5 ms·

How on earth did you get readme.com? I'm assuming someone else owned it, whenever I see that and all the "make an offer" links I move on and ignore it. Was the

How on earth did you get readme.com? I'm assuming someone else owned it, whenever I see that and all the "make an offer" links I move on and ignore it. Was the process easy?

Lerc 3y ago
Someone has to be the first one. I once registered web.site. I had it for a week or two before I tried pointing it at a server at which time someone noticed and took it off me.
- bottled_poe 3y ago
  “Someone”…?
- nl 3y ago
  > at which time someone noticed and took it off me. This... isn't how domain registration works.
  - girvo 3y ago
    I mean it absolutely could be. For a lot of these weird TLDs, it's a single company that makes its own rules as to who owns a domain. Not saying the person you're replying to is right or wrong, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
    - nl 3y ago
      .site is run by radix. They run quite a few reasonably popular domain names (.tech, .space. .online etc). AFAIK their rules are entirely standard.
    - Lerc 3y ago
      It was taken off me by the same people that I registered it with. They may have broken rules to do so. I just know they said I shouldn't have been given it.
gkoberger 3y ago
It wasn't called ReadMe originally... I happened to be browsing HN, and came across a post with someone offering readme.io for free, and I was like "oh that's a great name!" (I ultimately paid $3k as a thank you) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526 For the first few years, we used readme.io as our domain. When we did our Series A, I finally bought the .com for $170k. By that point I knew we were successful, and I figured the longer I waited the more it'd cost.
- 12907835202 3y ago
  Wow I can't fathom the .com being worth that much. Did you manage to do any sort of math on whether the .com has helped bring in $170k of sales? Or how many years it would take to break even.
  - vnchr 3y ago
    It’s an asset they can resell, and he validated the $170k price himself by paying that much.
    - Thorrez 3y ago
      It's only worth that much to a company named Readme. If no such company exists, and no company is willing to rename itself to that, then it's not worth that much. It's worth $170k times the probability that there is or will be a company that wants to buy it for that much.
      - onion2k 3y ago
        It's only worth that much to a company named Readme It's worth that much to any business that wants readme.com and believes it to be worth 170k. You don't need to be called Readme to want that domain. There are plenty of tech companies that want vanity domains to point to parts of their offering. I can easily imagine Microsoft, Jetbrains, Atlassian, or Replit making an offer for it. That said, by far the most likely way any company would acquire it would be as part of acquiring Readme as a whole. If you want to exit by selling (rather than IPOing) the value of your assets still plays a small part.

How on earth did you get readme.com? I'm assuming someone else owned it, whenever I see that and all the "make an offer" links I move on and ignore it. Was the process easy?

Lerc 3y ago

Someone has to be the first one. I once registered web.site. I had it for a week or two before I tried pointing it at a server at which time someone noticed and took it off me.

bottled_poe 3y ago
“Someone”…?
nl 3y ago
> at which time someone noticed and took it off me. This... isn't how domain registration works.
- girvo 3y ago
  I mean it absolutely could be. For a lot of these weird TLDs, it's a single company that makes its own rules as to who owns a domain. Not saying the person you're replying to is right or wrong, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.
  - nl 3y ago
    .site is run by radix. They run quite a few reasonably popular domain names (.tech, .space. .online etc). AFAIK their rules are entirely standard.
  - Lerc 3y ago
    It was taken off me by the same people that I registered it with. They may have broken rules to do so. I just know they said I shouldn't have been given it.

gkoberger 3y ago

It wasn't called ReadMe originally... I happened to be browsing HN, and came across a post with someone offering readme.io for free, and I was like "oh that's a great name!" (I ultimately paid $3k as a thank you) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526 For the first few years, we used readme.io as our domain. When we did our Series A, I finally bought the .com for $170k. By that point I knew we were successful, and I figured the longer I waited the more it'd cost.

12907835202 3y ago
Wow I can't fathom the .com being worth that much. Did you manage to do any sort of math on whether the .com has helped bring in $170k of sales? Or how many years it would take to break even.
- vnchr 3y ago
  It’s an asset they can resell, and he validated the $170k price himself by paying that much.
  - Thorrez 3y ago
    It's only worth that much to a company named Readme. If no such company exists, and no company is willing to rename itself to that, then it's not worth that much. It's worth $170k times the probability that there is or will be a company that wants to buy it for that much.
    - onion2k 3y ago
      It's only worth that much to a company named Readme It's worth that much to any business that wants readme.com and believes it to be worth 170k. You don't need to be called Readme to want that domain. There are plenty of tech companies that want vanity domains to point to parts of their offering. I can easily imagine Microsoft, Jetbrains, Atlassian, or Replit making an offer for it. That said, by far the most likely way any company would acquire it would be as part of acquiring Readme as a whole. If you want to exit by selling (rather than IPOing) the value of your assets still plays a small part.