Startup Domains Making News

Startups

It’s always interesting to see what domain names startups pick. Last year we helped 18 startups acquire domains and I’m excited to be helping over 30 startups so far this year find the perfect domain to build their brand on. While .COM is by far the most popular choice .ME, .CO and a late-comer to the game .IO are making a strong showing. Here’s a look at some of the top startup domains making news this week:

  • ElasticPath.com announced an $8M raise this week
  • Brika.com – think Etsy meets Fab
  • CodeClub.org.uk launched to help teach kids how to code, is it just me or does that make you feel old?
  • SongBird is calling it quits after a good fight in the music streaming space, they unfortunately were stuck with their 2nd choice – GetSongbird.com
  • Sciencescape.org got some nice buzz at the Extreme Startups Spring 2013 Demo Day in Toronto
  • Simple.com is finding it’s stride after raising a total of $15.3M (source CrunchBase)
  • Google is shutting down Adwhirl.com a company a cool ad platform they acquired
  • .CO was having a blast at SMX this week, you can see the highlights on their Twitter feed
  • GoodData.com raised $22M in a Series D round (source TechCrunch)
  • Trustev.com won Europe’s top startup award
  • Thumbstack.com raised 12.5M in a Series B Round (source TechCrunch)
  • VentureBeat covered the growth in popularity of .ME domains with startups, they mention Kiip.me which has raised over $15M in funding to date and Glide.me, one of my personal favorites
  • Vuclip.com, a startup you’ve probably never heard of is getting a whopping 80 million unique monthly visitors
  • AdRoll.com acquired Bitdeli.com, a two person team, or better put, two guys with a whole heck of a lot more money now

I’ve spoken with a few of the startups that I work with and plan to be featuring more stories from startup founders on what their experience was like finding and acquiring domain names. Since I now spend 95% of my time in the startup world as the CTO of Fashion Metric I’ve heard more domain acquisition horror stories than I could shake a stick at. It’s not all fund and games and sometimes it’s one heck of a fight to acquire the domain you’re looking for. Couple this with unreasonable domain owners and people who never respond to their emails and it can be incredibly frustrating for startups.

I plan to shed some light on the good, the bad, and the ugly and share tips for all the startup founders who read my blog and want to learn more about how to acquire the domain name they are looking for. While a good domain can be very powerful, at the end of the day it’s a great team that is capable of executing on an incredible idea that makes all the difference. Twitter.com, Facebook.com and Google.com were never wildly valuable domains, but what the founders did with them turned them into game-changing companies.

This weekend I’ll be mentoring startups at the Silicon Beach Hackathon and watching some amazing teams build cool stuff in less than three days. Looking forward to seeing what everyone builds!

Photo Credit: hackNY via Compfight cc

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton