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The Lowdown
April 2024 Archive
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Welcome to the The Lowdown from 
DN Journal
- your source for notable news 
and information from all corners of the global 
domain name industry! 

The Lowdown is compiled by DN Journal 
Editor & Publisher .


ROTD Has Year's Biggest Live Domain Auction Ready to Go June 6 at NamesCon Global 

The domain investing industry's biggest event, NamesCon Global, returns to Austin, Texas June 5-8, 2024 and, once again,  the RightOfTheDot (ROTD) live auction of premium digital assets will be a major highlight of show week. ROTD has assembled an exceptional catalog of Web2 domain names and Web3 digital assets for the event that will get underway at 3PM (U.S. CDT) on Thursday, June 6 at the downtown Omni Hotel. ROTD President, Director and domain industry pioneer Monte Cahn will again team up with world champion auctioneer Wayne Wheat to run the fast-paced sale.

Premium domains scheduled to go on the block include Dog.com, Fish.com, Messages.com, Desktop.com, DataStorage.com, Horses.com, Consulting.ai, Army.ai, Blue.org and Christmas.net, among dozens of others. Many Web 3 names including Wallet.x, Beer.x, A.nft, Bet.gaming and 8.polygon, supplied by industry

Above: Scenes from the June 2023 RightOfTheDot
live domain auction
at NamesCon Global in Austin, Texas
Monte Cahn
is at bottom left, Wayne Wheat at bottom right.

leaders Unstoppable Domains and Freename, will also be offered as traditional and blockchain-based digital ecosystems continue to converge.

Pre-bidding is already open, allowing prospective participants to register and explore the full catalog of digital assets at bid.rotd.com. While the live auction will present a unique opportunity for business owners, end users and investors to secure prime digital real estate, prospecting will remain open during a timed extended online auction that will continue until June 18, 2024.

Monte Cahn noted, "Our upcoming auction at NamesCon 2024 represents not just a sale, but a 

landmark event for the digital asset industry, showcasing the immense value and potential of Web2 and Web3 domains. With over $585 million in sales to date, RightOfTheDot continues to lead and innovate within the digital asset space. Our legacy of record-setting domain name and digital asset sales underscores its pivotal role in elevating industry standards and the perceived value of digital properties worldwide."

(Posted April 29, 2024) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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*****



Goodbye SquadHelp, Hello Atom! Popular Naming & Branding Platform Goes Nuclear With Move to Atom.com 

After staking a claim as the world's largest company naming and branding platform, Squadhelp completed an explosive rebranding of themselves this morning when they re-emerged from the makeover blast with a new name - Atom -  and a new super-premium web address at Atom.com!

Since launching in 2011, Atom (formerly Squadhelp) has helped over 50,000 clients, including Nestle, Pepsi, Dell, Alibaba, Hilton, Phillips, and Kellogg's in polishing their brands. Atom also offers a full startup ecosystem for ambitious new businesses, providing the brand building blocks they need to thrive, starting with the perfect domain.

is now

Darpan Munjal
Atom (Squadhelp) Founder & CEO

CEO and founder Darpan Munjal launched the business as a bootstrapped passion project while
focusing primarily on other ventures. His vision was the proposition that finding a business name shouldn’t be hard. This simple idea led to the creation of a platform for crowdsourcing business names. That platform,
Squadhelp, was powered by a group of creatives which soon grew into a huge naming community.
Since then, Atom has been recognized as an Inc. 5000 startup for three consecutive years and one of the Most Innovative Companies by Inc. Magazine while being consistently highly rated by clients and creatives alike.

In March 2023, Atom secured $10 million in strategic investment from Hilco Digital Assets. This allowed the company to move into a new stage of ongoing growth, including expansion of the team, accelerated development of new game-changing offerings, and significant increases in overall marketing investments.

As naming experts,  the team at Atom knew it was also time for their own rebrand. “We deeply believe in the importance of a world-class brand and the concrete impact it has on
business results," Darpan said, adding " Squadhelp was a great brand for what we used to focus on exclusively – crowdsourcing business names with the help of a vast creative community. But, Atom helps us take everything to the next level. Atom is an inspiring, memorable, and innovative name that people can get excited about. As a naming startup, with this tier A+ name and domain, we are betting on ourselves and aspiring to become a B2B household brand."

