It’s not often that we hear from the founders of a company to discuss why they spent what they did to acquire a specific domain name. Yesterday, CoFounders Co-Founder Chris Koerner shared the rationale behind his company’s $65,000 acquisition of the CoFounders.com domain name:
We spent $65k on a one word domain name, and it was a stupidly easy decision. Below is our thought process.
In fact, we named the company around the domain name, and not the other way around. Why?
1. Instant credibility for the only audience that matters – ours
2. 80-90%… pic.twitter.com/xczNGwlJOK
— Chris Koerner (@mhp_guy) February 20, 2024
CoFounders is an incubator and holding company, so CoFounders.com matches its brand name. Instead of operating on an alternative extension or appending a word with .com, the business opted to spend $65,000 to get the perfect domain name for “instant credibility.” Chris felt the domain name was worth far more than the company spent to acquire it.
I reached out to ask when the domain name was acquired and how it was acquired, but I did not receive a response.
From what I can tell using DomainTools, the domain name transferred from GoDaddy to Namecheap in early 2023. Because it was registered under Whois privacy before and after the transfer, this does not clear up when the domain name was acquired. However, the successful transfer screenshot in Chris’ tweet indicates a transfer to GoDaddy, so my guess is the acquisition was at least a year ago.
There is a flaw in his judgement though. I don’t think most people would consider “cofounder(s)” a single word. Theres a prefix in front of the word. A one word might have cost in the six digit. If I had to guess I would say that domain would cost $100k roughly. Still a great domain.