Alan is a European “digital health insurance platform” that uses the Alan.EU domain name for its website. Founded three years ago, the startup that is known simply as Alan has raised $86.5 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The company announced that it had raised €40,000,000 in its Series B round of funding in February of this year.
It looks like the company used some of this funding to acquire the brand match Alan.com domain name. If you visit Alan.com, you are forwarded to its website on the .EU domain name. It remains to be seen if the company plans to move its website to Alan.com or keep the .com domain name as a forwarder, both for email and for web traffic.
From what I can tell using DomainTools, it looks like Alan Dunn, founder of NameCorp, was the registrant of Alan.com prior to the transfer to the insurance startup. Using the DomainTools Whois History tool, it appears Alan Dunn became the domain registrant in early January, and it transferred to the current registrant in mid-January. Whois privacy prevents me from knowing for certain though.
I reached out to Alan Dunn to see if he could share the sale price or otherwise comment about the sale of Alan.com, and he told me the following:
“Life is full of surprises. Bonne chance aux nouveaux propriétaires!”
My guess is that Alan Dunn acquired the domain name from the former long-time registrant for his own purposes. The insurance startup may have been monitoring the domain name, and when they saw that Alan Dunn had acquired it, they made him an offer he could not refuse.
I think acquiring the Alan.com domain name was a smart move for the insurance company, and I would imagine it was a good move for Alan Dunn as well.
Looks like the long time registrant died in 2017 and I’m guessing his wife sold it to Alan. Sucks for them i guess.
I don’t think it is fair to say that without knowing the details.
I do believe the former registrant was the late Alan Colmes, of Hannity & Colmes fame on Fox.
Right, I never made the connection as I don’t pay attention to American political news. Probably not hurting for money then.
Also, probably received many offers over the years, so I presume it was quite expensive.
Yeah, its anyones guess what it went for. Alan bought it for 100k sold it for 1 million? Who knows.
Unlikely to have sold at that level if it sold in 2 weeks.
First one words now first names also selling like hot cakes 🙂
Upgrade from .eu to .com. VERY smart.
Anyone that answers with “Life is full of surprises” got paid really well. I would easily say at least 1 million..
Why would you say “easily $1million”? Most of these types of names are selling in the high 5 – low six figure range. There has been one 7 figure sale reported this year, versus dozens of one word .com’s selling in 5 and 6 figures.
Because when these companies get big funding they burn through money like water.
Have you ever heard of a company raising under $100 million and then spending “7 figures” on a domain? Would be extremely uncommon and the perceived waste would likely effect future capital raising.
I think you are thinking about how thing worked in the year 2000 where investors weren’t watching where the money went. Today big investors basically run these companies. Most of these types of sales are low 6 figs, sometimes in the 5’s.
I presume they are generating revenue, so it’s not like they are taking a % of their cash to buy a domain name.
Also, a company raising close to $100 million could have a $500 million or $1 billion or more valuation. It wouldn’t be shocking for a company with a $750 million valuation to spend seven figures on a domain name.
As I mentioned, I have no idea whatsoever about what was paid for the domain name and would not even wager a guess.