I was reading the CrunchBase funding report, when I saw something of interest. A company called HeyDay reportedly received $3.5 million in Series A funding. It was reported that the funding was provided by General Catalyst Partners, Google Ventures, and Spark Capital. In December of 2013, it received a reported seed funding round of $2 million.
According to its website, “Heyday is an automatic journal. It makes remembering effortless, beautiful & fun, so you never forget another day of your life.” It’s available to download for free in Apple’s App Store or via Google Play.
To me, a domain investor, the most interesting aspect of the company is its domain name. Visitors can find HeyDay via its website on Hey.CO. HeyDay.com and HeyDay.CO are both owned by different entities. HeyDay.com was purchased many years ago. There are a number of companies that operate HayDay brands, including a bookstore, footwear company, entertainment company, and many others.
I don’t think the company needs to worry about confusion if a visitor accidentally types in the full brand .com or .CO, but I always find it a bit peculiar when a company’s website is located on a somewhat off-brand domain name.
I think Hey.CO is a catchy domain name, and it looks like things are working out pretty well for the brand.
I don’t like it. ‘Hey’ is not the brand of the company; ‘HeyDay’ is. It’d be like if you owned a gym and your brand was ‘boot camp’ but you went with boot.??? for your site. I think its fine for proper-name brands (‘Clark Builders’ could go with Clark.com, etc because your brand is actually your name, Clark), but I don’t think this was very wise.
Elliot, don’t get me wrong, I like the domain on its own; catchy yes, but using it for this particular company…they’ll be known as “hay-co”. Still, I wish them the best.
Happy New Year my friend.
-Ramahn