IT.COM

sales Keep.com Sold to China in 2018 in a Fascinating Sale

Spaceship Spaceship
It's not often that a domain is sold twice to end users within a matter of years, but that seems to have been the case with Keep.com.

In early 2012, according to DomainIQ's WHOIS history, Keep Holdings purchased the Keep.com domain name from its previous owner in an undisclosed deal. Keep Holdings used Keep.com as a discovery tool for the latest trends in fashion, and developed a large following around the name.

Over the years, Keep Holdings has raised over $47 million in funding and has had several popular brands (including AdKeeper and Keep.com), spearheaded by Scott Kurnit. Scott, Keep's founder, is a serial investor and entrepreneur who founded About.com and lead them to a $1.5 billion valuation before creating Keep.com.

According to archival copies of Keep.com, Keep Holdings moved to KeepShopping.com sometime in mid-2018, although I'm currently unable to access any site on that domain.

Soon after, WHOIS changed and the domain started to show a landing page for Keep, a Chinese mobile fitness community founded in 2014. Upgrading from GoToKeep.com, Keep likely paid a sizeable amount to get Keep.com.

The company is able to afford it, however, as Keep has raised a total of $174 million in funding since 2015. This includes a mammoth $127 million funding round in July 2018 lead by Goldman Sachs.

I reached out to Keep Holdings' founder Scott Kurnit to see if any details of the sale were able to be made public. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, Scott told me that the sale was entirely confidential.

We're free to speculate on price, and I would be surprised if this name sold for anything less than a seven-figure fee. Given its developed status and its ties to a well-funded company, Keep must've paid a substantial amount for the name.

Thanks to James Booth (@BoothDomains) for the tip.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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Im sure it was a monster sale.
 
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Seven figure fee? For a developed business on a super premium name? You should be talking about 8-9 figure.

Thanks for the finding
 
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That’s a massive one!!!
 
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Not bad for a non-CHIPs 4L.com domain name.....
 
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Good investigation. Keep up the good work.
 
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Not bad for a non-CHIPs 4L.com domain name.....
:ROFL:best comments, btw, Leap.com is realy nice as a non-CHIPs 4L domain name as well.(y)(y):ROFL::ROFL:
 
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With my years of schooling in Chinese, I still do not understand the Chinese "chips". I do enjoy French fries from time to time, though.:xf.grin:
 
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I'm sure this is a very high sale above 8 digits
 
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With my years of schooling in Chinese, I still do not understand the Chinese "chips". I do enjoy French fries from time to time, though.:xf.grin:
French fries are rare these days. Try Chinese CHIPs with premium Turkish delight
 
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Great name, thanks for sharing.
 
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Great company needs gread domain!
 
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It's hard to imagine what it would be like to have so many huge acquisition domains in so many areas of grey rhinos and black swan in 2019.I don't know if they lack strategic thinking or are really rich.
 
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