Give.com Acquired by HostGator Founder

Earlier this week, Give.com was sold for $500,000 in a sale transacted via Sedo. The Whois record for Give.com updated yesterday, and I learned that the domain name was acquired by Brent Oxley, the founder of HostGator (who sold the company to Endurance International Group for over $200 million).

After seeing the Whois change, I reached out to Brent to learn more about the acquisition and his plans for the domain name.

Brent told me that Sedo’s Dave Evanson emailed him a list of high value domain names he was brokering, and Give.com was on the list. Although Brent was not in the market for a domain name at that time, he had been planning to set up a charity and had not finalized a name for it yet. The email proved to be serendipitous, and Give.com will be used for Brent’s charity.  Commenting on the deal, Dave told me, “I was aware of Mr. Oxley’s outstanding background and was delighted I was able to negotiate a price that made seller and buyer happy.”

Brent shared his vision for how Give.com will be used and when the charity will launch:

I plan to create a charity that has 0% management fees and is 100% transparent. I sold a company called Hostgator a few years back and am blessed to have the financial means to personally cover all of the marketing and administrative costs. Give.com will focus on providing water wells, food, education, and medical assistance to individuals located in 3rd world countries.

The problem with the majority of charities is that you have no idea how the money is spent, or if you are even helping anyone at all! I believe Americans want to give and do more, but that were tried of seeing our donations go towards high salaries, jets, and other luxurious administrative costs.

Give.com will create a bond between those being helped and those donating. Donators’ will receive videos, pictures, and thank you letters in the mail from the very person that they have helped! I believe the social focus will allow the charity to go viral, and for it to become one of the largest charities in the world.

There’ a lot of work to do still so we’re probably a year or two off from launch.

Since selling HostGator.com, Brent has been quite active in the startup space. Interestingly, the startups he is working with have excellent keyword domain names. Some of these include Help.com, Realty.com, eCig.com, and EasyRent.com.

Judging by Brent’s track record, I imagine we are going to hear much more about Give.com when the charity launches. It seems to be the perfect domain name for what Brent hopes to accomplish.