In January of this year, I noticed that Pixy.com changed hands. The domain name had long been owned by Digimedia, and it transferred to GoDaddy under Whois privacy. A couple of months later, the domain name transferred to MarkMonitor, also under Whois privacy.
It is now clear what company acquired Pixy.com. Snap, Inc. announced a new drone camera called Pixy:
A retail technology company called GetUpside, which offers consumers cashback for purchases at retailers, announced it rebranded following a large Series D round of funding. The company shortened its brand name to Upside and acquired its brand match upside.com domain name.
There’s only upside for users, merchants, and our communities – and now we have a name to match! We’ve also completed our Series D fundraising round led by @generalcatalyst. Read more in our CEO’s post: https://t.co/xSJ4CxQgvL pic.twitter.com/HsXnQoT3T2
— Upside (@upside) April 26, 2022
According to the blog post announcing the rebrand and funding round, Upside has achieved unicorn status with a $1.5 billion valuation.
Over the weekend, Tony Names shared a list of domain names he sold that are now developed.
Some of my ex which have been developed:
Lassie. co
Shangrila. io
M3TA. xyz
Vitruvia. co
Zenfit. io
Plover. co
Dealgecko. com
Metaview. io
Wedoit. co
Web3p ay. xyz
Lexaca. com
Supert eacher. co
HeartAndSoul. in
Hydrogel. us
IMSmart. co
DefiFund. vc
DesignCo. co
And Many More…— 💡 Tony (@TonyNames) April 24, 2022
I do not know Tony personally and we’ve only interacted on Twitter, but from what I gather, he is a relatively new entrant into the business of domain investing. This means these domain names were fairly recent sales, and having this many sold domain names developed into websites is quite impressive to me.
Keen Domains shared a video with me on Twitter that seems to reveal a previously undisclosed domain name acquisition. The Acquisition.com domain name is operated by Alex Hormozi, and in the video embedded in the tweet below, he shares that the domain name was acquired for $400,000 $350,000 (see update below):
Alex Hormozi bought Acquisition(.)com for $400K, TS 1:14:11#domains #domainnames #domainname @DInvestinghttps://t.co/9pdRAsYHmn
— Keen Domains (@keendomains) April 23, 2022
$400,000 for Acquisition.com seems like a reasonable price for both buyer and seller.
It’s not every day that we see an exceptional domain name change hands from one major corporation to another. That just happened with the valuable two letter DC.com domain name. Whois records show that DC.com is now owned by DC Comics:
DC.com does not yet resolve to a website, but I suspect the company will forward it to its website on DCComics.com. DC Comics could also choose to relaunch its website on the shorter DC.com domain name.
Finding common ground regarding the valuation of a domain name is often a struggle for a prospective buyer and domain registrant. The buyer usually has one idea about the worth of a domain name and the registrant has another idea. Sometimes both parties can agree on a valuation for a domain name but making a deal is still impossible.
Many domain registrants fall in love with their domain names. There may be a long backstory to how a domain name was acquired, or the domain name may have been in someone’s portfolio for many years. Whatever the reason, it can be difficult for some domain registrants to agree to sell their domain name even if a “fair” offer is made. A prospective buyer will need to offer substantially more than its value to get a deal done.
