A little over a week ago, I detected a domain name sale with the help of DomainTools and its domain monitor tool. I had been tracking that domain name since it last sold in private, so I contacted the seller to ask if he could share the sale price. He shared the price and some details with me, and I reached out to the platform to confirm and ask a follow up question.

It wasn’t so much the need to confirm the sale price because I trust the seller, but I like to ensure everything is accurate. A representative from the platform told me the company could not confirm the price or share details unless it has permission from the buyer as well as the seller. The company had reached to the buyer, and the buyer did not respond to their query.

I just posted a poll on Twitter asking people if I should share the price in a tweet or my blog, and I would like to know what you think:

On Wednesday, GeekWire reported on the $100 million funding round of a real estate startup called Place. The company is now valued at $1 Billion, and it wisely uses Place.com for its website. Most interestingly to domain investors, the article shared that Place.com was acquired for $3 million. Jeff Eckhaus spotted the sale price and shared it on Twitter:

Buried in article – The company spent $3 million to acquire the https://t.co/NtanMv2sYp domain name

Real estate startup Place comes out of nowhere with $100M round, led by Goldman at $1B valuation https://t.co/sNcDltiK2n via @GeekWire

— eckhaus (@eckhaus) November 19, 2021

Here’s an excerpt from the article discussing the purchase price for the Place.com domain name:

For the last few years, I have found domain investing to be a bit less fun than before. Business has been quite good for the last several years, so it’s not the money issue that has made it less exciting. I haven’t really been able to pinpoint the issue until I was chatting with a friend this morning.

I came to the realization that my usage of buy it now (BIN) pricing on 90+% of my portfolio is making this business less fun. I have nearly all of my inventory listed on Dan.com and GoDaddy with BIN prices. After having the best sales year last year and the first half of the year on fire, I removed the Make Offer functionality on almost all of my Dan.com listings under $10k. People can either buy the domain name for the list price or purchase it via payment plan.

Navigator.com has been acquired by Google. The Whois record for Navigator.com became public for the first time since 2018, and the registrant is now Google LLC. The acquisition was first reported by Jamie Zoch on Sunday morning:

Google LLC acquires ultra premium generic domain name Navigator․com from its past domain owners according to whois records. The domain was under privacy at GoDaddy and has since transferred to corporate registrar MarkMonitor displaying Google. pic.twitter.com/OM7dIkRh7M

— JamiΞ Zoch (@DotWeekly) October 24, 2021

In response to my article yesterday, a couple of people suggested asking for equity from wanna-be startup entrepreneurs who can’t afford to pay for a domain name. I like the idea of having equity serve as upside in a deal, but in practice, it is more challenging than simply asking for and getting the equity.

There are many considerations I make before even considering whether or not to ask a startup for equity in the company. Most importantly, I have to believe in the vision of the founder and team. There are plenty of successful startups that I think suck, but if I can’t see how the company would achieve a valuation that would give me enough upside, I am not going to offer a special deal to sell a domain name.