sales Voice.com sold by Microstrategy for $30 million

[GeorgeK]

Just announced!

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...croStrategy-Sells-Voice.com-Domain-30-Million

 

[Cebe]

Wow..

 

[lovedomains]

wow

 

[Irvin raul]

it's Worth it. Awesome deal.

 

[mAd MaX]

The $90 million for LasVegas.com would top it, but it's still in progress (spread over 35 years):

https://www.thedomains.com/2015/11/...gas-com-in-2005-for-up-to-90-million-dollars/

The $872 million valuation for Cars.com tops them all, but it wasn't a pure domain name sale:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/cars-com-is-the-largest-domain-sale-in-history.1019533/
https://www.DNAcademy/the-definitive-guide-to-the-worlds-largest-domain-sale

LasVegas.com deal has been abandoned I read

 

[DomainBarracksRob]

Just announced!

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...croStrategy-Sells-Voice.com-Domain-30-Million

This is AWESOME !!! Thanks for sharing !

This is makes me want to "ABC" domains all Day!

Always Be Closing! (sales)

 

[xcloud123]

Great name！

 

[keston57]

Thanks for sharing this information.

 

[cooljub]

LasVegas.com deal has been abandoned I read

Really? I was reading about this deal recently. The site's still on it. Do you have a link?

 

[mAd MaX]

Amazing sale, I don’t think people understand how hard it would have been to get a sale like this, Imagine negotiations for it.

To get $30 million, previous owner/s may have had to turn down other monstrous offers before they agreed to this price.

Seller was a company so buyer's agent most probably MarkMonitor went up high

 

[Angelicus]

great sale, great name, w/o NDA nice PR for Voice too.

Congratz to all.

 

[Constantin S]

Nice.

 

[Larion]

Congrats to buyer and seller!

https://www.microstrategy.com/us/co...egy-sells-voicecom-domain-name-for-30-million

 

[Avijit Roy]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Kingslayer]

This 30million Voice.com sales confirms my point, that Crypto.com owner should have demanded for more than 12million. After all the years of rejecting offers, 25-30million would have been a worthy bargain.

You can’t look at previous sales and say ‘xxxxxxxxxxx. com should have sold for this or that’.

End of day previous owner of Crypto got a fantastic deal, life changing amount of money where he and even his children don’t have to work again (if they don’t want).

I do think this was a one off sale, not every company has or is willing to folk out $30 million for a domain name, but single word domains are certainly the thing to get involved in if you can (from an investment pov).

There’s lots of demand for them right now and with high street closures and more and more businesses moving soley online, i do think demand is only going to grow.

 

[sgtppr]

I am...in the same industry as the buyer. In that community we are debating whether this price was an overpay or not. As a domainer i think it was a massive overpay. What say you all?

What's wholesale price on this? My guess: $250k.

 

[garptrader]

Facebook paid a billion dollars for Instagram when it had no revenue. Facebook's market cap currently exceeds $500 billion. Can another social media network take a slice of that?

 

[sgtppr]

It was a fair market price because that is what Microstrategy demanded and that is what Block.One paid. Great deal for the domain speculation industry.

that is not the question that i asked.

but you indirectly answered my questing by dodging my question.

it was clearly a massive overpay. no domainer would pay anything close to that if they were buying it as an investment.

you know why this industry is dying? because the culture of domainers is one of trying to fleece idiots. 'sure someone wants to pay $500,000,000 for turtle-drawings.mobi? fair price! that's the market value! by the way i own horse-drawings-night.network, only $1,500!"

 

[RegBoss]

The buyer of the Voice.com domain name, namely block.one, has already filed multiple trademark applications incorporating the term "voice", so we can get a sense of how they plan to use it:

1) Voice: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88461547&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

2) Voice.com: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88461546&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

3) Voice logo/figurative mark: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=88461543&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

They might have some issues trade marking it. Are they going to tell all the people with voice in their trademark already that they can not use voice. Not likely. They might get the "naked" voice trade marked. Highly used word. I think trying to trade mark it a waste of time and money. They already paid a fortune for it.

Trade marked names containg voice. 7205 trade marks already.
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804:vqkwau.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl~:=PARA1$LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=voice&p_tagrepl~:=PARA2$COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query

Looking at voice dot com does give me an idea for voiceox though. Make a blog and let people voice what they want. I had a blog before with socialspat but the problem is maintenance and monitoring all the replies. You also get some A-holes you have to watch or eventually block. Takes up a lot of time. You need an IT team to run it properly.

 

[sgtppr]

They might have some issues trade marking it. Are they going to tell all the people with voice in their trademark already that they can not use voice. Not likely. They might get the "naked" voice trade marked. Highly used word. I think trying to trade mark it a waste of time and money. They already paid a fortune for it.

Trade marked names containg voice. 7205 trade marks already.
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=toc&state=4804:vqkwau.1.1&p_search=searchss&p_L=50&BackReference=&p_plural=yes&p_s_PARA1=&p_tagrepl~:=PARA1$LD&expr=PARA1+AND+PARA2&p_s_PARA2=voice&p_tagrepl~:=PARA2$COMB&p_op_ALL=AND&a_default=search&a_search=Submit+Query&a_search=Submit+Query

Looking at voice dot com does give me an idea for voiceox though. Make a blog and let people voice what they want. I had a blog before with socialspat but the problem is maintenance and monitoring all the replies. You also get some A-holes you have to watch or eventually block. Takes up a lot of time. You need an IT team to run it properly.

