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Hilco Digital Assets
Doubles Firepower with Braden Pollock Joining
Andrew Miller at HDA as a Strategic Partner and
Stakeholder |
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15
months ago
domain
consultant and ATM
Holdings Founder Andrew
Miller, who has been involved in many of the
biggest domain sales in industry history, teamed
up with diversified financial services giant Hilco
Global to
start a
new division - Hilco
Digital Assets (HDA). The new
enterprise hit the ground running, quickly
establishing itself as a powerful force in the
premium domain space with moves that included a $10
million investment in SquadHelp.com.
That funding and
Miller's advice helped SquadHelp build and launch
their new Ultra
Premium Domain Marketplace. HDA
just doubled their firepower with another
big move in welcoming another one of the
industry's most highly respected figures, Braden
Pollock, on board as a strategic
partner and stakeholder. Braden,
who founded LegalBrandMarketing.com,
is a long-time investor in both domain names and
promising startups who owns a world class domain
portfolio that HDA will now exclusively represent.
Just last week Braden put a six-figure sale
on our bi-weekly Top
20 Sales Chart for the fourth time
this year (he also closed many other high end
sales that were
subject to NDAs, as most at that level are). Andrew
and Braden have known each other for years and
over that time both have stayed busy running their own thriving
businesses, so I was curious to know what factors led to them ending up
on the same team at this point in time.
Braden said the seeds were planted last year when
Andrew hired 23-year-old domain name and digital
asset advisor Daniel
Koleshchuk as his first employee at
HDA. Braden was a foster parent to Daniel for many
years and encouraged him to enter the business,
partly because Pollock was considering starting a
domain brokerage of his own one day with Daniel playing a
key role in that vision. In
the meantime, Daniel has thrived under Andrew's tutelage at HDA and his
accomplishments there naturally resulted in Braden
and Andrew being in touch more often. The idea of
Braden partnering and investing with HDA came up for the first time
a few months ago when they got together at this year's NamesCon
Global conference in Austin. Since
then they have been going back and forth,
working through how that could work with the end
result being an agreement that was signed on
Sunday (October 1,
2023). |
Andrew
Miller
Hilco Digital Assets Managing Director
Braden
Pollock
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Braden
told me, "In Austin, I mentioned to Andrew that
I really wanted to start an agency but if there was a
path for me to be a partner in Hilco then I
wouldn't need to start one of my own. I had wanted
to get into that business because I have a lot of
great inventory that others wanted to represent, so
why not just do it myself? However, Andrew was
having a great deal of success with HDA - a lot of
which people don't know about because of NDAs - and
if the opportunity was there, I thought why not
just join a winning team - especially one backed
by Hilco's incomparable connections to the
corporate world - the place where the vast majority of high end
buyers come from."
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Braden
added, "I
also liked Andrew's vision for HDA, in that
they will be investing in various assets,
whether it be equity in digital asset
related companies or digital assets like
premium domain directly. I am an angel
investor and will be able to help put
deals together and invest alongside
Hilco."
In fact Braden
and HDA have already bought two domains
together and they have each put funds into a pool of money to
jointly purchase additional assets.
Andrew
told me, "We are so excited
that Braden has aligned with us as a strategic
partner and stakeholder. When Hilco Global,
Hilco |
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Streambank and I made the decision
to start Hilco Digital Assets together, one
of the primary goals was to assemble a world
class team of experts with a deep track record
and a portfolio of the most premium domain name
assets. With Braden, we get access to one of the
best portfolios in the world, his network,
expertise and connections that
are unparalleled in the domain asset class. Just
as importantly, he may be the most widely
respected and well-liked person in the
industry. Having someone on your team
that has created so much good will is invaluable to both HDA and to SquadHelp,
in which we are the lead strategic investor." |
In
closing Andrew noted, "Hilco Global is a category
leader as an advisory and investor across many
asset classes and in only 15 months with HDA, is
now established as one in domain names.
We
are looking forward to building and accomplishing
great things together." *****
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