Last night, I read Anthony Ha’s TechCrunch article about a startup called Wedgies.com and the company’s seed funding round of $700,000. The company has some very cool social media polling tools, and it seems that others agree enough to invest in the company.
The company’s products seem interesting, but I was most interested in learning more about the Wedgies.com domain name. There often seems to be a great story when a startup acquires an excellent domain name in the aftermarket and is willing to share that story publicly. After doing a bit of research on the domain name, I learned that the founders have a very unique story about how it was able to buy Wedgies.com.
In fact, the acquisition story was already told in 2012 by Michael Carney on Pando Daily. If you have not read that article yet, I recommend checking it out because it’s a great story that you couldn’t make up.
To make a long story very brief, the company founders were operating their business on the Spanish ccTLD Wedgi.es, when they decided they needed to buy the matching Wedgies.com domain name. As Carney said in his Pando Daily article, it was “[c]ute, but certainly not as cool as the real thing.” The company founders had a difficult time tracking down the registrant of the Wedgies.com domain name, and when they did track him down with some outside help, he made a unique request from them in order to initiate a negotiation to buy the domain name.
I’ll let you read the Pando article for all the details, but they eventually were able to secure an acquisition for what I think is a very fair price. This is definitely a unique story that I’ve never heard before, and you’ll want to read it when you have a chance.
Stories like these show how much effort a startup will go through to get their ideal domain name.
Interesting story. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Morale of the story… dealing with a parolee with a good domain name is easier than negotiating for a lot of other domains. 😉
For all you old schoolers sometimes plurals do make great brands. 🙂
Just lost a nice plural exception I’d bid on because I was away and unavailable for the auction. I have the singular though.
I cringe when I see people trying to ramp up businesses on stuff like domain hacks like .es or .ru, for a North American marketplace. I would assume ok for a startup, but if you are serious about being taken at face value, for sure good call.
I agree that it was a wise decision, especially at that time.
It’s generally much more expensive to buy the .com domain name for a hack after the company has had success, especially if they’ve raised outside funding (and the info is publicly available).
Got a real good price at <$10K too.
Dear phone company,
I can not get someone to return my phone messages. Please turn off their phone. When they contact you please tell them to contact us. Thank you phone company.
sincerely,
Mr. Lowballer
lol
At the time of the Wedgies PR stunt article, I contacted the former owner, who stated there are some ” VERY significant inaccuracies ” in the coverage.
As he did not follow up with details, I can only relay this much.
Very intriguing.
How did he get into domaining in the early 90s and if he had stayed clean and sober, he could be the Domain King!!!.
When he was in jail, who paid for the renewal of his domain?
Sounds like he may never have gotten into domaining at all, but rather that he may have only regged the domain as a goof for yuks.
Nice domain for the price….
Eric Jenkins
http://www.SpringCreekMedia.Com