A VC: Finding And Buying A Domain Name

I’ve felt for a while that domain names are actually a great investment - they are completely unique (there is only one doctors.com) and they are very limited.

In a world where literally every business and every startup needs a domain to pin themselves on, this kind of domain price inflation makes sense:

We’ve noticed the average price of a good domain has risen fairly dramatically in the past year. We used to advise companies to spend $10k or less on a domain, then we upped that recommendation to $25k. We recently upped it again to $50k.

One of the interesting questions to me is whether a domain name, once used by a failed startup, ever comes back around for use. As an example, will anyone ever use Kozmo.com again?