Voice.com $30M Sale

Michael Saylor shares how he sold voice.com for $30M, the largest naked domain sale in history, through patient negotiation.

"We bought all these domains because I thought wouldn't it be great to own a part of the English language. Eventually there'll be a Google Voice or some telco company that'll want to launch a service, and what a great domain to launch on.

Someone out of the blue contacted us through a domain broker offering $150,000. I said no. A week later they doubled it to $300,000. I said no. They went to $600,000. I said no. They went to $1.2M. I said no.

They kept doubling - $2.5M, then $5M, then $10M. Around $18M, I had 8 people in my office looking at me like 'aren't you going to take the money?' I said no.

I told them to send back a note pointing out this is the word 'voice' in the English language and it's worth $1B to the right company. They asked for a response, so I said $30M, though I didn't really want to sell it for that - I wanted $100M or more. But I figured if I didn't give them some number, they would stop negotiating after 5 no's.

They came back with $12M. I agreed to take a meeting. The call started with them offering $22M. I explained this was like my daughter - I'm willing to marry her off, but only for the right price. Eventually, they met my $30M price."