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The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

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Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#21

Post by forrestthewoods »

lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

Exchanging 10 to 20 years of potential revenue for a flat check seems like a pretty good deal.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#22

Post by xwdv »

kick wrote: post #20
xwdv wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There ain’t nothing “sure-fire” in this world when it comes to income son. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Those armchair investors from reddit don’t know the situation .

Most of your comments on HN today have been extremely condescending. Is 'xwdv a parody account? (Genuine question.)

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. I used to get upvotes, but recently I only get downvotes, and now that I feel targeted, the tone of my posts gets more hostile. I wish there was more transparency surrounding downvotes.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#23

Post by slantedview »

"Sullivan suggested that their goal is to return roughly the same annual revenue as they have been getting from PIR — around $50M. Of course this time it would come without the possibility of expanding the underlying business year by year."

This hurts my head. Needless to say, the returns on this fund will be _far_ less assured than the returns on simply maintaining the .org business as it was (especially with Goldman managing the fund).

Impressively, even ISOC comes out a loser from this deal. Only Ethos wins, but then, that was surely the point.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#25

Post by annoyingnoob »

lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

There is a chance that the fire sale price will help keep .org prices from skyrocketing. Maybe they did .org domains a favor.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#26

Post by kick »

xwdv wrote: post #22
kick wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of your comments on HN today have been extremely condescending. Is 'xwdv a parody account? (Genuine question.)

It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. I used to get upvotes, but recently I only get downvotes, and now that I feel targeted, the tone of my posts gets more hostile. I wish there was more transparency surrounding downvotes.

There is [transparency]: if you're being downmodded, you're either deemed as not contributing to the conversation, or people disagree with you enough to do so.

As per Paul Graham:

I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Forcing users to publicly display their opinion on a person's comment would be negative for many reasons, especially on a site like HN, where many people choose to be eponymous.

Also, note: most of the comments on the first page of your profile seem to be in the black, which means they weren't controversial enough to receive many (if any) downvotes.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#28

Post by slantedview »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #6
zapita wrote: post #4

The article says that a national bond fund may have fronted the endowment without turning .org into a for-profit. What does this mean?

They could have sold bonds (raised money via debt) as an alternative to selling .org. They probably would have gotten a good yield considering the stability of the .org revenue stream.

Even the selling of bonds would have been unnecessary. They had a rock solid revenue stream. This deal wasn't about ISOC raising money, it was about looting a public asset for private profit.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#29

Post by kick »

TomMckenny wrote: post #27

Honest question: since .org is relied on world wide, why are just two US state courts the only ones with the legal power to review the sale?

Why would anywhere else have legal power to? .org doesn't sell domains directly to consumers, and ICANN is intentionally centralized, up until a few years ago being owned by the US government. US-owned US-created top-level domains are hardly an international affair.

You could argue that DNS is broken, and that ICANN is bad, but there's no legal argument for .org being subject to foreign governments.

Re: The .Org Fire Sale: How it sold for less than half its valuation

#30

Post by slantedview »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #25
lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wrote about this too - linked in the article. https://lancewiggs.com/2019/12/01/did-isoc-leave-1-billion-o... The travesty is that ISOC has given up a sure-fire stream of $55+ million/year in tax-free income, along with the ability to easily grow that to over $100m/year with price increases - all for just over $1.1 billion. As any r/personalfinance reader can tell you a rule of thumb for endowments is to spend a ma…

There is a chance that the fire sale price will help keep .org prices from skyrocketing. Maybe they did .org domains a favor.

As always, non-profit services cost less than for-profit services for a reason. ISOC could have implemented any price hikes they wanted without the need to pay out a profit as will be necessary for the new owners.

This will be a net cost increase, likely a big one (since there are no actual controls), for .org owners.

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