Technorati.com has just published an interview with Thunayan Khalid al-Ghanim (also known online as Elequa) who owns Future Media Architects (FMA) a company that should be well known by all domainers for having a killer portfolio of domain names and a reputation for never selling a domain.
So here is the most interesting part of the short interview for me:
“”Future Media Architects (FMA) has built up a portfolio of some 120,000 domain names, valued at over $3 billion.”
Wow $3 Billion, that’s quite a valuation
Or is it?
It works out to just $25,000 a domain on average which is getting to be the sweet spot for a typical brandable domain to an end user.
Of course some of the domain mentioned in the article, are worth well into the six figures and some names like Media.com well into the seven figures.
“His top names include media.com, MultiMedia.com and Music.TV. And unlike most other internet investors seeking to profit from domain names, FMA is known for its rigid policy of refusing to sell the names it owns.””
The interview concentrates on one of FMA latest launches Arabs.com, a website in Arabic and English that he intends to develop into a major online political forum.
Anyway I can’t remember reading an interview with Elequa anywhere so check it out.
“It works out to just $25,000 a domain on average which is getting to be the sweet spot for a typical brandable domain to an end user.”
Just $25,000 over 120,000 domains? C’mon this valuation is for media attention and is not grounded in a price that someone would actually pay.
I vaguely recall reading in an article/online somewhere that he just hoards domains. Supposedly purchased them with family money (billionaires?). Doesn’t develop them (except for a tiny %), doesn’t sell them. Just hoards.
Not possible for me to admire that. It’s like using mom and dads money to purchase blocks of prime real estate in a metro city, where everyone wants to live, then not allowing anyone to see it, rent it, or buy it. Just stare at it and brag about it all day.
Weird.
Snoopy
No one is going to buy his portfolio for $3 Billion, but he is saying the end user retail value is $3 Billion which again at $25K a name is not unreasonable.
Ron Jackson did two interviews with Thunayan years ago, go to DN Journal archives.
I one time got a phone call from Thunayan, and he asked why do all these VC’s keep calling me ?
This was around the Marchex buyout of Yun Ye. He said one firm said to him “everyone needs more money” and he replied “I don’t” It was funny stuff.
@nop
Elequa sounds like a brilliant investor to me – having enough capital to hoard valuable assets, and recognizing that those assets are finite in number.
Which domainer doesn’t do this?…for the exact same reasons? I own a high percentage of ‘hologram’ and ‘sentiment’ dot-coms – which, I suppose, makes me a hoarder as well.
And if I had that type of wealth, I’d take it a step further (than Elequa) by creating an ETF, which has millions of valuable dot-coms serving as the constituents of the portfolio – instead of gold, oil, or equities. Sort of amazes me that no one (or no group) has done this before.
so his thousands of LLL.biz and LLL.info are worth $25,000 on average?
the odd one on a VERY lucky day would get low x,xxx
ok, he has gems like i.net
possibly even 7 figs on the right day, but prob low xxx,xxx
i will see the interview though, thanks
i also don’t respect people just because they buy with mum and dads money and hoard
i dont get it either
media.com is gorgeous though
high 7 figs up imo
sort of priceless
Music.tv is one of his best names?? If so that name isnt worth 25k. And even if it is, that’s just the average.
That valuation is just unrealistic. Gimmie a break
Personally, I like Ibiza.com and Cool.com.
Congrats to Thunayan on Arabs.com. It’s an important project for him.
Wonder whatever happened with his case to get LH.com back from Lufthansa after losing it to them in a domain dispute decision.
@Michael: IIRC Berryhill made them pay for LH.com in the end…non-disclosed of course but certainly not cheap
Elequa,
Congratulations on the interview.
@ Snoopy
“ C’mon this valuation is for media attention and is not grounded in a price that someone would actually pay. “
——–
Considering that most domain portfolios (large or small) usually consist of less than 5% of what is considered to be premium quality domains it seems like most domainers specially those with large portfolios are now actively trying to downsize their collections before they are affected by all the new Apps and the new TLDs, hence the need to get (or to create) some media attention for their domains.
In the near future only domains that have already been turned in to a successful online business can demand million (or billion) dollar price tags, otherwise no one is going to pay some of the prices that we are seeing now for just the domain alone considering all the other choices that are going to be available to them.
(just my opinion)
–
So the question begs? how are they making money? I have seen their sites and I refuse to believe they are covering their nut from a handful of developed sites?
Why argue with the valuation. Even at 1 billion it’s impressive.
FMA has one of the most impressive domain portfolios. Of course not all of those 120 000 domains they own are worth $25k, but they have names that can be sold easily in 5-7 figure range.
