Rick Schwartz just revealed the domain behind his recent seven-figure deal—AiReviews.com, which he sold for $1.34 million cash plus 9% equity. The kicker? He registered it for $480.
The reveal came after Rick teased a “seven-figure LTO” deal in mid-November without naming the domain. On November 26-27, the full details surfaced: a hybrid cash-plus-equity structure that’s becoming increasingly common when AI startup founders can’t afford—or can’t find—category-defining .com domains outright.
The math is striking. At $480 acquisition cost to $1.34 million cash (ignoring the equity stake entirely), that’s a 2,791x return. If the company takes off and that 9% equity becomes meaningful, the total return could balloon significantly higher.
Why This Deal Matters
AiReviews.com fits the current sweet spot for AI domain sales: short, descriptive, and immediately understandable. The name works for SaaS review platforms, AI tool aggregators, product comparison sites, or automated review generation services—basically any business model where AI meets customer feedback.
The equity component signals that the buyer is a serious founder building a real company, not a domainer flipping the name or a corporate buyer with deep pockets. Equity deals only make sense when both sides believe in long-term upside.
Two things to watch: whether this triggers more equity-linked domain sales in AI verticals as founders realize they can stretch their capital by offering points instead of pure cash, and whether AiReviews.com shows up on Crunchbase or ProductHunt in the next couple months as the company launches.
For now, Rick’s turned a sub-$500 registration into a million-dollar payday with ongoing upside—exactly the kind of ROI that keeps domainers hunting for the next AI category killer.
