The purchase price and terms of the Prosper .com domain name has been hiding in plain sight for almost 10 years.
Prosper is a privately held company that operates in the peer-to-peer lending industry. The company operates on the valuable brand match Prosper.com domain name. I was not aware, but according to an SEC document uncovered by Charley Chacko and shared with me this afternoon, the Prosper.com domain name was purchased for $380,000.
Here’s an excerpt from Proser’s SEC 10-K filing from 2010, which has information about the sale price and terms of the sale:
“In 2006, we entered into a non-interest bearing promissory note in the amount of $380,000 for the purchase of the “Prosper.com” domain name. The note was discounted by $109,583 for a net payable of $270,417. The promissory note includes both principal and interest and is payable in annual installments of $20,000 due on the first, second, third, and fourth anniversary of the note and $300,000 due on the fifth anniversary of the note. Interest on the note was imputed at an 8% annual rate and is amortized to interest expense over the five year life of the loan. The carrying value at December 31, 2010 and 2009 is $288,594 and $286,537, respectively. The fair value is calculated based on discounted cash flows and is estimated to be $278,453 and $258,453 at December 31, 2010 and 2009, respectively. We recorded amortized interest expense of $22,057 and $21,905 for the years ended December 31, 2010 and 2009, respectively.”
Although this filing was made before the domain name was paid-off in full, the fact that Prosper can be found on Prosper.com would seem to indicate the company paid the purchase price to acquire the domain name.
I looked at NameBio and DNJournal, and neither have a sales record for Prosper.com. Assuming Ron is able to add it to the 2006 domain name sales archive, it will end up ranking as 14th largest sale of the year, behind the $450,000 sale of Templates.com. Should Ron add it to the 2011 archive when the final payment was due, it would rank as the 17th largest sale of the year, trailing the $400,000 sale of Look.com.
In looking back on this sale price, $380,000 for Prosper.com seems like a great price for the buyer, especially because the domain name was acquired with a payment plan.
