Yesterday, I saw a headline that an AI company called Cognition AI had raised $21 million in funding:
Cognition AI, which offers a Copilot-like coding assistant that, the startup says, can finish whole projects, raised $21M from Founders Fund, Elad Gil, and more (@ashleevance / Bloomberg)https://t.co/xbxGGDOhp1
📫 Subscribe: https://t.co/OyWeKSRpIMhttps://t.co/TsSDhNJqnC
— Techmeme (@Techmeme) March 12, 2024
According to a press release that was published this morning, the Gold.com domain name was acquired by JM Bullion, a subsidiary of publicly traded A-Mark Precious Metals, Inc. Gold.com was brokered by Andrew Miller of ATM Holdings, Inc., in conjunction with Hilco Digital Assets. Gold.com had been registered under Whois privacy, so I am unsure about who sold the domain name. Following the acquisition, JM Bullion now owns Gold.com and Silver.com.
In the press release, the CEO of JM Bullion shared the company’s rationale for acquiring this valuable domain name asset:
Some deals take a very long time to finalize. I have had acquisition and sale negotiations that have gone on for years. Some deals get done and others die on the vine. If you don’t receive a response to an email you sent to a contact at a company, it is a good idea to check LinkedIn to see if they still work there.
I have been involved in many long term negotiations to buy domain names. Oftentimes, the domain name is not being used, so I follow-up every year or so to inquire if anything has changed. If the person with whom I am communicating has left the company, usually there will be some sort of email deliverability notice indicating an email address doesn’t function. This is not always the case. Here’s one such example.
If you have adult-related domain names monetized with pay per click links at Bodis, you may consider changing where you point them. According to an email from the parking service, the company’s upstream advertising provider will no longer allow the monetization of domain names classified as adult. I suspect this may impact other parking services as well.
Here’s the email I received from Bodis with more information about the situation:
For most of my highest value domain names, I send prospective buyers to an Embrace.com inquiry form. These domain names are generally unpriced, allowing me to assess market and business conditions at the time of the inquiry. On the form I use, I require a name and email address, but I also request a phone number.
I try to reply to purchase inquiries in a timely fashion. I think it makes sense to negotiate a deal when the buyer is most interested. I use a stock email reply that is individually crafted for each domain name. This makes it easy to reply to inquiries no matter where I am or what I am doing.
Last year, I had a bit of a curt exchange with someone who wanted to buy one of my one word .com domain names. His offer was very low, and I think I told him he would need a time machine to buy this domain name for his 3 figure offer. He didn’t love that reply and told me I should provide more information about my expectations on the landing page if I don’t want to waste time.
As much as I think prospective buyers should do their research before buying a great domain name in the same way real estate buyers should know the market, this guy was probably more right than wrong. My landing page did not include any information about the value of the domain name nor did it link to a good resource to educate visitors about its value. You can visit Uppercut.com to see a landing page I use that has not been modified.
