IT.COM

interviews Why This Company Paid $150,000 for User.com

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In October 2018, UserEngage made the monumental decision to pay $150,000 to acquire the domain User.com in a transaction brokered by Sedo. Since then, UserEngage has rebranded to User.com, putting the memorable four-letter domain to use almost immediately.

In this Inside Interview, we’re going to speak with Polish entrepreneur, Greg Warzecha, who is founder, and CEO of User.com. We will be discussing the thought process behind acquiring a premium .COM domain and what the upgrade means for his company.


Can you tell us about the business behind User.com?
User.com is a marketing automation platform aimed at boosting engagement and conversion with personalized automatic live chat messages, emails, SMS, pop-ups, chatbot, and many more. We have solutions for each marketing funnel level - from the first click on the website until the stable relationship with the customer.

Thanks to User.com you can nurture your leads, sending them audience-tailored communication, at the right time, through the right channel.


Your company started out life as UserEngage. Was this name your first choice, or was it prompted by a lack of available domains?
It’s never easy to find a catchy name for your company. We were thinking about the proper domain name for a long time and finally, we decided on userengage.com. It was simple enough and available at an affordable price so we contacted its previous owner, David Cohen from Techstars.com, and we bought it for $10,000.


What prompted you to look at acquiring the User.com domain name this year?
The marketing automation market constantly grows so it’s important to find a name that is short and easy to remember. User.com meets both conditions and is only four letters. We’ve been dreaming about it since the beginning but the price was out of our range at that time.

We never thought that we could succeed, but 10 months ago we began negotiations, just 'for fun' and because of curiosity about what the process looks like. During this period we exchanged an enormous number of emails with Sedo and finally, we bought the domain for $150,000.

I think the price is high, but still extremely low for such a short generic name. User.com shows we are customer focused. Our tool allows clients to create a user-friendly relationship between the companies and their customers, we facilitate businesses growth and we help users to find what they really look for on the Internet. I believe it’s a perfect name.

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Did your recent $2.7 million in Series A funding influence your decision to pursue the User.com domain?
Definitely, yes. Even though we could afford the price, we still had doubts if this was the right decision. And then our investor appeared and gave us both financial support and business mentoring. Vercom is a winner of the prestigious Deloitte Fast 50 and the support they gave us was invaluable. They made us sure that we were making the right decision.


Did you use any tools (e.g., automated appraisals), services (e.g., manual appraisals, domain brokers), or data (e.g., sales data, search volumes, search results) to determine your best offer and/or the value of the domain?
We didn’t use any specific tools. We counted on Sedo, the domain broker and actually, that was enough.


How much do you think the domain was worth before you purchased it and why?
The initial price for User.com was $700,000. From the one perspective, it’s just a word, but the word is just four letters. Additionally, for our services, it’s a perfect match. We had to try the negotiations.


According to reports, you acquired the domain name via the domain marketplace Sedo. Did you have a positive experience dealing with Sedo?
Sedo was a very patient partner. As I said earlier, we were mailing so often and spent so many hours on Skype calls before we finalized the transaction. We had never made a transfer for $150,000 before, so we were checking everything - from the contract through to the bank account details. They were great, and the transfer agent we were assigned was courteous. The whole process went smoothly.


At the end of October, you announced your rebranding from UserEngage to User on social media. Was customer feedback regarding the name change positive?
The feedback I received was fantastic. My mobile was ringing for three days. We’ve got a huge number of calls from people sitting in and out of our business, my mailbox was full of messages and congrats. Our marketing team received many emails from our clients saying we’ve made something huge. We expected people will react somehow but no one thought it gonna be so positive and massive.

Of course, we heard a few voices discussing if the price is reasonable and some people had doubts about the investment we've made. But general feedback was great and it gave our new brand a ‘boost’ for further marketing activities.