Whatever Square did, they'll do that. I'm sure there are still some protections.

Lots of startups are using dictionary words these days.

 

[satsdifference.com]

I like. Does wonders for our niche all "Digital Assets" Mainstreaming..



-have a special day

 

[TauseefKhan]

I cay say 'sex is down' and 'voice is up'
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/dnjournal-all-time-top-20-cash-domain-sales.htm

it will be interesting if the single word dot com owners raise their expectations exponentially after this sale.

 

[J.R.]

that is not the question that i asked.

but you indirectly answered my questing by dodging my question.

it was clearly a massive overpay. no domainer would pay anything close to that if they were buying it as an investment.

you know why this industry is dying? because the culture of domainers is one of trying to fleece idiots. 'sure someone wants to pay $500,000,000 for turtle-drawings.mobi? fair price! that's the market value! by the way i own horse-drawings-night.network, only $1,500!"

The sell-off of Voice.com was a voluntary exchange, between Microstrategy and Block.One. There was no overpay, because there are 1,000 GTLDs that Block.One could have used (Voice.Horse anyone?), but they made the cost-benefit analysis that the Voice.com asset value was at least $30M for them; they made a calculation. Obviously, what a wholeseller pays for an asset or good, has little bearing on what the retail value is to the right buyer.

When you are talking about premium 1-2 word dot-Coms with commercial and/or dictionary meaning, scarcity and use plays a HUGE role in valuation.

The domain speculation industry isn't dying, its being bought out as the premium assets are finite; there are only so many 1-2 word premium dot-Coms with commercial and/or dictionary meaning to go around. For that reason, Block.One was willing to make the $30M purchase because they know more about their business than you do.

Notice the false analogy you use, "I own horse-drawings-night.network" to compare to a digital blue diamond like Voice.com. That is why Microstrategy earned $30 million, and you are stuck playing armchair domain valuation expert.

Lesson in there...

 

[sgtppr]

edit. see next comment.

 

[sgtppr]

The sell-off of Voice.com was a voluntary exchange, between Microstrategy and Block.One. There was no overpay, because there are 1,000 GTLDs that Block.One could have used (Voice.Horse anyone?), but they made the cost-benefit analysis that the Voice.com asset value iwas at least $30M for them; they made a calculation. Obviously, what a wholeseller pays for an asset or good, has little bearing on what the retail value is to the right buyer.

When you are talking about premium 1-2 word dot-Coms with commercial and/or dictionary meaning, scarcity and use plays a HUGE role in valuation.

The domain speculation industry isn't dying, its being bought out as the premium assets are finite; there are only so many 1-2 word premium dot-Coms with commercial and/or dictionary meaning to go around. For that reason, Block.One was willing to make the $30M purchase because they know more about their business than you do.

Notice the false analogy you use, "I own horse-drawings-night.network" to compare to a digital blue diamond like Voice.com. That is why Microstrategy earned $30 million, and you are stuck playing armchair domain valuation expert.

Lesson in there...

ok boss, i'll make a less hyperbolic analogy. say frogs.com sold for $300 billion.

everything you are saying would also apply to that 'digital blue diamond'

you're pretending that because something is valuable, there is no such thing as an overpay. that's not how valuation works. for domain names or anything else.

 

[J.R.]

ok boss, i'll make a less hyperbolic analogy. say frogs.com sold for $300 billion.

everything you are saying would also apply to that 'digital blue diamond'

you're pretending that because something is valuable, there is no such thing as an overpay. that's not how valuation works.

No, you are pretending there is an objective standard by which to measure the value of a premium 1-2 word dot-Com with commercial and/or dictionary meaning. Hence, your dependence on using extreme numbers like $300 billion to make your case when we have more a more dependable scale. As of today, the largest valuation of a domain name by the major blue chip accounting firms is Cars.com at $872 million!

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/39899/000003989915000006/gci-20141228x10k.htm

So, until a greater valuation point has been reached on an applicable URL asset that is the highest standard we have on that particular domain name but every premium dot-Com is unique. So, even considering the current scale of $0-$872M, the Voice.com deal might be considered a steal in the right context.

Even using your Frogs.com example, it would depend on use. Let's say, a professional sports team franchise was allocated to a new city. Maybe they want to use the nickname Frogs and desire Frogs.com. How much would they be willing to pay? How much would the seller demand? I don't know...but I do know $375K was the sell price for Rangers.com; but is that a starting or ending point for negotiations? If it is a savvy hard-nosed negotiatior like MicroStrategy; it might be the beginning of a email convo - maybe. For others, a dream offer.

To make a claim for an overpay, you would have to provide proof that there is an objective standard by which to measure these unique, scarce and income producing digital diamonds like Voice.com. As of yesterday, Estibot.com had Voice.com valued at $618K; how wrong were they?

But the purchase of $30M of Voice.com as the highest public URL sell to date disproves your claim.