Category Killer

A category killer is the one domain that is the category. Hotels.com. Cars.com. Insurance.com, which sold for $35.6 million in 2010. There's only one of each, and whoever owns it has a head start on every competitor in the space before spending a dollar on marketing.

They almost never come up for sale, and when they do the buyer is usually a public company or a fund. For most investors they matter as a reference point rather than a target. Knowing what the category killer sold for tells you something about the ceiling on every lesser name in that industry.

The phrase gets stretched. A two-word name that describes a niche isn't a category killer just because it's descriptive. Reserve the term for names that would make a stranger assume you're the biggest player in the business.