A thread on Hacker News about Pop.com was trending on Wednesday. In the thread, the Founder of Pop.com, Jahanzeb Sherwani, shared quite a bit of information about the company. In addition, he shared that the company paid “roughly” $1.5 million to acquire the Pop.com domain name. He also shared some additional thoughts about what the domain name means to the company and how it was acquired.
Here are a few excerpts from what Jahanzeb said about the Pop.com domain name in the Hacker News thread:
“Yes, the domain was expensive. Roughly $1.5m. We consider it an asset that is unlikely to depreciate significantly. (The domain actually has an interesting history as a failed precursor to Netflix from Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2000/sep/10/internet….)”
“After starting with screen.so, we realized firsthand the importance of having a name that’s easy to remember and communicate.
Also, instead of viewing the domain as an expense, it’s more of an enduring asset, which potentially increases its value over time.”
“I worked with https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ted0 who was AMAZING at helping find and acquire the domain. I can strongly recommend him as an amazing person to work with. It took a few days to find a domain we loved, and another few days to close the transaction. It was quite an interesting experience!”
I reached out to Jahanzeb on Twitter to ask if he could share more details. In particular, I asked him if he could be more specific about the purchase price so the sale can be officially reported and archived. At the time of publication, I have not received a reply to my message.
Pop.com is currently registered under private Whois at Namecheap. Prior to the transfer of the domain name to Namecheap, it looks like the domain name had been privately registered since at least 2013. I can see the domain name had been offered for sale via broker in 2019. I do not see an active website in the Archive.org database in many years. Using DomainTools Whois History tool, the domain name appears to have transferred from GoDaddy to Namecheap in late August or early September of 2020.
Thanks to George Kirikos for sharing this on Twitter.
Badly sold! Wholesale price.
Snoopy, how many years the seller waited to get $1.5m offer? He could have waited more year’s to get more $$$ and there is no guarantee he would get more $.
$1.5m is good price.
He could have got that price by sending it to auction.
It seems like a fair price to me. Could have sold for more, but I assume over the years he did not have any higher offers, so that is a good indication of what it is worth.