CentralNic will back new TLD applicants at auction and provide working capital.
With ICANN’s auctions to settle new TLD contention sets coming soon, and applicants realizing they might need more money to launch their TLDs than previously expected, a number of companies are offering funding.
One of those is newly-public CentralNic, which is offering financing for auctions as well as working capital for ongoing operations.
CentralNic already has clients that have applied for 60 top level domains, but it would like to work with more. Providing funding is one way it hopes to do that.
Financing can come in a number of forms, but CentralNic CEO Ben Crawford told Domain Name Wire “we’re absolutely interested in taking an equity position” in new TLDs.
The company raised £5 million in its IPO. That amount of cash alone isn’t enough to back many new TLDs, but CentralNic’s investors have deep pockets.
“If the deal is right, we have access to additional funds quickly,” said Crawford.
Other companies I’m aware of that are willing to either invest in or acquire new TLD applications include Famous Four, XYZ.com, and Donuts.
Only domainers do not understand their business is dead due to the lack of financing/leasing platforms.
Not only, they continue to follow forums where leasing and financing section are the same section reserved to brokers.
Simply incredible…