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Pizza.com sold for $2.6 Million

9 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

johns 19y ago
Bummer. I had a great idea for a pizza-centered startup (no joke) and that would have been perfect. I only had 2mil budgeted for the domain (joke).
- DocSavage 19y ago
  The final two bidders didn't even start bidding until $2.4 million :o
mynameishere 19y ago
openfacetomatopie.com sold for 5 cents.
axod 19y ago
There's no way on paper that pizza.com is worth that much at all. But if you really want to be the person who owns it, I guess you'd be prepared to pay whatever it takes regardless. It's alexa rank has been pretty much nothing until recently, it'll drop back down to 0 after the hype of a sale wears off, so the owner will have pizza.com, but no traffic :/
- iamelgringo 19y ago
  There's a lot of traffic that's driven to generic domain names. Article here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040059.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040059.... Best excerpt: They bought control of beer.com for $80,000 in 1998 and built an audience for the site by giving out free e-mail addresses and having fans rate different brews. Less than a year later, they sold it for $7 million to Interbrew, a beer company. The pair then bought creditcards.com for $100,000 in 2003, created a comparison site for credit-card offers, and sold it to a private equity buyer for $2.8 million in 2004. Now that it's valued by some at several hundred million dollars, they admit to selling too soon.
  - axod 19y ago
    That's different though. That is building a site and driving traffic to it. Those successes would have happened just as well with other domain names. Sure, the fact they were generic probably helped a lot on exit, because people rightly or wrongly still see them as a big advantage. Fact is, pizza.com doesn't get any traffic. They will have to spend a lot more money making it so that it does get traffic. For example, you could either spend $2.6m on a generic domain, and spend another say $2m on building a site/marketing etc, or you could register 'somethingpizza.com' for $10 and spend $4m on building the site/marketing. I'd put my money on the second option. But I guess it depends if there's someone else further down the line that believes it's worth say $3.6m, then you make a profit out of doing nothing.
- ssharp 19y ago
  >>> There's no way on paper that pizza.com is worth that much at all. The value was clearly established at $2.6 million. I'm sure ad revenue from that domain is significant, well into 6 figures/year.
  - axod 19y ago
    The ad revenue on a domain that doesn't get any traffic??? I'd be surprised if it made 5 figures a year to be honest.

9 points by iamelgringo 19y ago

johns 19y ago

Bummer. I had a great idea for a pizza-centered startup (no joke) and that would have been perfect. I only had 2mil budgeted for the domain (joke).

DocSavage 19y ago
The final two bidders didn't even start bidding until $2.4 million :o

mynameishere 19y ago

openfacetomatopie.com sold for 5 cents.

axod 19y ago

There's no way on paper that pizza.com is worth that much at all. But if you really want to be the person who owns it, I guess you'd be prepared to pay whatever it takes regardless. It's alexa rank has been pretty much nothing until recently, it'll drop back down to 0 after the hype of a sale wears off, so the owner will have pizza.com, but no traffic :/

iamelgringo 19y ago
There's a lot of traffic that's driven to generic domain names. Article here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040059.htm http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_26/b4040059.... Best excerpt: They bought control of beer.com for $80,000 in 1998 and built an audience for the site by giving out free e-mail addresses and having fans rate different brews. Less than a year later, they sold it for $7 million to Interbrew, a beer company. The pair then bought creditcards.com for $100,000 in 2003, created a comparison site for credit-card offers, and sold it to a private equity buyer for $2.8 million in 2004. Now that it's valued by some at several hundred million dollars, they admit to selling too soon.
- axod 19y ago
  That's different though. That is building a site and driving traffic to it. Those successes would have happened just as well with other domain names. Sure, the fact they were generic probably helped a lot on exit, because people rightly or wrongly still see them as a big advantage. Fact is, pizza.com doesn't get any traffic. They will have to spend a lot more money making it so that it does get traffic. For example, you could either spend $2.6m on a generic domain, and spend another say $2m on building a site/marketing etc, or you could register 'somethingpizza.com' for $10 and spend $4m on building the site/marketing. I'd put my money on the second option. But I guess it depends if there's someone else further down the line that believes it's worth say $3.6m, then you make a profit out of doing nothing.
ssharp 19y ago
>>> There's no way on paper that pizza.com is worth that much at all. The value was clearly established at $2.6 million. I'm sure ad revenue from that domain is significant, well into 6 figures/year.
- axod 19y ago
  The ad revenue on a domain that doesn't get any traffic??? I'd be surprised if it made 5 figures a year to be honest.