Thoughts

Andrew Miller

April 6, 2025

Will Tariffs Affect the Domain Aftermarket?

It is not possible to start off this post without addressing the week that just passed, as it relates to tariffs, recession, interest rates, and the measuring stick that most use, the stock market. As always, I do so without any political stance. My first job was working at Drexel Burnham in Mike Milken’s training program, followed by Bear Stearns, before embarking on my entrepreneurial path. I have been through many economic cycles and market reactions, from the crash of 1987 to the Internet Bubble bursting in 2000 to the housing crisis of ’08, and of course, Covid. I can say with confidence that the most premium exact match and category defining domain assets have held up incredibly strong throughout it all. As I have said many times, the biggest swing for them is venture and growth investing, because a large number of these domains are acquired as the most important, strategic game changing brand and asset for VC backed companies. In ’22-23 VC investment was slow and cautious and that had started to pick up strongly in ’24-25. I expect it will continue but we do need to keep an open mind to a potential longer term fallout from these trade policies, and if so, exercise a lot of patience with the most valuable domains. There will be plenty of deals done for the best domains, regardless. There always are.

A Baseball Analogy for Domains

Last week, one of my favorite domain investors and regular readers, Bruce Breger, reprimanded me for writing about Cornell hockey on the opening day of MLB. Bruce and I are baseball purists at all levels, with as much appreciation for the sport as we do for the most premium domains, which got me thinking about a baseball analogy. The start of the season has seen a new weapon introduced into MLB, the “Torpedo Bat”, started by the dreadful Yankees. It is definitely legal and so far, seems to be providing hitters and teams a serious advantage doing the hardest thing to do in pro sports, hitting off of a MLB pitcher. I asked GROK the advantages of the Torpedo and it listed several key ones, which I do not have room to list. I saw it as a direct parallel to the massive advantages companies that acquire and leverage a category defining or their exact match domain name achieve across all facets of the business. Domains are the “torpedo bats” of hitting it big in business growth. As I often say, a crappy product or business will not be saved by a great domain name but a ultra premium domain name will propel the value of a great business to the next level, something understood by companies and domains that we at Hilco Digital Assets oversee, such as Chat*com (OpenAI) and Rocket*com (Rocket Mortgage).

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