What is Fund.com Worth Today?

The 2008 sale of Fund.com is one of the largest reported domain name sales of all time. Last week, there was an article that discussed the Fund.com domain name published on Seeking Alpha. The article discussed the history of the domain name and company that owns Fund.com. Interestingly, if you visit Fund.com, you will be forwarded to an offer page via Igloo.com stating “This domain may be available for sale.

This morning, Rick Schwartz posted a question on Twitter asking about the value of Fund.com:

I think Fund.com is an exceptional domain name and also a great brand name. If it were to be sold, I could see it being used as a brand in the mutual fund space or possibly in the loan / funding space. I could see a brand like Fund.com being used by a company that offers business or personal loans and could have a tagline like “We fund your business” or something along those lines.

Fund.com is short, simple to spell, easy to remember, and it passes the important radio test. In short, I still think Fund.com is one of the most valuable domain names.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

23 COMMENTS

  1. >”I still think Fund.com is one of the most valuable domain names”

    Me too, and while I love the king, he’s being silly there, perhaps angling for a lowball acquisition or something.

  2. Other than the traditional investing use, it’s a great name for a ‘go fund me’ type of site. Lots of people, ideas, charities, and start-ups wanting to get funded these days, for various reasons.

  3. All good points, but is it really justified anymore? I own fundr.co which is also very memorable, only one letter more (but same size given there is no “m”) and although it may not be as prestigious, I think a company would rather put the money into marketing and personnel over a multi-million dollar domain name. If they actually have the money to afford a high priced domain, don’t they have the money to market it and create greater awareness with that cash via promotion? Will fund.com return the price of the domain or will their marketing efforts do that? If so, the argument for such an expensive domain seems unjustifiable.

    • I’m honestly not trying to be nasty, but your comment is so out of touch that one has to wonder why you are even at a blog like this or involved in the industry at all. I could be much more blunt but no need perhaps. “fundr.co” is total worthless garbage, there’s no need to hold back about it, could you really not know that? I know I’m being harsh, but honestly it makes sense and there’s no point beating around the bush. I’m doing you a good deed and favor whether it looks that way or not. Elliot knows I’m completely right too though I hope he doesn’t play any bamboozling games by rebuking me for being so harsh with you. Then I’ll have to tell him he’s full of beans and pretending.

      And yes – a domain like that is “justified” anymore, in spades.

    • Tend to a agree, a poorly branded .co cannot be compared to the one word .com gem that is Fund. You could spend $10 Million Dollars on promoting Fundr.Co and it would be forgotten in a week. If I was in the “funding” business there is no better domain/website address to have on my business card

  4. One of the great financial names obviously.

    Finding domain buyers at the $10 Million + level is a monumental task but can be achieved every now and then if you have the necessary skills, contacts, patience, and more than a pinch of good luck.

    • Rate.com is worth whatever the end-user is willing to pay for it. I believe it is worth seven figures and was waiting 20 years to either develop it or sell it. $750k was a fair price at the time and I registered it for $100 back in 1997. That is s nice return.

      I had a talk about Rate.com last night with a friend over a cigar. The money from that sale was great and what was even better, was that the company that purchased it was using the name in the capacity that I had always hoped it would. Having Rate.com on national television and being seen by almost everyone is not only helping the.com space but helping my portfolio of similar names. I felt the same way when I sold PebbleBeach.com to the The Pebble Beach Company knowing that it would also help with the visuals and viability for my PalmSprings.com.

      We can justify our purchases or sales however we want. There will be more and they will make a huge difference to those that own them. The .com sales space has been the slowest I’ve seen it in a very long time lately. Maybe Rick is seeing the same slowdown but I know that the single-word generic .coms are going to be big sellers very soon. Shoes.com selling to Walmart is a sign that bigger sales are coming and that the new extensions have found there limits. There is clarity again in the domain sales arena.

      I’ve watched this cycle since 1996 when I sold my first domain name Powwow.com for $25k.

    • I keep hearing about slowdown in domain market but quite honestly getting more inquiries on wider variety of domains (from actual small business end users directly) than ever before going back to 1999.

      Dont have big portfolio maybe 800 domains primarily concentrated on few segments. Very small sample size. Haven’t closed deals because I want a little piece of the pie going forward and not just a straight sale. Small biz doesn’t seem to like. Not particularly interested in selling domains for dollars, euros, crypto.

  5. Normally in the past I would have suggested a domain like this should go up for auction in NYC at Heritage Auctions, but with Black.com recently for sale through them for an absurdly low $750k and the recent murky news regarding OC.com, I’d be inclined to doubt the wisdom of that. Now if Sotheby’s was doing IP and domain names, then definitely yes…

    • The value of Black.com is relative to the times. Right now, it would be a good sale at $500k. It’s an open-vessel name and could serve a company like Jet.com did but as a generic, it has its limitations. Shoes.com is obvious in the public’s expectations. Black.com? Not so much. Will it be worth much more in the near future? Yes

      Everything is timing.

    • I see your point but I disagree with your valuation. Empty vessels are the best sellers right now from a frequency and price standpoint. Hope to prove you wrong when Black.com sells for more than Rate.com did, but I know it could go both ways who knows. Im making a calculated bet (I bought it from HA). Nothing ventured nothing gained.

