Universal Music sold the domain name Uber.com to the now popular car hailing company, Uber, when it was still a startup in 2010. At the time, the company’s name was still UberCab.
Until now, no financial records on the transaction were available; Michael Jackson, an American investor, made an astounding revelation on Twitter.
According to Jackson, the domain Uber.com – registered in 1995 – was given to Uber in exchange for $107,000 dollars worth of Uber shares:
“Universal Music received $107k worth of Uber shares in the seed round in exchange for the domain name it owned from a previous investment.”
Jackson also revealed that Universal Music, daughter company of Vivendi SA, sold the shares they received during the early funding round, for less than $1 million:
“They sold their shares in the Series A round the following year for $863k.”
Uber had an IPO four days ago, raising almost $8 billion dollars.
So how much money would these shares exchanged for the domain Uber.com be worth now?
Uber.com – could have been worth half a billion dollars.
According to Michael Jackson, those shares were worth $532 million dollars at IPO time, a fascinating number.
Although Uber shares are down since May 10th, the original owners of Uber.com would have made a killing, had they waited for the startup to have an IPO!
