[gkoberger]

When I started my YC company, we used the .io (which we found on HN, actually! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6397526). A few years later, once we could afford it, we bought the .com for $170k.

I imagine that if you filtered based on only companies that make it to (for example) a Series B, the % goes way up.

[6DM]

I'm honestly shocked you decided to pay that for a domain name. I guess I can kinda understand as a percentage of your company revenue, but morally that is so hard for me to justify feeding a squatter, let alone in a sum of that amount.

[gkoberger]

I don't love it either, but we didn't really have a choice. All simple .coms are already owned at this point, and I think with few exceptions pg's article is dead on:

http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

[klabb3]

> A few years later, once we could afford it, we bought the .com for $170k.

How are these bigger ones sold? Do you sell it back or to someone else later?

[gkoberger]

I might be misinterpreting the question, but the way to buy an expensive domain is to go through a broker.

We bought it outright (sent money to escrow), but a lot of people will do rent-to-own. For example, we would have paid $10k/mo for it, and then when we hit $170k it would be ours. But in the meantime, if we missed a payment, the rights would revert back to the original owner.