Domain legends: the famous investors and record sales

The major leaguers of domaining: Rick Schwartz the Domain King, Frank Schilling, Mike Mann, Kevin Ham, Yun Ye, Jon Postel, Bob Parsons, Paul Stahura, Andrew Rosener and more, plus record sales like AI.com for $70 million.

Community6 min readUpdated October 2026

Every industry has its legends. In domaining, they're the people who saw value in internet addresses before almost anyone else, and the record sales that proved them right. Here are the major leaguers, based on public reports and the industry's own news sources.

Record-setting domain sales

Domain	Price	Year	The story
AI.com	$70 million	2026	Bought by Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek, reportedly paid entirely in cryptocurrency. The biggest domain sale on record.
Voice.com	$30 million	2019	Sold by MicroStrategy to Block.one through GoDaddy's broker service. The record for nearly seven years.
Chat.com	Reported $15.5 million	2023	Bought by HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, then acquired by OpenAI in 2024.
Sex.com	$13 million	2010	The record cash sale until Voice.com.
Business.com	$7.5 million	1999	Sold by Marc Ostrofsky, a record at the time, after he reportedly paid about $150,000.
Men.com	$1.32 million	2000s	One of Rick Schwartz's best-known sales.

Prices as publicly reported. Many big deals are private and never disclosed. See the full list of record domain sales.

The investors

Rick Schwartz, "The Domain King"

Rick Schwartz bought his first domain, LipService.com, in 1995 for $100, and became one of the best-known pioneers of type-in traffic, the idea that people would simply type a word plus ".com" into their browser. He earned the nickname "Domain King" and became famous for big sales, including:

Men.com for $1.32 million
Candy.com in a deal reported at over $3 million plus equity
iReport.com to CNN for $750,000
meet.me for $450,000 in 2011, co-owned with Michael Berkens

With attorney Howard Neu, he co-founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference, first held in October 2004 in Delray Beach, Florida. It became one of the industry's signature events, with live domain auctions. He shared his blunt opinions for years on his blog, RicksBlog.com.

Rick today. Still active three decades later, Rick markets himself as "The REAL Domain King" on DomainKing.com and says he has earned more than $100 million from domains. His site lists more than 6,000 names for sale, lease or partnership, including a "Featured 2026" set of 13 flagship names, over 5,000 mainstream names in 20 categories, and a "We buy domains" offer for people selling names. His current projects include:

The Beanstalk Challenge: instead of only selling his premium names, he partners with selected entrepreneurs who build businesses on them, splitting ownership 50/50. Finalists presented their companies at a live finale tied to NamesCon and CloudFest Americas in Miami.
Leasing and partnerships on names from his portfolio, alongside outright sales, with every deal closed through Escrow.com.
A .si collection: .si is Slovenia's country ending, which he markets as "super intelligence" for the era after AI, with first names and words aimed at AI agents and assistants.

Frank Schilling

One of the most respected domain investors of his generation, Frank Schilling built a massive portfolio and then founded Uniregistry, a registry, registrar and marketplace built by domain investors for domain investors. In February 2020, GoDaddy announced it was acquiring Uniregistry's registrar and marketplace businesses, along with a portfolio of more than 350,000 domain names. A GoDaddy executive called him "one of the smartest and savviest investors."

Mike Mann

Mike Mann founded BuyDomains in 1998, which grew into one of the biggest secondary markets for domain names, and sold a majority stake in 2005. He went on to run DomainMarket.com, was an early promoter of the .co ending, and made headlines in 2012 when Business Insider reported he had registered 14,962 domain names in 24 hours. He has also founded several other tech companies and charities.

Kevin Ham

The Vancouver entrepreneur was the subject of a famous Business 2.0 cover story, "The Man Who Owns the Internet," which described a domain "empire" worth a reported $300 million built largely on type-in traffic. He also became known for an unusual arrangement that showed ads on unregistered names under Cameroon's .cm ending, catching people who mistyped .com.

