Domain Portfolio Yields $100M
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A story about Michael Saylor's early investment in premium domain names and their massive return.
"Early on in the dot com era, I identified that the internet was going to be a big deal and bought a bunch of domains. We spent about $2 million buying domains like alarm.com, wisdom.com, strategy.com, michael.com, mike.com, angel.com, courage, hope.
I've since sold or created businesses under those domains for over $100 million in value. For example, I sold voice.com for $30 million a couple years ago - that's the largest naked domain sale in history.
My view is that the English language is going to be important to the human race for 1000 years. These domains are scarce real estate in cyberspace. People spend hundreds of millions on ad campaigns to market misspelled brands, when they could just buy a premium domain that everyone can remember and spell instantly. I think the world undervalues them, but in time they'll be worth even more.
When I tell you alarm.com, you can remember it and type it. You don't have to sort through 197,000 Google search pages to figure out which one I was talking about. That's why these one-word English domains are so valuable."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.