CrunchBase reported that an insurance startup called Coya received $10 million in seed funding at the end of August. A quick check showed that the company is operating its business on the Coya.com domain name, which had previously been owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration. Jamie Zoch reported the sale of Coya.com at the end of July, although the price was not published.
I reached out to one of the founders of Coya via email to ask what the company paid to buy the domain name and what url the company was using prior to the acquisition. Unfortunately, I did not hear back from him.
I also reached out to Jeff Gabriel, Vice President of Sales at Uniregistry. Jeff let me know that the domain name was brokered by Ryan May of Uniregistry, and the sale price for the Coya.com domain name was a very reasonable $22,500.
Ryan shared his thoughts about the deal and how it was a win for both parties:
The most rewarding part of brokering domains is watching companies act on their potential in an intelligent manner and helping them realize that potential. In the case of Coya.com, we were able to get a four letter pronounceable .com address that stands as the pillar of this company’s online marketing, at a price that made sense for the seller (Frank). Both parties walked away ecstatic with the deal, which is always the end goal for me.
I think it was smart for Coya to purchase the exact match Coya.com domain name. The price was more than fair, and the price would have likely increased had the company not acquired the domain name before launch and referred to itself as Coya despite not having the exact match domain name.
Way too cheap.
Don’t be so coy about how you feel about it.
I’m surprised shilling let it go so cheap.
I guess he needed some more money to pay for namejet auctions
Cheap for Frank, I would have thought they got close to $40-60k for this.
Was probably just priced as a 4 letter .com. I’m assuming very little was known about this company at the time they bought it.
If they couldn’t get coya.com for under 30k they probably would have bought doya.com. Thousands of alternatives.
A “coya” was an Incan emperor’s first wife. Not exactly a household word/brand. In other words, good luck finding endusers. 22.5K is a little low, but it wasn’t exactly a firesale. That name would’ve stayed sitting on the shelf for a long time.
I agree with David.
Did Unireg know who the buyer was and the funding/plans for the name, or did the buyer keep that hidden?
A fair price, I think. Frank just picked up lxl.com for a bit more than that.