Marc Ostrofsky

Marc Ostrofsky sold Business.com for $7.5 million in 1999, a Guinness record at the time, after reportedly buying it for about $150,000. It was one of the first sales that made the world realize domain names could be valuable assets. He later wrote the book Get Rich Click! and invested in several online businesses.

Dharmesh Shah

Better known as the co-founder of HubSpot, Dharmesh Shah is also a serious domain buyer. He made headlines for buying Chat.com for a reported $15.5 million in 2023, before OpenAI acquired it in 2024. It's proof that big tech companies still pay up for short, perfect .com names.

Michael Berkens

A veteran investor and longtime industry blogger at TheDomains.com, Michael Berkens co-owned and brokered the $450,000 sale of meet.me with Rick Schwartz in 2011.

Yun Ye

One of the quietest legends. Yun Ye built a portfolio of more than 100,000 domain names and sold it to the marketing company Marchex in 2004 for $164 million, one of the biggest portfolio deals ever. Little else is publicly known about him.

The builders: people who created the industry

Person	Known for	Why it mattered
Jon Postel	Ran IANA, the internet's master list of names and numbers	Co-wrote RFC 920 in 1984, which set out the first top-level domains like .com, .org and .edu. Often called the internet's original "naming authority". See the ICANN story.
Bob Parsons	Founded GoDaddy (originally Jomax Technologies) in 1997	Turned domain registration into a mass-market consumer product, helped by famous Super Bowl ads, and built the world's biggest registrar.
Paul Stahura	Founded eNom in 1997, later co-founded Donuts	eNom became a giant wholesale registrar (bought by Demand Media in 2006). Donuts filed 307 applications in the 2012 new gTLD round, more than anyone else.
Elliot Noss	Longtime CEO of Tucows	Built Tucows into one of the world's largest wholesale domain providers.
Todd Han	Founder of Dynadot	Built a registrar and marketplace popular with domain investors.
Monte Cahn	Founder of Moniker	A pioneer of live domain auctions at industry events. Moniker brokered the $9.5 million sale of Porn.com in 2007.

The brokers

Andrew Rosener, founder of MediaOptions, is one of the best-known high-value domain brokers. MediaOptions topped Escrow.com's annual "Master of Domains" ranking for the seventh year in a row in 2025, which reflects the dollar value of deals closed through Escrow.com.

The chroniclers

Some of the most important people in domaining are the ones who report on it, giving investors real sales data instead of rumors.

Ron Jackson, DN Journal: has published weekly domain sales reports since 2003, the industry's go-to record of who sold what for how much.
Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire: industry news, analysis and a long-running podcast.
Elliot Silver, DomainInvesting.com: a daily blog for investors, known as Elliot's Blog until 2013.

What the legends teach us

Short, generic .com names hold value across decades.
Patience pays. Many record sales came years after the purchase.
End users pay the most. The biggest checks come from companies that need the exact name.
Data beats hype. The best investors study real sales, not asking prices.

New to all this? Start with what is domaining? and the story of the first domain names ever registered.

Sources

DomainNams isn't affiliated with anyone named here. Profiles are based on public reports. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.

Questions

Who is the Domain King?

Rick Schwartz, an early domain investor who bought his first domain in 1995, pioneered type-in traffic investing, sold Men.com for $1.32 million and co-founded the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conference.

What is the most expensive domain ever sold?

AI.com, bought for $70 million by Crypto.com founder Kris Marszalek and reported in early 2026. The previous record was Voice.com at $30 million in 2019.

What is the Beanstalk Challenge?

Rick Schwartz's program that partners with entrepreneurs to build businesses on his premium domains, splitting ownership 50/50 instead of simply selling the names.

Who sold the biggest domain portfolio?

One of the biggest was Yun Ye, who sold more than 100,000 domains to Marchex in 2004 for $164 million.

How did early domain investors get rich?

They registered short, generic .com names in the 1990s when registration was cheap, held them as the internet grew, and sold them years later to companies that needed those exact names.

David Ray

Domain investor and web developer in Palm Harbor, Florida. He buys, sells and builds on domain names, and writes the DomainNams guides from that experience.