If we take into account that many of domains are developed and has a good traffic then this 3billion range isn’t that unreachable.
Thanks for sharing the interview!
Elequa owns a very impressive collection of domains, but is it really as good overall as Yun Ye’s portfolio which fetched $1600 per name in a better economy? I doubt it, but this is just my personal gut feeling, nothing even close to a real appraisal.
I am going to guess that the average value of Elequa’s domains is $1000 per domain.
That’s $120 million.
He can buy all the domains in the whole world for all I care but you can’t buy “BullS”-that what reflects on all the websites.
To me (and probably to him) the $3bn could just as easily be $30bn or a mere $3m, since they are not for sale now and unlikely to be in future who cares?
The arabs.com thing is awesome, people and websites like this can help change the world for the better by empowering others.
He didnt have to do that, plenty of people in that wealth bracket do absolutely sweet FA for their species. Here’s someone actually trying to make a difference and all people can do is sit and bitch.
If he is so damn rich, just buy GoDaddy and capture every conceivable domain names that one can think of and —he can control the internet world.
Plain and simple-Money talks!!
Presumably domain portfolios follow a powerlaw principle. Even if his top stuff is worth 7 figs, there just simply isn’t a way to believably reach 3 billion with 25k average).
What a loser (sarcastic)
Why stop at $3 BN…chump change…when you’re talking fantasy valuations..?
Why not make it meaningful & make it $30 BN ??
The guy has no ambition at all.
LOL
LOL
Another domainer bigging himself up with his fantasy valuation, talking his book
Sorry. He’s dead wrong.
BUYER determines value.
Not the Seller.
Anyone can *impute* (extrapolate) the an average of $25,000 over the number of domains held (in his case, 120,000 domains)
The acid test is finding any entity to pay $3 BN
And why would they?
To park and/or resell the domains (ala Buydomains business model)?
That model earns a paltry return (compared to a fixed income investment)
95%+ of his domains are dogshit, even overall they don’t get that much traffic.
Certainly the majority of the 120,000 domains are nothing to write home about
I never ‘stumble’ over his WHOIS on searches
Does anyone know how much NUT (interest) someone with $3 BN can earn in a year (relatively risk free)?!!
Not even in the go-go years would anyone pay more than AVERAGE $1000 per domain, warts & all, across the whole portfolio.
And fast forward to today, certainly not today.
$25,000 AVERAGE for his dog shit hand regs?
You should see some (tons) of his hand regs someone posted on DNF years ago…LMFAO
Goddamn, even newbies in 2011 would be embarassed…
So he will ‘never sell’…
Right…this chump will DEFINITELY win the prize of “richest domainer in the graveyard”..
Inshallah, mofos!
ps. you .INFO ‘investor’ chumps can thank this xxxx for the buyout & hoarding up all the LLL.biz & LLL.info
If not for him they would be worth $250 instead of $300 reseller prices..LOL
It can be $3 trillion…depends on moon…who knows…bigger than News International…
“Thunayan has launched Arabs.com, a website in Arabic and English that he intends to develop into a major online political forum.
As well as a general discussion area, the site has separate sections including women’s rights, cultural affairs, an archive project collating historical political transcripts, and a section called Transparency, “for whistleblowers to expose scandals and secret files”. Bloggers can also post their own articles or opinion pieces in a separate area.
“Arabs.com is a forum for Arabs by Arabs – and anyone around the world who is interested in Arab issues – from every segment of society, without bias or preference for one voice over another, to create their reality without censorship or guardianship, where each person is responsible for their exercise of free choice and expression,” he explained.”
———-
Brave man, good luck 🙂
“95%+ of his domains are dogshit” agree
and BSdomains =BSsites=BullS
Hope he is reading this blog!!
$25K per domain??? Sweet spot? I got your sweet spot…. RIGHT HERE. Reminds of the sneezing and coughing comments at the end of Animal House.
FMA is known for its rigid policy of refusing to sell the names it owns.””
And so you can ask the money but you still aren’t selling…. So value it at ???? Music.tv??? Hey, guy has a good publicist. Still smells like shit but nice shit with only a mild unpleasant order.
Snoopy
No one is going to buy his portfolio for $3 Billion, but he is saying the end user retail value is $3 Billion which again at $25K a name is not unreasonab
////////////////
In the article the value is claimed to be $3billion. quote “has built up a portfolio of some 120,000 domain names, valued at over $3 billion.”
The owner is a nice guy but this “value” is completely divorced from reality. He surely owns a lot of names worth $25,000, but the average name is not worth that. When you talk about a retail enduser valuation what exactly does that mean, what he can sell 1% of his names at? What he could sell 1% of names at if he actually sold names? Are we calculating a meaningless number here?