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Thanks to Greg for taking the time to participate in our Inside Interview. Acquiring the User.com domain name for $150,000 seems like an excellent investment in the company. To learn more about User.com, you can follow Greg and his team on @userengage_com on Twitter.

This interview has been edited for clarity.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Great to see an Eastern European Companies to invest in the top .com domain names.
 
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1.Dropping your price from $700,000USD to $150,000USD is something that a SELLER should never do. I don't care if you are selling domains/real estate/or anything else.
That's a whopping 79% discount! LOL! At this point why not just sit on the rail road track with a sign that says "HEY run me over! Cuz I gave up long ago."
If the Seller doesn't believe in his pricing, why would anyone would even consider buying from him???
By the time he pays taxes and broker fees he ends up with...peanuts!

2.User.com is a fantastic brand. It will take the current company that acquired this name OUT of obscurity and give them the edge over other competing companies in their space. The problem most startups and companies face today is "nobody knows them".
The best coffee in the world is not a winner today, the best KNOWN coffee in the world wins. Starbucks is disgusting IMO(I am drinking Starbucks while writing this), but IT'S the best KNOWN coffee in the world, and it's close enough. :xf.wink:
Why are they the best??Because they SPEND MONEY to DOMINATE their space. Period.

That's my 2 cents for today
 
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Maybe I am alone but 150K is a good price. The name is too generic for most businesses.
And there are not many names selling in that range, let alone 700K. I think the owner did well to sell. He might have been waiting for 20 years for a serious offer - who knows.

There are people who have been sitting on superb names for two decades, but until a sale happens these names are not productive assets. Even patient people expect a return at some point.

There is a huge gap between our perceived value and the number of end users capable and willing to spend the right sum of money on domain names.
 
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For me, the domain User.com is worth considerably more than 150k.

If the new owners dont make a success with it with their current business model, it has massive resale potential in the future, or the ability to be developed in an alternative solution.

User.com could be used for VR and AI etc. As future technologies take over more and more of our lives, the word 'user' will apply to much of the worlds population in these areas. The term 'user' was used in the film Tron way back in 1982 as an example.

With more and more people living in social isolation and retreating into cyberspace, and in the future into VR, AR, AI and any other alternate realities , the word 'user' (singular) will become increasingly applicable.
 
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Good buy, great price for a great domain name
 
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Hi guys, thank you for your comments.

You must know that:
1) We were extremely lucky,
2) 150k USD for a company from Poland it's still a lot :)

If you have some questions I can answer them in later.

Regards,
Greg from User.com
Hello Greg,

Welcome to NamePros!

Congratulations on the purchase of an outstanding domain at a great price.
If you have any questions about the forum, feel free to DM any of the Staff.

By the way "Greg from User.com" has a good look to it. :)

Peace,
Kenny
 
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Subjectivelyyy an amount is always considered "high" or "low", while objectivelyyy it always remains relative.
My observation here is that the price was obviously 100 % exactlyyy the right price because otherwise it would not have
ended up in a deal.
 
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150K is really a small $ for a growing company, it is basically just compensation for 1-3 staff year salary...so, why not spend this number to get a short/great .com for branding....I think once a company is growth enough, they all “should” happy enough to spend suce small $ to enhance its branding
 
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Did you use any tools (e.g., automated appraisals), services (e.g., manual appraisals, domain brokers), or data (e.g., sales data, search volumes, search results) to determine your best offer and/or the value of the domain?
What a funny question. You think this thing matters to end users?

Congratulations Greg for stealing User.com at such a ridiculously low price.
 
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From 700k to 150k sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I need an end user to purchase any of my premium names RIGHT NOW.
 
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personally user is a bogus name and too generic no specific meaning, user can mean anything, drug user, booze user, sex user, users user> it makes no sense. its just a .com short word that is over priced and has no relevance to anything specific, people see and place too much over some words like user and in the bizarro world of domaining well say no more!
 
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User.com costs for me about 400k$
 
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