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.
While a large downpayment of $150,000 is difficult for some smaller startups, I think it puts skin in the game and mitigates some of the risk associated with the failure of a business on a domain name. If a startup using a domain name fails spectacularly, there is always the risk that people will associate that business with the domain name and its value could be diminished.
Public acquired Public.com from Anything.com, a domain investment company with a portfolio of exceptional domain names. The seller was represented by Larry Fischer of Get Your Domain., and ESQWire.com handled the transaction and escrow. The 2021 sale has been added to the Embrace.com list of recent one word .com domain name sales.
Click through to Leif’s post to see the entire story, and thank you to DomainRetail.com for highlighting this thread on X.
Some folks been sharing their stories on purchasing domain names. Here’s how we got https://t.co/18wpqbwmG0 …
— Leif Abraham (@leifthunder) August 1, 2024
900 K is a fair price for this domain IMHO – win/win for buyer/seller
I’m positive the sellers felt like they’re doing the buyer a favor, both with payment terms and the overall low price, just to now discover they were viewed as “proper sharks”.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Anything.com is a savvy investment company with many large domain name sales. I don’t think they do special or unfavorable deal terms as a favor to a buyer at their own expense. On a quick look, just some of the sales I have noticed and written about from that portfolio include:
Home.com
Blade.com
Eternal.com
Medicine.com
Door.com
Near.com
Snappy.com
AEX.com
I don’t think $900k is a low price for this domain name. Blade.com for $503,000 around the same time was a low price, in my opinion.
I also would have expected a higher price out of this owner. . . . or this price in an all cash deal.