An article about a startup called Haus caught my attention this afternoon because of the domain name it chose for its website. Anna Escher wrote an article on TechCrunch this afternoon, reporting that Haus “secured $4.5 million in seed funding:”
Millennials don’t want to be drunk, but are locked into alcohol-centric communities. @drinkhaus wants to finesse the way to gather with its D2C aperitif.
10 funds + 100 individual stakeholders (!) contributed to the party round. My latest on @TechCrunchhttps://t.co/VaKkjcs2ZZ
— Anna Escher (@annaescher) January 30, 2020
Haus raised its funding round in a somewhat unique manner. There were ten funds and 100 individual investors who participated in the investment round. As someone who covers the business of domain name investing, I thought the domain name chosen by this brand was even more unique than that.
Haus.com is owned by a different startup, so that domain name was not available. Haus could have chosen (keyword)Haus.com or Haus(keyword).com. Haus could have also chosen an alternative domain extension like Haus.Club or Haus.io. Instead, Haus moved its brand to the right of the dot and the startup’s website can be found on Drink.Haus.
This is interesting because Haus doesn’t own the .Haus extension. The .Haus extension is owned by Donuts. I have seen a few major brands using their .brand extension for a landing page or even their website. For instance, KPMG now uses Home.KPMG for its website. I do not recall seeing a company branding on the right side of the dot using an extension it does not control. It will be interesting to see how this works out for Haus.
