I Might Have Spoke too Soon
Not five minutes after I post about picking a brand over keyword domains comes news that Business.com is on the block for 400-500 million. Business.com was bought back in ‘99 for what then was the largest domain purchase ever at 7.5 million. Turns out that it was a huge win for them.
My question is — how much did the domain factor in toward their success? They don’t even rank number one for business. It obviously had something to do with it though as that’s a domain that would get a lot of type in traffic.
Cameron Olthuis is the Founder of
Looking at their revenue numbers, I think they’ve severely underperformed their model and the potential of that domain name. It’ll be a good exit for them, but it could have been a lot more.
I wish I could afford it or they did this two years down the road when I was freed up to go do this with some private equity investment.
How much can you kick in?
I agree Brian… but how many big properties on the web do you look at and realize they are severely underperforming? There are a lot of them.
I got 5 on it, 5 dollars that is…. you can cover the rest right?
I agree, I have never been impressed with Business.com even back in the send all kinds of link juice days. It is a crap site that I have never used for anything but submitting a few urls, and it doesn’t even show up in the serps as much as it used to. Technorati and Wiki are way up on it.
I think it is obviously rad for them 7.5 to 400 but, unless the hype keeps getting crazier, I can’t see it bought for a billion in a couple years, there is no substance.