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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

#41

Post by lancewiggs »

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.

Any investment firm wants to maximise returns for their investors. The incentive is to find the (monopoly) price that maximises income from sales numbers x dollars.

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

#42

Post by lancewiggs »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #39

The reason it sold at half it's valuation is because the valuation was bullshit. It's like some guy claiming his classic car is worth 25,000 dollars. If nobody is offering 25k for it then it's not worth 25k. Period, end of story.

They didn't appear to shop the offer.

It's like that 'some guy' selling his classic car to a classic car dealer who was walking by, without first testing the price with experts or posting an advertisement.

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

#43

Post by asdff »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #39

The reason it sold at half it's valuation is because the valuation was bullshit. It's like some guy claiming his classic car is worth 25,000 dollars. If nobody is offering 25k for it then it's not worth 25k. Period, end of story.

It would be like you valuing the car at 25k then selling it to your buddy for 15k without even listing the car on ebay first to feel the price.

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

#44

Post by mattrp »

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…

I don’t know if it’s fair to say they could have easily doubled but your point about not acting like investors is fair. In contrast, AAA, USAA, and AARP have chosen to leverage their assets to enter new lines of business while Isoc simply sold their’s off. I am not familiar with what governance issues might be in play here but the simpleton like me would ask, what alternatives did ISOC evaluate before taking a buyout offer from a insider-linked entity that ironically calls itself “ethos”...

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

#45

Post by akiselev »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #39

The reason it sold at half it's valuation is because the valuation was bullshit. It's like some guy claiming his classic car is worth 25,000 dollars. If nobody is offering 25k for it then it's not worth 25k. Period, end of story.

The entire deal was put together in secret within the last 2 months. We don't know what anyone else would have offered because no one else was given the chance.

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

#46

Post by cameldrv »

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…

The bigger issue is that org was given to PIR to manage in the public interest. It was not supposed to even be a moneymaker for ISOC, they were just supposed to be the stewards of .org in the public interest. The fact that it’s worth even $1 billion shows that they’re operating it in the interest of the ISOC and not the public interest. ICANN should simply create a new entity that will charge break-even fees for registrations and stop trying to tax .org registrants with mandatory charitable donations to a dubious charity.

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

#47

Post by lancewiggs »

Scoundreller wrote: post #32
forrestthewoods wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Agreed. A p/e of 20 isn't bad. S̶t̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶m̶a̶r̶k̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶1̶5̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶f̶i̶e̶d̶.̶ Oops, stock market is 20-25 right now. There's so many TLDs today, the ability to raise prices isn't what it was. Though they could 5x prices and even if they lost 60% of their business, they'll come out ahead. I could understand the worries of .org holders.

.org is .org, and they have a lot more pricing power than almost all of the gTLDs (generic top level domains).

Their customers, if you think about it, are perhaps more likely to value what the domain stands for. Meanwhile the annual price is currently absolutely trivial versus the expenses of most organisations from higher GDP countries.

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

#49

Post by jorvi »

kick wrote: post #26
xwdv wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

HN downvotes can be rather confounding still. Check here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21653015

I responded very matter-of-fact, pointing out that the sharp edges of Tesla's cybertruck are something that makes it more dangerous to pedestrians. I didn't add any flourish or snark or whatever and yet it went into the grey. That kind of voting behavior just gives me a giant question mark.. why would anyone be hostile to explanation via fact?

IMO any site with a voting system should attach a heavy cost to downvoting:

1. each downvote you do costs more - with a slow backoff timer

2. the more points you have, the more it costs to downvote

3. the more downvotes a comment has the more points it costs

This mirrors the real life cost in social interaction:

1. you can't constantly be negative to everyone

2. high status people can afford to do that more, but not infinitely

3. you can't pile on one person (or rather, with each person adding it nears the threshold of "wow, maybe that's enough, dude")

(Yes, I know, talking about voting vis-à-vis HN is discouraged, but it apparently does bother a rather large contingent of users)

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

#50

Post by kick »

jorvi wrote: post #49
kick wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

HN downvotes can be rather confounding still. Check here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21653015 I responded very matter-of-fact, pointing out that the sharp edges of Tesla's cybertruck are something that makes it more dangerous to pedestrians. I didn't add any flourish or snark or whatever and yet it went into the grey. That kind of voting behavior just gives me a giant question mark.. why would anyone be hos…

Your answer was an answer to a question that wasn't being asked, and one that was obvious, at that. It seems reasonable that it was downmodded.

IMO any site with a voting system should attach a heavy cost to downvoting:

I think 'dang has already elaborated as to why this is a bad idea, but:

Hacker News depends on downmods for community moderation. Discouraging them would lower the quality of the site.

3. the more downvotes a comment has the more points it costs

Not to assume bad-faith, but this was a joke, wasn't it? A bad comment should be downmodded more, and users should not be penalized for that. Flagging, too, should happen if it's extremely bad.

This mirrors the real life cost in social interaction:

1. you can't constantly be negative to everyone

If a person is only posting negative content, it makes sense that they would get downmodded more often: active users of the site will often see these people's comments more than others. Should they get punished for keeping the quality of the site up? I don't think so. That seems unreasonable.

3. you can't pile on one person (or rather, with each person adding it nears the threshold of "wow, maybe that's enough, dude")

That's completely unreasonable: if a comment is bad, it should be downmodded.

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