Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist at First Round Capital, he is considered one of the top venture capitalists around.
I know of Josh because he is from my area. One of the companies Josh co-founded was Half.com. But before Half.com he co-founded a Wayne, Pa based company called Infonautics. I remember trading the stock back in the day.
Infonautics has a bit of a tie to the domain industry in it’s how Tucows went public through a reverse merger.
Josh tweeted out on Saturday his receipt of purchasing Half.com back in 1999. The domain had dropped and Josh lucked out getting it for $35.
After selling Half.com to eBay, Josh remained with eBay for three years. In 2004, Josh co-founded TurnTide an anti-spam technology company that was acquired by Symantec.
Great!
Just before those years, NS would force you to reg for 2 years at a time squeezing 70 USD if I remember right. What a flashback anyways!
for how much did he endup selling the domain to ebay?
This was an expired domain likely picked by a script. These names weren’t freely available in December 1999.
http://web.archive.org/web/19991012110207/http://half.com/Press/press.html
That makes no sense. Archive.org he had the name long before dec 3rd 1999 and got funded as well. This must have been a renewal invoice, not a registration invoice.
October 4, 1999: Half.com gets $2.5M in funding
https://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/1999/10/04/daily9.html
I just posted my receipt from same time period. It was a renewal receipt. Just like his
https://firstround.com/person/josh-kopelman/#mystory
” I then had this crazy idea to allow anyone to buy and sell used books, music and DVDs online and launched Half.com in July of 1999″
Good find Gregg, it’s odd he did not tweet like it was a renewal. Even people like Snoopy were replying on how he might have acquired it in 1999. Not sure why he did it that way without further clarification.
Was registered in April 1999. The renewal period (Dec 1999 to Dec 2000) on the invoice is a mystery. My guess is that he bought if off the previous registrant/domainer and didn’t get credit from Netsol for the partial year remaining on the registration.
YES. I SOLD HUNDREDS OF NAMES DURING 1998, 1999, 2000.
I watched way too much MTV, especially MTV’s TRL in 1999. If I only knew about domaining back then. Frank Schilling wouldn’t had bought as many domains around that time, well my newspaper job probably would had afforded me one, but nevertheless.
He must of been watching for the domain to drop. if not, talk about luck of just happening to check for it when its available. i was checking many domains in 99 and never had such luck.
how much did he sell it to ebay for?
I registered my first domain 2001 – way too late for registering premiums – but no complaints