Hilco Digital Assets Managing Director Andrew Miller highlighted the strategic importance of the
rebrand to Atom. “We invested in Squadhelp because of its many strategic and technology advantages as a naming platform, but from the outset, we were aligned on acquiring a next-level, hear-it-once remember-it-forever brand, one that conveyed the power and importance of having a world-class
domain name for both the company and its customers,” Andrew said, adding “I have been involved in many of the most prominent domain name brands for over 26 years, and Atom.com is a game-changing brand name for this platform."

Under the Atom umbrella, the company plans to add further tools and services across domain sales, naming, testing and customer insights, trademark and IP protection, creative services, and more - all while maintaining their current domain name marketplaces and crowdsourced naming contests. Atom will continue to draw on the expertise of its internal team and global creative community backed by innovative AI technology built to support the Atom experts.

Andrew Miller
Managing Director
Hilco Digital Assets

Darpan Munjal summed the rebrand up with this - “Just like atoms are the building blocks of the universe, Atom.com will provide the building blocks of success for every great startup. It will be an ecosystem for early-stage startups that offers founders everything they need to build and launch a new brand or grow an existing one.”

(Posted April 17, 2024) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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*****

Price Paid for Chat.com Last Year Confirmed to Be $15.5 Million Making It One of Top 2 All-Time Publicly Reported Domain Sales 

Last year at this time Hilco Digital Assets Managing Director Andrew Miller and fellow pioneering domain broker Larry Fischer were busy helping Hubspot Co-Founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah put together a multi-million acquisition of the super-premium domain name Chat.com. Andrew and Larry represented the seller but Andrew also served as a facilitator in bringing both sides together - a role he frequently plays due to the extraordinary high level contact list he has developed over the past two decades.

Having a hand in historic sales is nothing new for any one of these three. In 2022 Dharmesh acquired Connect.com for $10 million in the year's highest publicly reported sale (and one of the five highest ever). Andrew and Larry, working individually, together or with other partners have closed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales in their illustrious careers.

The exact price paid in eight-figure domain sales rarely gets released to the public and up until a few days ago, it seemed unlikely we wouldever learn what Chat.com sold for in the spring of 2023. However, as Andrew noted on his LinkedIn feed, Dharmesh, during an interview on the Lenny Rachitsky podcast, revealed he had paid "$15 million+" for Chat.com. Ever since, people have been speculating about what that + represented (we were among them as having the exact price would allow us to chart the sale and give the public another great example of just how valuable top tier domains can be).

This week I've been in daily contact with Andrew because we are working on a profile about him that will be our next cover story (due out by the end of the month). It gave me an opportunity to talk with him about the Chat.com sale and see if there was any way he could confirm the exact price for me. He always strictly adheres to any non-disclosure agreement that is in place but with Dharmesh opening the door, Andrew was able to share that the price of the domain was  $15.5 million for the name plus escrow and related costs.

Andrew Miller and Larry Fischer speaking at NamesCon 
Global 2023
in Austin,Texas about some of the biockbuster 
deals they have done together including Chat.com and Home.com.

With that information we will be adding Chat.com to the 2023 Top 100 Chart in our Domain Sales Archive Wednesday evening (April 17) when our next bi-weekly domain sales report will be out. In addition to being the #1 sale of that year, it will also be added to our all-time Top 20 list where it will stand at #2 behind only the $30 million sale of Voice.com. Congratulations to everyone involved in this landmark sale!

(Posted April 16, 2024) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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*****

Radix Records 28% Premium Domain Revenue Jump YOY Led By .Tech, .Online and .Store TLDs 

Radix has released their latest semi-annual report on the registry operator's premium domain sales results across the 10 TLDs they administer. Their H2-2023 Recap (.pdf file) details how Radix generated $4.8 million in Premium Retail Revenue, including $3.1 million that came from premium domain renewals. That represents a 28% year over year gain for this segment of their business.

.Tech was Radix's top performer, generating $1.36 million in revenue with $984,380 of that coming from renewals and $377,622 from new premium registrations. Rounding out their top five TLDs, in order, were .online, .store, .space and .site. The top chart below breaks out the renewal revenue produced by each of their leading TLDs. The second chart shows the new premium registration revenue from each of those extensions.

NEW PREMIUM REGISTRATIONS:

There is a wealth of additional information in the free, full report here (.pdf file).

(Posted April 4, 2024) To refer others to the post above only (and not the full Lowdown column) you can use this URL:
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*****


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