Anyone seriously valuing that portfolio would firstly ask what income it is producing. Parking & sales numbers.
Who remembers when Fabulous famously claimed their domain portfolio was worth $500million, then a year later the entire company was bought on a valuation of $30million?
Good article and Arabs.com is an interesting platform from the English articles available there.
I couldn’t even begin to guess at the value of his portfolio, but just looking at the domains mentioned on the FMA site, it has to be fairly substantial.
I’m happy he mentioned Media.Com and Music.TV as his top domains, as the owner of Media.TV that works for me on many levels.
hint: http://macdailynews.com/2010/01/16/saudi_prince_alwaleed_meets_with_news_corps_murdoch_to_discuss_investments/
He certainly has some very nice domains. Funny how jealous people write stupid things.
If he has rich parents he has good genetics and why should you belittle him? He has better domains than you can afford, or will ever own, yet you belittle him? Jealousy ruins domaining.
The second comment was the best – welcome to the REAL WORLD buddy, the one where people are better and smarter than you.
I’d say Elequa is in a better position to value domain names than the bottom feeding (pun intended) keyboard warrior domainers. Good on him for investing in domains and actually developing them.
1) 120,000 domain names? Prove it.
2) He is desperate for media attention/to sell his portfolio. Claim that you will never sell what you have, the rich kid next door will be jealous and will offer more money.
3) He is in deep troubles. 120k domain names – if true – are around $1m renewals per year. He is making what? Not even jack sand % of that. Losing money every year isn’t a good sign to evaluate a portfolio at $3bn.
4) Arabs.com is another bullet-in board? Magnificent.
Wow.. .so many haters.
Tony’s a great guy that has built an impressive portfolio of names. Is it worth $3B? maybe, but he isn’t selling them anyway so it doesn’t matter.
To hate the guy because he has money from other sources is ridiculous.
@Reality – I think there is a real lack of understanding with those comments, particularly the first 3 points.
@Reality Only a moron would make your 1st 3 (completely wrong) assumptions.
as for #4? So what? besides, it is a lot more than that…
Only the cowards hide their identity!!!
Is his portfolio worth a significant amount of money? YES.
@Reality
Why would be lie about the number of domains he owns? Plus DomainTools.com shows 110K domains with his admin email. He also owns his own registrar (i.net)
Covering renewals when you own a large portfolio of great domains is nothing. Ask Frank Schilling, Kevin Ham, Mike Berkens, Mike Mann, etc.
Brad
Brad
“”Covering renewals when you own a large portfolio of great domains is nothing””
Not without selling.
When I went into the business of domaining it was my goal to sell enough domains a year to cover the costs of renewals which I have been able to do each and every year.
Even Frank who for many years did not sell any domains started selling them a few years ago.
Mike Mann whole business model going back to buydomains.com was to sell domain names and he continues to do so in his new venture.
If you don’t sell domains those renew fees are going to hurt a lot.
I believe his domains will ultimately bring a price the market is willing to pay but certainly it is not worth 3 billion dollars because if that’s the case he might as well buy EgyptOnlineRevolution.com, SaudiArabiaMecca.com, SaudiArabiaMakkah.com and Amecca.com which I own.
Heck my 1,000 .com domains portfolio is valued at $2 million and is for sale currently for only $175K because I realize the market on average pays on average $1,500 to $5,000 for a decent generic .com.
Sure prices will continue to climb but for now there are deals out there.
Is this a ‘roast’ ???
(If not familar with the term, search wikipedia for meaning of roast.)
Heck my “BullS” is priceless as it represents all the websites of the internet.
(Godaddy mission- express yourself via domains)
Remember folks, your website is useless if nobody buys anything that can be used or be eaten.
Where are the real products where people can really use or eat and MAde in USA?
I have 500$ Amazon credit ready to use but I got nothing I “NEED”…so amazon is useless ..to me.
Living less and simplicity!!!
Every time you fill your tank you are fueling his habit
Wow… quite the array of comments.
To me he did something he liked, he can afford it, helped market prices, whats the problem.
What a naive valuation… He should definitely read these comments to see the real picture.
Boring, boring, boring. Anyone can take vast sums of family money and make investments. If FMA was an exhibit at the Zoo at the End of the Universe, I can’t see punters giving it more than a cursory glance. Despite the protestations of a small and hyperactive marmoset.
What a joke.
The domain names are pathetic.
Garbage. Not worth anything
Only a few of the domains have sites and they stink.
No content, nothing of value.
Just another rich mamas boy who was given billions to flounder
Obviously not someone who has any business sense
Has billions, buy some companies or start ups. Or at least have people build sites on these domains.
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