Yesterday, TechCrunch published an article about Zoe, a startup that recently raised $15 million in additional funding. To date, Zoe has raised $118 million in funding. Notably, this startup uses the brand matching Zoe.com domain name for its website.
In looking at some internal pages on Zoe.com, I was able to see the company got its start on the off-brand JoinZoe.com domain name. Wisely, JoinZoe.com now forwards to Zoe.com.
Zoe.com has been registered under Whois privacy for quite some time. The domain name transferred from DreamHost to GoDaddy in mid-2023, according to historical Whois records at DomainTools. I presume that’s when this domain name was acquired.
Prior to the transfer of the domain name, Zoe.com was used by another startup called Zoe. In early 2023, Zoe.com began forwarding to ZoeImmersive.com, Archive.org shows. Crunchbase shows that “Zoe Immersive is a software company that operates an interactive media studio,” and it has raised $450,000 in funding.
It would appear that Zoe acquired Zoe.com from Zoe, and it was able to upgrade from JoinZoe.com, while the other Zoe seemingly downgraded to ZoeImmersive.com.
This shows how much more valuable a domain name is to one company than another company with the same name, and it also shows how flexible a great domain name can be, shifting from one company to another.
