Thoughts

Andrew Miller

November 3, 2024

A World Class Q4 Is In The Making

It was another good Q4 week in domain land for us at Hilco Digital Assets. We oversaw the successful acquisition of 2 domains for fast growing companies, Assured*com and Uncharted*com, as well as the sale of the category defining name Fiduciary*com in a win-win for the seller and buyer. We have several other deals advancing, including a massive category defining domain transaction that should happen soon (will say what we can when it does). I recently mentioned that we are advising on the sale of ID*com, arguably one of the most valuable domain name assets in the world, as both a rare 2 letter domain that also defines a trillion dollar category. It was an exciting week for us at HDA as we were engaged to oversee the transactions for some new domain assets, one which, like ID, has never been available before and was registered in the early 1990’s, World*com. I am honored and excited as this is one of the handful of most valuable category defining and exact match domain assets in the “world”. All of the domains we own or represent are at https://lnkd.in/e6V-QDgh

How Will The Election Affect Domain Sales?

I never discuss politics in this post (*although we are overseeing the sale of Election*com), but no matter who wins the Presidential election, we will experience some potential market volatility starting this week. We surely will see some short term reactions to the election results. However, I always believe in ignoring the noise and being opportunistic. Interest rates are coming down, inflation is finally slowing, and the most valuable domain assets have outperformed over my 26 years of investing in and advising on them, through many disruptive events.

Innovation In The Domain Name Industry

If you have been around early stage investing as long as I have, you will agree that the typical approach is comparable to the kids game “follow the leader”. A category becomes hot, a VC invests in the first mover, and with very little originality, everyone follows them into the next several companies promising to copy the first mover and do the same thing. One could even call it lazy, but it’s more driven by FOMO. Nobody wants to miss the next big thing.  We are an investor in Atom, a fast growing, cutting edge domain name marketplace,  and I am a long time customer of all marketplaces including GoDaddy, Afternic, and Sedo, to go with Atom. In the past 6 months, I have been shown several new domain name marketplace concepts. I welcome innovation and will always do business with someone who builds it but, it feels a lot of people are trying to enter this space, which is actually a small addressable market in the scheme of things. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

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