    • Well Michael, I am an anonymous nobody who still prefers to stay that way and you are a famous big cheese in domain investing. So both I’m reluctant and it’s a bit hard to argue with you from my anonymous ursine platform, and I hate to do it because normally I kind of like you and have seen some of your domains which I like. However…

      I’ll be honest with you, and I’m just being honest – sometimes it’s really as if some of you guys are engaging in trying to manipulate the market down for whatever reasons one might care to speculate, such as perhaps to be able to pick up great domains cheap on a downturn for instance. That’s how bad it is when I see some of the comments by some industry luminaries such as yourself here now. I also made that clear in my first post above about Fund.com. That is also the possibility impression I got from the original announcement about Black.com, for example, and later relating to OC.com as well.

      Oh, and before anyone may wish to say this or that for having an extreme thought like the above, consider that this anonymous ursine troll for a time once worked on the same floor as his home state’s two US senators, pinstripe suit, security clearance and all. You might say I was paid by the American public no less to consider such thoughts and possibilities and consider them well. 🙂 And that’s just one part of my life story.

      Otherwise how do you even explain some of these things? Going back further, how do you explain, for instance, a great domain like LA.com going for only $1.2 million and some of the industry luminaries with a platform then being all to eager to bow down, drink, and also serve to others the Kool-Aid of “good sale, good sale”? You don’t, really. That was ridiculous then and is ridiculous now. And notwithstanding your own past success and experience, $500k is ridiculous for a domain like Black.com, among other strange domain “ridiculomena” and “ridiculosities” lately (I just made up those words, which seems like a good idea at the moment).

      Now in your case, by the way, I do not believe there is anything intentional. I suspect you have simply lost your way as far as this goes.

      Now another possibility is that some of the luminaries really do the above, while others unwittingly follow along or are misled. It happens to the best of us.

      Another possibility is that some of the luminaries have simply lost perspective and lost vision. You yourself certainly had vision in the 1990’s, a vision I certainly wish I had then, but it does seem that you have lost your vision in this regard now.

      Another possibility is that they have forgotten why domain names are and were valuable to begin with and how to value them. Instead they have turned aside to only look at visible buyer behavior instead of exercising a sensible vision with respect to a domain name itself, the perspective of a real end user, and a given domain name’s real world potential and psychological cachet (there really does seem to be a *lot* of that going around).

      So to summarize now and without going into various elaborations, some of which Elliot himself already did above regarding some of this, Black.com is worth millions, not less; Fund.com is worth millions, not less; LA.com is worth millions, not less. And that has nothing to do with merely whether someone is willing to pay but rather with the true utility in every sense of these great domains and others like them. And that is also simply plain, sober and realistic for now, despite any current “market conditions” evidenced by visible and reported buyer behaviors, not only for times past or some hoped for possible future.

      Too many people are beating a drumbeat of negativity and have lost sight of why truly great domain names of every length, both short and long, are valuable to begin with. (And lookout for the still comatose still sleeping giant .US to awaken some day because it doesn’t and never had to be that way, but that’s another topic just wanted to plug here.)

    • Great content John. You are a smart person and know how to get people to engage.

      You use the title luminaries like we are the Illuminati. I cannot speak for the others, but for me, my engagement is about survival. I usually price estimate much higher than most but timing dictates what kind of return you’ll get. If you’ve read the article on estimating my portfolio to be worth $1.2 billion, it is because I “know” what these kinds of names are worth for the future. Does it matter now? To most, no. Everyone has an opinion. That does not mean I will sell my portfolio now for that much, but I have held the same belief in my portfolio for 25 years. Nothing happening now is going to change that. What matters most to me are the sales that dictate the market, some I which, I have had the pleasure to develop and sell. As I told my 84 year old mother today; “we survived well over the years”. I still have many options and, in my view, the keys to the future, i.e. single word generic .coms that have daily use. If you’ve read any of my interviews over the last 15 years, I’ve been saying the same things over and over.

      You wonder what may be my ulterior motive to post here. I get that a lot. It is healthy to be skeptical, but the fact is, I am not buying any more generic .coms. I already have enough sitting on the shelves collecting Dust.com. I am buying future technology .coms like BeeHiveDwelling.com, TaxiTower.com and GnosticNews.com. I’m not keeping anything away from anyone. Call me, (888) 769-4764, email me; michael@ccin.com or write me on FB (no time for twitter). I will always make the time for conversation. I see myself no greater than anyone else here. I just have a different timeline.

      I don’t buy the new strings even though many times I have promoted some of the gTLDs like dot Club. I have never gotten a penny, nor a word, from the registry. It doesn’t matter. I call it like I see it. I prefer to see people succeed. The only way I can do that is by telling people the truths of what has helped me to survive in this industry. LIFE- that is another matter.

  6. It is definitely a slow summer so enjoy the good weather while you can. Looking forward to the next month or so, at least from a domaining standpoint, when things usually pick up again.

  7. Everyone always complains about summer sales being bad but large corporations never close so not sure who came up with that.

    I can understand Mom and Pop type domain buyers under 10k but with mega premium names it shouldn’t make a difference.

    • I have one large deal on hold until the end of August because the chief procurement officer is on vacation.

      I also had a couple of deals held up earlier this summer because the decision makers were out for “summer Friday. ”

      Business does continue, but many companies have employees who take vacations during the summer.

  8. My best sales usually occur in January. Summer always has been a dry time for my domains. Lots of offers, but few in the ballpark I’m seeking.

    @Michael Anthony Castello
    You had an amazing ROI for Rate.com — and that’s super.

    I’ve had buyer’s remorse a few times. But I’ve rarely had seller’s remorse. Make a profit and move on. We all have financial responsibilities — and we do what we have to do.

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