Two Keyword Brandables Raise Funds
I was catching up on some reading this morning, and I wanted to share two articles about financial startup businesses who have raised significant funding and are using brandable keyword .com domain names.
According to CNBC, a company called Ripple has raised $55 million in funding from several large banks. The company has also been backed by Google Ventures. Crunchbase shows that Ripple is closing in on raising $100 million in total funding.
Ripple uses Ripple.com for its website. I did some research using DomainTools, and it appears that the company, a related company, or its predecessor acquired Ripple.com in late 2012 from a New York-based domain registrant. NameBio does not show any public sales record for this domain name, and I don’t see any broker offerings in my email history. With a domain name like this, I wouldn’t even guess what the sale price was because the spread could be very large.
According to TechCrunch, a company called Point raised $8.4 million in funding. Crunchbase shows that this is the first round of funding for the company, which was started in January of 2015.
As you may have already guessed, Point uses Point.com for its website. NameBio does not show any public sales history for Point.com. The domain name was a part of a bankruptcy proceeding a couple of years ago.
Both Point.com and Ripple.com are great brand names, and it is smart that they operated on the exact match .com domain names of their brand. There are many companies that use Ripple and Point in their branding, and it would likely be confusing for clients, prospects, journalists, and others if they operated on different extensions. This is especially the case for a company like Point because there are so many companies in related fields that have “Point” in their branding.
It’s always good to see great domain names being used by startups who understand how important the domain name is to their business.
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About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has sold seven figures worth of domain names in the last five years. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Google + | Facebook | Email
Alex DaCosta
Elliot, have you done any research on .NET brandable domains? Do you think there is a potential for .NET domains to get bigger as now made-up .COM’s are growing. Let me know your toughs.
Thanks in advance.
– Alex.
Elliot Silver
I have not done research on .net and almost exclusively buy .coms.
todd
I am constantly seeing great one word .coms raising millions in funding. I would love to know how many startups with great one word .coms don’t raise millions in funding. I know it’s not guaranteed but it sure seems like when you pair a great domain with a great idea it’s like money in the bank.
Companies like Godaddy really should offer payment plans for our domains like HugeDomains does. The value of our inventory would go up if a startup can secure a good domain for a couple hundred bucks a month from a reputable company like Godaddy.
T
If memory serves, Ripple used to be at ripplelabs.com. Glad to see they rebranded and upgraded to one word.