Thoughts

Andrew Miller

April 27, 2025

Follow Our LinkedIn Newsletter!

As I wrote last week, after reading insights from Dharmesh Shah on the benefits of the LI Newsletter, I decided to test starting Random Sunday thoughts as a newsletter last week. Albeit it is only 1 week, it seems to be a smart idea as the initial edition went well. One of the reasons referenced was that Linkedin’s algorithm did not favor outside links, which I use a lot to share others’ insights. Thus, you will see no links today here but they are in the newsletter, with other “bonus” content, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/domain-name-icon-andrew-miller-lgf4e/

Another Massive Investment Publicly Disclosed

I am not sure what is in the kool-aid recently but after 25 years of 95% of domain name transactions I have overseen being price confidential, I and Hilco Digital Assets have had several notable price disclosures recently on domain transactions. First, it was the Chat*com reveal at $15.5m, then Gold*com at $8.6m, Rocket*com at $15m, and now, this past week, the Icon*com sale at $12m. On Thursday, the Founder/CEO of Icon came out and announced the upgrade to Icon*com. A link to his post and subsequent reporting is in my Random Sunday Thoughts Newsletter. Icon is growing fast, and Kennan is a dynamic, talented, young entrepreneur. He reminds of those rare founders that are so driven they are often mistaken as being brazen. This list includes people like Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger, founders of Instagram, Sam Altman at OpenAI, Sergei at Google, and of course Mark Zuckerberg. One thing they all had in common was they were a bit wilder when they were young, but managed to leverage that into building transformative companies. When Zuck acquired the Facebook*com domain name at the advice of Sean Parker (as someone with some inside knowledge of the deal, for a lot more than reported due to the value of the stock portion), Parker advised,  “One of the first things I said was, ‘Drop the “The.” Just Facebook. It’s cleaner.” That worked out pretty well. Icon is already delivering an AI product that gets rave reviews, but they realized that there was nothing more important strategically than locking down their brand, dropping the *me, and becoming Icon*com while they still could. I always say, the greatest of domains and brands will not save a crappy company or product, but a great business will get exponential value from its exact match domain. In this case, Icon is one of the most valuable on the Internet. I expect it will create enterprise value measured in the 9-10 figures for the company. Kudos to Kennan for getting that and being confident enough to talk about the price he paid and his decision to do so. I am rooting for Icon, that is for sure.

And I Repeat, Patience.

This week, I had the pleasure of a fun and informative call with a bunch of my partners, clients and friends. A theme that I so often stress but cannot overstate with the most premium domain assets is “patience”. This coming week, we at Hilco Digital Assets will be closing the sale of a domain name that has been marinating with the buyer for many years, an important win-win outcome. I am excited to be able to mention it down the road. In general, with a few more deals closing, it continues to be an increasing understanding of the strategic significance of the most valuable exact match and category defining domain name assets.

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