bizjournals.com, covered what they considered to be very successful companies located in DC that own great domains in a post entitled “The golden domain names of D.C. Tech”
I quite an opposite approach to the Forbes article which portrayed those that acquired great domain names in the 1990’s as less than great businessman.
The article covers MicroStrategy Inc. and its CEO Michael Saylor, which accumulated domain names like hope.com, alert.com, usher.com, wisdom.com. Michael.com and mike.com from 1995-2000.
The article goes on to cover Personal.com: a data management startup, led by CEO Shane Green, “has a spacious Georgetown office and backing from Revolution Ventures and Grotech Ventures, among others. But its domain name stands out as its most enviable asset”.
Alarm.com: A company that was built off another MicroStrategy which became a Web-enabled home and business security systems, co-founded by Alison Slavin. MicroStrategy sold its stake in Alarm.com to ABS Capital Partners in 2009 for $27.7 million.”
DNA.com: owned by a synthetic biology company Intrexon Corp., which went public in August
Revolution.com: owned by Steve Case one of the co-founders of AOL ” landed a great domain name for his investment firm, Revolution LLC.”
Repair.com: although the company apparently shut down last year as a “appliance repair scheduling platform” the article notes “whatever went wrong, it certainly wasn’t the domain’s fault”.
Nice to see a publication that “gets” the value of a domain and notes the value it brings to building out a successful business
Hello MHB
We agree with you that Bizjournals.com truly gets it. We owe them a high five for writing an article on our web site.
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
DNA.COM is perfect for a site of cheap DNA tests
Thanx – I commented to it!
DNA and Alarm impart meaning to the companies they represent, as does Care.com, you wrote earlier secretly filed for IPO. Some brandable one words I like are:
Frost.com <== Frost and Sullivan
Orange.com <== French telecommunication company
Visa.com
Lemon.com <== Mobile Wallet
Avenue <== plus-size women's fashions – I shop there! It's amazing.
“Most founders are forced to improvise, whether through conspicuous vowel omission (Spinnakr.com, Cont3nt.com), adopting a .co TLD (hinge.co, tech.co) or using the country code for Libya or Montenegro (urgent.ly, ID.me).”
Or, if your company is BizJournals.com aka American City Business Journals and you want a domain, you hire an “agent” to use a fake name and lie to me about his true intentions in order to purchase a domain name.
Happened to me when, little did I know, ACBJ bought MiamiBusinessJournal.com from me.
VERY unethical business practice by American City Business Journals.
ACBJ admitted to me that they used an “agent” to purchase the domain from me. When I pressed them for answers, they referred me to their attorney who refused to answer my questions but did admit to using an “agent” in his words.
So, ACBJ does appreciate a good domain name AND has no problem using deceptive business practices to keep the price down.
@ Rob Sequin, lol – BizJournals REALLY get domains! 🙂
Rob
I wouldn’t call the practice of using agents to buy domains without identifying themselves as deceptive business practices or unethical
I call it business.
Your should know that every brand protection company from MarkMonitor to Fairwinds has either an in-house alternative company(s) that they use to acquire domains on behalf of clients and many public companies use agents even domain brokers to acquire domains for them.
This is why we always tell people to disregard whom the buyer represents themselves to be and price the domain as they are dealing with the highest and best buyer.
If you are you get the sale at the price the domain is worth and if your not then you just have the wrong buyer.
Mike,
As an active domain buyer broker in this industry, I certainly understand about buying domains for a client.
However, when an “agent” lies about his name and intentionally misleads the domain owner about his intentions and hides the fact he is representing a client, that, to me anyway, is unethical.
That is the whole point of having a buyers agent so the buyer remaining unidentified
i think agents should not straight out lie about why they want the domain. they don’t even need to go there most of the time. its highly insulting and offending when you get an email from one of these ‘agents’ who uses lies like they need it for a student project, or their kids little league team. talk about pathetic. do they need to reveal who they are buying for? no but don’t treat me like a fool.
R. E. = ” This is why we always tell people to disregard whom the buyer represents themselves to be and price the domain as they are dealing with the highest and best buyer.
If you are you get the sale at the price the domain is worth and if your not then you just have the wrong buyer. ”
Bravo, Michael for revealing this professional nugget we subscribe to !
Gratefully, Jeff schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)