How HeadHunter hh.ru bought, or the legend of Hazrat Kharitonov
Now HeadHunter and hh.ru are practically synonyms, but it was not always the case. When in 2002 the National Job Club and Job.rbc.ru merged into HeadHunter, the domain headhunter.ru belonged to RBC. By 2005, relations with RBC were strained, the domain still belonged to them, and to protect themselves from hostile takeovers, virovets offered to buy a short two-letter book at hh.ru. With him, our service could safely continue to work, if RBC had taken a long option.
At that time we had two news - good and bad. The bad thing was that the domain was occupied, which even for the distant 2005 was not surprising. But there was a good one - he owned a cybersquatter, which means that the domain could be quickly purchased. Unfortunately, for an Internet company, whose name consists of two words starting with “h”, and living under the wing of a rich RBC, this meant a price of several tens of thousands of dollars, and we did not have such a sum at that time. Therefore, we decided to resort to tricks and created the legend of Hazrat Kharitonov.
According to the legend, Khazrat Kharitonov is a friend of Olga Brukovskaya, our marketing director at the time (a person who is not yet public, and therefore well suited for this operation). Hazrat had a birthday planned, so Olga and his friends decided to give him a personal website, and for what they really needed a beautiful domain with the first letters of the name of the birthday man. Naturally, Olga acted here as a private person, under a different name, with a different phone number - everything is like in a real detective story.
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A clever cybersquatter would never have sold such a tasty domain to an unknown lady when HeadHunter aimed at him, so we refused to make a purchase and stopped showing any interest.
And suddenly, after some time, Olga appeared on the horizon with a purchase offer and her touching story about a 40-year-old hero of the day. Of course, the cybersquatter did not immediately believe in the legend, but after several meetings in the cafe, he succumbed to feminine charm, gave up and, preferring a bird in his hand, sold the domain three times cheaper than HeadHunter suggested.
Then relations with RBC were improved, the domain headhunter.ru they gave us, but as it turned out, hh.ru was much better, and after the rebranding it became part of our logo and the main domain of the company.
At that time we had two news - good and bad. The bad thing was that the domain was occupied, which even for the distant 2005 was not surprising. But there was a good one - he owned a cybersquatter, which means that the domain could be quickly purchased. Unfortunately, for an Internet company, whose name consists of two words starting with “h”, and living under the wing of a rich RBC, this meant a price of several tens of thousands of dollars, and we did not have such a sum at that time. Therefore, we decided to resort to tricks and created the legend of Hazrat Kharitonov.
(retro screenshot HeadHunter of the middle of two thousandth)
According to the legend, Khazrat Kharitonov is a friend of Olga Brukovskaya, our marketing director at the time (a person who is not yet public, and therefore well suited for this operation). Hazrat had a birthday planned, so Olga and his friends decided to give him a personal website, and for what they really needed a beautiful domain with the first letters of the name of the birthday man. Naturally, Olga acted here as a private person, under a different name, with a different phone number - everything is like in a real detective story.
')
A clever cybersquatter would never have sold such a tasty domain to an unknown lady when HeadHunter aimed at him, so we refused to make a purchase and stopped showing any interest.
And suddenly, after some time, Olga appeared on the horizon with a purchase offer and her touching story about a 40-year-old hero of the day. Of course, the cybersquatter did not immediately believe in the legend, but after several meetings in the cafe, he succumbed to feminine charm, gave up and, preferring a bird in his hand, sold the domain three times cheaper than HeadHunter suggested.
Then relations with RBC were improved, the domain headhunter.ru they gave us, but as it turned out, hh.ru was much better, and after the rebranding it became part of our logo and the main domain of the company.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/171771/
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