Thoughts

Andrew Miller

March 24, 2024

A Birthday Wish: Continuing Q1’s Record Domain Deal Momentum

If all goes smoothly, I will get a nice birthday present this week, as the momentum of Q1 has continued, and we at Hilco Digital Assets added to what was already a record quarter of domain deals that we oversaw on the sell side, + 2 new serious discussions on what will be epic deals (these latest 2 are definitely Q2 if they close). A couple weeks ago, I posted some tips on successfully negotiating high level domain transactions and the past couple of weeks got me thinking about it more. It is important that a domain owner understands clearly how these get done at this level. For category defining names such as Gold, Chat, Football, Chocolate, it requires a buyer who either knows what they want to do with the asset or a buyer who wants to rebrand or establish a brand, and that can take time. Sometimes we can get lucky and it’s weeks, sometimes it takes years. For the most valuable “Internet real estate”, there may only be 1, max 2-3, buyers in any given window of time that understand the value, how they will deploy it to achieve game changing enterprise value, and be prepared to spend the investment dollars required to acquire that domain asset. For exact match domain names, that are “brandable” vs category defining, that is even narrower and requires either: an established company that already has the domain in their brand name and are using a longer version of the address (for example HelloPublic acquired Public*com); a company that started on a secondary TLD (extension), which is definitively not going to get them to the next level; a company that is looking to rebrand to the exact match domain; or a founder/investor looking for a new name. The important takeaway on these brandable transactions is, while there is only 1 category defining .com, there is always a choice on a brand/rebrand, and (broken record Andrew) you must have a ZOPA(zone of possible agreement)to get these deals done, especially in a weaker venture and economic climate. With that said, and based on our Q1 2024, the market is really getting strong as more and more senior leaders see case studies from their peers and are realizing the strategic significance of premium .com domain assets. All of the domains we own & oversee are at HilcoDigital.com/domains

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