Mint.com domain name sale worth about $2 million.
Hite Capital sold the Mint.com domain name to the recently sold finance web site for equity a few years ago. It has paid off, according to an article by Michael Arrington on Tech Crunch.
…Mint gave a “substantial†amount of Series A stock to Hite Capital in exchange for the Mint.com domain name. That stock was worth a “couple of million dollars,†says one source, after the acquisition.
Not bad. For Hite Capital, selling a domain name for equity paid off. (It’s not clear if there was cash involved in the transaction as well.) But selling a domain for equity doesn’t always work out as planned. One high profile case is Business.com, which Marc Ostrofsky sold for $7.5M in 1999. But that wasn’t cash; it was equity. And according to the buyer, it ended up redeeming that equity for only $2.0M in 2004.
Congrats to Hite Capital. My question is what made Mint.com want to be called Mint.com? The domain has nothing to do with the industry.
Perhaps the concepts that go along with the word mint, crisp, refreshing and enjoyable. Let that be a lesson to us, to be a valuable domain a category killer need to even be used in its most obvious way. I doubt a website selling “mints” would have sold for so much=)
Well, mint has a financial connotation.
Since a domain name is such an important part of a website business, I would suggest the seller negotiate a structure that protects his or her down side in the transaction. For example, instead of stock, request a convertible note secured by the domain name and some other assets of the buyer to reasonably secure your investment. The principal is the agreed upon value of the domain. Reasonable interest accrues to the end. Callable in say 5 years. That way you know that after 5 years you either get the return you expected from the stock (you convert to stock), or you get a reasonable return in cash (you call it and they pay up) or you get the domain name back and the other assets and you sell again.
Of course I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
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Mint.com is not a category-killer domain, it’s a brandable domain, and it’s about as good a brandable as it gets as it relates to finance. I can totally see a company choosing mint.com over names like stocks.com, finance.com, invest.com.
Perfect brandables like mint.com are probably more rare than category-killers. You are pretty much limited to really common 3 and 4 letter words with no spelling issues, and within them you have to choose only words that people would remember on some form of emotional level. There are probably no more than a couple of hundred perfect brandables of mint.com quality. Blue.com and fly.com are the other two that come to mind.
Yes,
It has a financial connotation (I assume you are referring to statements like “make a mint”) but Mint.com did not brand it that way. Instead the branded it using mint leaves.
I would still think that they were trying to communicate a “fresh” and “refreshing” concept.
Great suggestion Roger and a novel way of securing the domain. I’ll keep that in mind and will bring it up with counsel.
How about a multiple meaning for mint.. $$$money and the mint plant? The name is great but that’s not what makes mint.com valuable. The work that has been invested and the services this site provides are the reasons for the 1.7 mil purchase price. Congratulations Aaron and associates
I agree with Ron. I always thought it had two meanings.
This is a great result Mint.com is a superb generic name –
GenericGene.com