Thoughts

Andrew Miller

September 8, 2024

Rocket.com: SOLD!

Last week, I posted about some exciting just closed and to soon to be completed domain name transactions by me and our team at Hilco Digital Assets. We confirmed to Elliot Silver this week that we oversaw the sale of Rocket*com, one of my most important domain deals of my 26+ years. More here https://lnkd.in/egm4fd_T .This week, we will oversee another epic sale and 1-2 more 7 figure deals. I am still feeling like it will be a really strong Q4 for domain name assets. All of our domain names are at HilcoDigital.com/domains

Creative Payment Structures

I wanted to briefly discuss a topic that is becoming more prevalent in the domain asset class, the financing of domain name sales and acquisitions. There are credible third parties that offer third party domain name financing, such as our partners at Domain Capital and Atom.com through its marketplace. We will also consider this at HDA for the right situation. However, there is another path as well, seller financing, which is when a domain name owner is willing to enter into a purchase and sale agreement to sell their premium domain name and accept a payment structure over time. As the asset class continues to appreciate in standalone value, and category defining and exact match, .com domains become mission critical to companies, this option opens up tons of possibilities. We recently did a $5m+ deal for a major VC and its portfolio company, financed with a 30 percent initial payment and payments over 3 years. This allowed the company to acquire this important part of their strategy while preserving cash. Often, there will be a discount offered to pay off the financing early. The key aspect of this is the buyer can utilize the domain name, which is securely kept in escrow, during the financing period.  We are very experienced at structuring these deals creatively for our clients and acquirers, both directly and via Atom.

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