Somewhere down the line you're going to sink many $K into marketing, I don't see why paying for a domain name that already has some traffic and name recognition

Somewhere down the line you're going to sink many $K into marketing, I don't see why paying for a domain name that already has some traffic and name recognition is a categorically bad idea. Was it a bad deal for 'freedrive.com'? Depends on the specifics of the situation and how the company leverages their name recognition.