A lawsuit, an opportunity to buy the domain back, and now a six figure sale.
Domain investor Greg Ricks just sold poe.com for $260,000, and there’s an interesting backstory to this sale.
Ricks bought the domain name in August 2002 for $3,200.
In 2003, an author named Richard Poe sued Ricks for cybersquatting. Ricks hired John Berryhill to represent him, and the parties settled during a court-mandated mediation (which Berryhill described to me as “colorful”). Part of the settlement was that the author got the domain name.
In 2009, a domain investor offered Ricks the opportunity to buy the domain back for $18,500. It’s not clear at what point the author relinquished the domain; it doesn’t appear that the domain expired. Ricks jumped at the opportunity.
He held onto the domain since buying it in 2009 and sold it on December 12 through Afternic for $260,000.
The Whois record for the domain is private, but the nameservers changed post-sale. Today, it forwards to poe.quora.com, which throws a 500 error. So it’s possible (but not certain) that Quora acquired the domain. Update: Quora was the buyer.
“Ricks bought the domain name in August 2022 for $3,200.”
Did you mean 2002 here?
Yep, thanks
I was going to write the same after reading at my email. Even in 2002 it was a bargain…
What a bargain way back then .You need to have foresight in this business.
Many more success stories out there.
We all came here to ask about “August 2022 for $3,200” seems to be after reading the email
Congrats to Rick!
Reading that in my inbox made me want to write the same thing. It was a steal back in 2002.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/21/quora-launches-poe-a-way-to-talk-to-ai-chatbots-like-chatgpt/
“Signaling its interest in text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, Quora this week launched a platform called Poe that lets people ask questions, get instant answers and have a back-and-forth dialogue with AI.”
Well there you go. Thanks