Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

#21

Post by csel »

aresant wrote: post #6

$350,000 actually seems like a good value for that domain name when you consider how memorable / brandable it is. I've bought a couple of 5 figure domain names for marketing projects and if you're building around PR / word of mouth or direct response (tv / radio) marketing a great domain is worth its weight in gold. Smart move IMO and you can see the list of top 10 sales in 2010 here to compare value wise where it fe…

The choice of highly brandable names like sex or color come with a huge disadvantage in terms of SEO. I mean, just try searching for the Color app on the app store, you have thousands and thousands of apps with "color" showing up. Sometimes it is best to go with something unique. IMO.

Re: Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

#23

Post by benvanderbeek »

khafra wrote: post #10
aresant wrote: post #6

$350,000 actually seems like a good value for that domain name when you consider how memorable / brandable it is. I've bought a couple of 5 figure domain names for marketing projects and if you're building around PR / word of mouth or direct response (tv / radio) marketing a great domain is worth its weight in gold. Smart move IMO and you can see the list of top 10 sales in 2010 here to compare value wise where it fe…

Upvoted for hard data. Strange, though, that out of the most valuable 10 domain names, I don't recognize any as being at the top of their industry. I wonder if they got their money's worth. At least it's a fungible asset unlikely to depreciate. You'd have to do extraordinarily awful as a business to significantly lower the value of your domain name.

In terms of being top of their industry, I would think that spending this kind of money on a domain would be accompanied by the conscious or subconscious thought that since we have such an amazing domain, we'll coast and let the traffic/money come in, vs. obscure domains/company names who have to earn traffic by proving their value.

Re: Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

#25

Post by credo »

Personally, I think that it is unfortunate that the $41M investment has made Color everyone's favorite punching bag. Right now, three of the top 15 HN threads seem to be focused on Color

Sequoia had made an investment based (on among other things) what they consider to be a very strong founding team.

If they are right and if this investment has a high ROI, great for Color and for Sequoia.

If they are wrong, this investment will be a money-loser (like most other VC investments out there). In the meanwhile, I do wish that people stop beating up on Color.

Re: Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

#27

Post by notahacker »

betashop wrote: post #20
DevX101 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your offer unsolicited? I would guess that an unsolicited offer for a poorly performing site would lead to some good deals on domains. From one of you prev posts, it sounds like fab.com was a social network that didn't take off.

I bought fab.com from a domain hoarder in 2010. It had been unused for many years prior. The fab.com social network was run by us after purchasing the domain. We ran the SN under that name for a few months before deciding to change courses using the same domain name.

Are you willing to disclose a price range Jason?

I'm guessing, looking at your level of funding when you bought it, that you got a better deal than color/colour.com for a better, more brandable name

Re: Color.com Was Acquired For $350,000 (The Domain Name, That Is)

#28

Post by jaredmck »

kmfrk wrote: post #17

As someone who isn’t good at SEO, is the name and domain going to be good or bad for the company? I tried to find the app on the iTunes search result list and gave up (until I found a direct link).

i don't think this name is good for SEO since it's such a generic term; but it really shouldn't matter given the amount of money they have, and being a primarily mobile app. they're coming up 10th for "color" right now, while it's cool to be able to say color.com, does it really matter? i don't think so- think they didn't need to spend close to half a mil on color+colour rather than going with something like getcolor.com or colorapp.com

the itunes placement seems like a wiser place to spend their money at this point, but really with $41MM i guess they can spend it everywhere all at once if they like.

Post reply on HN