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Public.com Acquisition Price Becomes Public

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If you watch any of the financial news television channels, you have probably seen commercials for Public. In 2023, I wrote about why Public upgraded its domain name from HelloPublic.com to Public.com. At that time, Co-Founder Jannick Malling shared insights behind the company’s domain acquisition of Public.com.

This afternoon in a thread on X, Public Co-Founder Leif Abraham shared how much his company paid to acquire Public.com – $900,000. Public was able to acquire the domain name with a payment plan, allowing it to leverage the domain name to grow its business while paying for the domain name over time.

According to the thread, the company put down an initial payment of $150,000. The company agreed to pay $4,000/month for 36 months with a lump sum payment of $606,000 at the end of the term. Public ended up paying it off within 18 months.

James Booth Sells KOKO.com via Atom for $1 Million

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James Booth reported a 7 figure deal this morning on X. James announced the sale of KOKO.com for $1 million. The domain name was sold via Atom.com.

James reported that his hold time for this domain name was a short six months. I reached out to James to ask about the deal, and he let me know it was paid in full.

The Creative Way Loom Got Loom.com

Shahed Khan is the Co-Founder of Loom, a video-based work communication tool. The company operates on its brand matching Loom.com domain name, but that wasn’t always the case.

This afternoon on X, Shahed shared the creative way his company was able to acquire Loom.com for $150,000 in 2018. Having Loom.com certainly helped the company. In fact, it was acquired by Atlassian for $975 million in 2023.

Here’s the first post in Shahed’s thread. You’ll want to click through through to X to read the entire story.

The Zoe.com Trade

Yesterday, TechCrunch published an article about Zoe, a startup that recently raised $15 million in additional funding. To date, Zoe has raised $118 million in funding. Notably, this startup uses the brand matching Zoe.com domain name for its website.

In looking at some internal pages on Zoe.com, I was able to see the company got its start on the off-brand JoinZoe.com domain name. Wisely, JoinZoe.com now forwards to Zoe.com.

There’s Always Some Self-Doubt

I would imagine the average sell through rate (STR) for most domain investors is below 3%. If you have a domain portfolio with 1,000 domain names, that would amount to 30 domain name sales per year. If the rate is much higher, I think it probably means the seller’s prices are too low. The trouble with this, in my opinion, is the difficulty in replacing these assets once sold.

Mike Cyger posted a poll on X asking people if they have self-doubt about their domain investing strategy and tactics:

ASAP.com for Sale in Bankruptcy Auction

ASAP.com and related domain names are coming up for sale in a bankruptcy auction. These domain names are owned by a food prep and delivery service called ASAP, which was previously known as Waitr Holdings. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April, according to Nation’s Restaurant News.

The online bankruptcy auction is being managed by Heritage Global Partners. In addition to the ASAP.com domain name and an assortment of intellectual property, other domain names being auctioned include AlcoholASAP.com, BiteSquad.com, ASAPLiquor.com, ASAPPot.com, EATAsap.com, MarijuanaASAP.com, LiquorASAP.com, MunchiesASAP.com, and quite a few others.