Earlier today we wrote about AO.com going public making the founder a very wealthy guy.
George Kirikos just found out that the domain was recently acquired by the company in March 2013 for approximately £391,000, which based on the exchange rate of £1.5205 the domain sold for just about $600,000.
George notes that on Page 104 of the AO.com prospectus, they bought 2 domains for £391,000 total, and given the dates, that was mostly for AO.com. The other domain they acquired at the time was AO.co.uk
Prior to acquiring the domain name AO.com the company used appliancesonline.co.uk as their main site.
So from a $600K purchase in 2013 to a public company with a valuation in the billions.
Thanks George
The Russian who sold the AO.com domain name for under $600K last year is probably crying into his vodka, given the amount he left on the table.
crying into his vodka
love that
I don’t think a $600K sale is necessarily worth crying about, how much do you think he could have gotten?
Wonder if the seller knew who he was dealing with.
Maybe crying into his Whisky if he read today’s DNJournal cover story.
I think many who have been there would agree that selling a domain name is child’s play compared to the risks and sweat involved in building a company and then attempting to take it public.
So in this case, $600K is a nice payday. $900 million is a much nicer payday, but building a business takes an incredible amount of extra effort to get there, and even after all that, most who work their butts off trying won’t find this kind of success, if they find any success at all.
So, “money left on the table”? It’s all relative, but who cares when $600K will buy more than enough bottles of vodka to cover countless tables.
$600K buys a lot of vodka to cry about 😉