British workforce management platform Rota has been in business since 2015. Initially, the company operated on Get-Rota.com, a placeholder domain that the company quickly moved away from when it acquired Rota.com.
Its purchase of the premium Rota.com happened in January 2016, according to Whois history. Before changing hands, Rota.com was listed for sale on the Brandbucket marketplace.
Rota.com’s acquisition price has never been revealed publicly, but do Rota’s company accounts point to the domain’s cost?
Throughout several of Rota’s account filings with the UK’s Companies House, there is mention of a domain name cost of £36,182.
It first appears in a 2017 filing covering Rota’s income and expenses for 2016, the year that Rota acquired Rota.com.
At the time, £36,182 equated to just over $51,000. The figure could include the original registration costs of Get-Rota.com and possibly other names the company registered, but I think this suggests that the majority of the £36,182 figure would have been the price paid for Rota.com.
It’s interesting to note how far the domain industry’s aftermarket has advanced since 2016. Now, a $50,000 price tag for Rota.com would be closer to the price a domain investor would pay for the domain.
Since its acquisition of Rota.com, Rota has flourished, raising £11.3 million (around $14.7 million) across 7 funding rounds.