microsoft's lawyers go away.
But there was an unexpected benefit David hadn't anticipated.
The Unexpected Blessing
ExcelFormulaBot.com was limiting. The name locked him into one specific use case: generating Excel formulas. What about Google Sheets users? What about other spreadsheet platforms? What about expanding into broader analytics capabilities?
The name made all of those expansions awkward.
FormulaBot.com, by contrast, was flexible. It could mean formulas for any platform. It could expand beyond spreadsheets entirely into other types of formula generation and AI-powered analytics tools.
The Microsoft cease and desist didn't just force a rebrand — it freed David to think bigger.
The Evolution
After the transition to FormulaBot.com, David expanded the platform's capabilities. No longer constrained by the "Excel" brand association, FormulaBot evolved into a multi-purpose, AI-powered analytics platform.
The tool still generates Excel formulas (ironically, better than ever). But it also supports Google Sheets, handles complex data analysis, and offers a range of AI-powered features that would have felt out of place under the ExcelFormulaBot brand.
Today, FormulaBot serves users across multiple platforms and use cases—an evolution that the original domain would have made confusing and awkward.
David Bressler reflects on Microsoft's cease and desist as the best thing that could have happened to his business. He spent $500 on FormulaBot.com to escape a legal problem. What he actually bought was the freedom to build a bigger, better business.
And Microsoft's lawyers? They inadvertently did him a favor.