Extend is a “well funded early stage startup,” according to a tweet from its founder and CEO Woody Levin. The San Francisco-based startup had been using the off-brand HelloExtend.com domain name for its website.
According to a tweet from its founder yesterday, the company has acquired its brand match Extend.com domain name:
Not a big deal…No more “hello” in our URL – Come visit @HelloExtend at our new home https://t.co/CxMCAOgBz2. How cool is that!? #extend #protectionplans #bigdeal pic.twitter.com/B9Zj6OPSso
— Woody Levin (@Woodrow1616) September 10, 2019
Prior to Extend’s acquisition of Extend.com, the domain name had been registered to domain investor Andy Booth and his brother James Booth, who had acquired Extend.com from publicly traded Cisco less than a month ago. The sale was confirmed last night on Twitter by James:
Happy to announce we sold the premium domain https://t.co/F1ABR3cGFw! Amazing purchase from the buyer! https://t.co/48qQU3ABci
— James Booth (@DomainBooth) September 11, 2019
I reached out to Andy and James to ask if they can share the sale price for Extend.com, but they said they are honoring the buyer’s request to keep the price confidential. As a courtesy, I will not share the asking price either.
According to its CrunchBase profile, “Extend provides extended warranties as a service to merchants and reinvents the broken customer experience associated with them.” From what I can see, it does not look like the company has raised outside capital to this point.
It was a smart move for the startup to acquire Extend.com, especially at this early stage. The company will not have to worry about directing partners and consumers to an off-brand email address or website. In addition, the company doesn’t have to worry about another company buying the domain name and making it unavailable in the future. In fact, there’s another company called Extend that was founded in 2017 and has raised $14 million in funding.
This was a nice acquisition by Extend and likely a nice flip for the Booth brothers.
The guys at paywithextend.com might as well rebrand now… Game over.
Since the .com is no longer available for them (at least not in the near future), I would suggest that they acquire Extend.app since their product is exactly an app.
Except there is another app called Extend already and they are using extendapp.com, so even more confusion. Besides, consumers have never heard about a TLD called .app. They would add the .com anyway or worse, think it’s a scam..
No, a rebrand is the way to go here I think.
Bad idea to use .app, which is confusing and an unheard of extension. They are better off sticking with what they have or branding to a completely different term.
While rebranding to a different name is also an option, I think .app is a clear TLD and don’t consider it confusing. Obviously, Google and people who use .app think the TLD is fine, too. https://get.app/#success-stories
People learn new things every day, especially tech things. It’s not wise to just think .app will be unheard of forever.
I am not aware of Google using .app for anything.