Owning a three letter domain such as MUX.com can be a pricey experience, but it doesn’t have to be a single payment transaction.
MUX.com is owned by MUX, a video streaming technology company. MUX acquired MUX.com, an LLL .com, on a “start-up budget.”
At the beginning, the company used MUX.co, a domain they spent $1,200 dollars on. Moving on, they acquired MUX.io as it’s popular with tech companies. That domain cost less than $1,000 to acquire!
What is MUX all about?
“Mux is building the future of online video infrastructure. We started off by building Mux Data, a best-in-class performance analytics tool that’s trusted by developers at companies like Vimeo, Robinhood, CBS Interactive, Discovery, PBS, and TED. Billions of monitored streams later, we launched Mux Video, a simple API to video hosting, encoding, and streaming. Take any video file or live stream and make it play beautifully at scale on any device, powered by magical-feeling features like automatic thumbnails, animated GIFs, and data-driven encoding decisions.”
The big target was MUX.com and the apparent six figures required could not be shelled out at once. They drafted a “lease to own” agreement, and moved on with the domain’s acquisition from its previous owner, Mike Gleissner.
Why did MUX go with a payment plan for the domain MUX.com?
According to their own testimonial, three possible scenarios led to that option:
- In the scenario we hope to avoid, failure, we just cease the lease and decline the purchase option. The domain owner gets some years of lease payments and owns the domain outright again.
- In the scenario where we are acquired, we may take on the name of acquirer.com or a subdomain like acquirer.com/mux, and the acquirer would have the option to decline the purchase option price. Alternatively, the acquirer may view mux.com as essential goodwill in the transaction and factor in the purchase price in the acquisition price.
- In the scenario where we are wildly successful, paying “X” will hopefully not be too much of a burden for 5-years-older, mature and cash-flow positive Mux.
In the end, MUX.com paid off the domain and has received almost $32 million dollars in seed funding to date. By securing the domain and paying in installments, they were able to establish their presence on a short, memorable domain name bearing the prestige of a three letter .com.
MediaOptions.com negotiated this sale and we are the ones that structured the deal. Lease w/ an option to buy is the future of all startup domain acquisitions. It is the only model that makes sense.