Trove Becomes Pave After Payfone Becomes Prove

Over the Summer, I wrote about a major rebrand involving an exceptional one word .com domain name. A company called Payfone rebranded as Prove, and it acquired the matching Prove.com domain name at the time of the rebrand. The company formerly known as Payfone also owned an additional exceptional one word .com domain name – Pave.com.

I read a press release yesterday announcing another rebrand that I found interesting. A startup called Trove, which had been operating on the off-brand .CO domain name, TryTrove.CO, announced a rebrand to Pave. The rebrand announcement came as the business announced that “it raised $16 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).” Smartly, the company acquired Pave.com in advance of the launch and now has the brand match .com domain name along with the new branding.

I reached out to Brian Harbin and Michael Law of Grit Brokerage, which brokered the sale of Prove.com. Brian replied to confirm that his company also brokered the sale of Pave.com. Unfortunately, Brian was unable to share the acquisition price of Pave.com, so the sale will not be added to the list of the top domain name sales of 2020.

Interestingly, Trove.com is being used as a forwarder to the Punch.in website. I would be interested in knowing if the company formerly known as Trove tried to acquire Trove.com as its first choice and then opted to rebrand after being unable to secure the domain name. It’s probably one of those things we will never know.

Pave.com is an exceptional domain name, and Pave is a nice brand name. I think it is a wise move for a startup to start off on a sub-optimal domain name and either purchase the brand match .com domain name when the funding is there or opt to re-brand. I would imagine a full rebrand is not an ideal situation, but if done early enough, there should be fewer issues.