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information After Raising $13.5 Million, Pillow Homes Switches to Pillow.com

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Pillow Homes Inc, known simply as Pillow, is a short-term rental management startup, which was launched a few years ago to facilitate the process of renting out your apartment through the multi-billion dollar marketplace Airbnb. Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength and has recently completed a $13.5 million funding round.

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Originally known as Airenvy, the company rebranded in 2014, using the domain name PillowHomes.com. However, just before completing their latest funding round, the company switched to the highly desirable one-word .COM domain name pillow.com.

Previously, pillow.com was owned by Pillows.com, a family business owned by Abby and Craig Clark, focusing on luxury bedding. I reached out to Craig to find out more details about the deal that resulted in Pillow using the Pillow.com domain.

According to Craig, Pillows.com entered into a joint venture with Pillow, a deal that has allowed Pillow to operate on the Pillow.com domain. Craig’s company remains the owner of the Pillow.com domain name, but Pillow has an option to buy the domain.

DomainIQ shows that Craig's company took ownership of the singular Pillow.com in early 2014, with the name forwarding to Pillows.com until last month.

Through this strategic partnership, Pillow has the ability to grow its presence and value through an incredible one-word domain name. As we’ve seen many times within our Inside Interview series, a short memorable domain name can be an incredible platform on which to grow a company further.

Thanks to Jamie Zoch (@Yofie) for his help with this article.
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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Such an amazing, positive brand. Also pretty interesting way to structure the deal.
 
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.COM remains the king of all.. ( no other extensions can beat it )
 
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Pillow.homes : not better?

Not for smart/successful companies. Maybe more for somebody who made a blog where friends and family might be the only people to ever visit.
 
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Lol: wasn't the same said about PCs and Cars?
 
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A "PC" means Personal Computer and before Cars, there were Horses. In both cases people said that they would never be used nor work. Today, we all use a Personal Computer (OK...some use Macs...) and Cars. Do you still ride a horse?
 
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A "PC" means Personal Computer and before Cars, there were Horses. In both cases people said that they would never be used nor work. Today, we all use a Personal Computer (OK...some use Macs...) and Cars. Do you still ride a horse?

That's actually nonsense, nobody said cars would never be used or work. And what in the world does that have to do with pillows.home? Not for a serious business. Startups don't seem to be fans of new gtlds either on the whole

"For the second week in a row, there is not a single startup on the list this week that decided to use a new domain name extension."

http://dngeek.com/2017/06/moneytap-com-make-tv-lanla-com/
 
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Very nice, congrats to them for picking up a killer brand! Thanks @James Iles
 
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"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad." Advice from a president of the Michigan Savings Bank to Henry Ford's lawyer Horace Rackham. Rackham ignored the advice and invested $5000 in Ford stock, selling it later for $12.5 million.

Have a good day?
 
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Talk about upselling!, All the people that go to Pillow.com thinking it's MyPillow and end up with a new house. LOL

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"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad." Advice from a president of the Michigan Savings Bank to Henry Ford's lawyer Horace Rackham. Rackham ignored the advice and invested $5000 in Ford stock, selling it later for $12.5 million.

Guess you missed that part. I should have said nobody smart instead of just nobody.

Still nothing to do with domains and you coming in asking if pillows.home is better. The people you consult are the only losers here, you would tell them yes.
 
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Pillow.homes : not better?
Yeh, pillow.homes is SO AMAZING. Wow! What a name! Easily better than pillow.com :banghead:

Seriously though, go buy it for many thousands of dollars. You won't regret it, you can then live in denial like the so called kingoftop.
 
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Ultra generics aren't great for SEO, unfortunately. Search for "pillow" and get anything but this company.

"Pillow Homes" however, works. Two word, descriptive domains have immediate advantage over ultra generic domains, because as a pair they eliminate millions of other results.

It can take years of intensive marketing to associate an ultra generic, dictionary word with a brand that offers products or services unrelated to the word.
 
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dot anything but .com is not better - just for the record
 
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Pillow.homes : not better?

If I saw a company using that name, I'd assume they were an inexperienced small time business who not only couldn't afford to buy pillow.com, they couldn't even get pillowhomes.com.
 
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Pillow.homes is registered. I guess @guillon you got it.
Pillow.casa, taken too! Oh, no.
However, Pillow.estate, the "classier" version is only $9.99 on GD right now. Hurry up and grab it before someone else and this thread gets indexed
on goo gle.

Pillow.Loan is premium it says. Only $349.
 
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Two word, descriptive domains have immediate advantage over ultra generic domains, because as a pair they eliminate millions of other results.

Agreed...just made this point to a potential customer a few days ago...good to know others feel the same!
 
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Am I the only person here who thinks that "Pillow.com" was chosen in part because "Zillow.com" is a big site for home sales?

From a trademark perspective, it's fanciful and non-generic (they're not selling pillows, they're renting apartments). That will make it easy for them to obtain a trademark (although they haven't yet applied), unlike the folks who are selling pillows at Pillows.com (who haven't even bothered trying to get a registered trademark - an effort that would certainly fail).

Thus, as "Pillow.com" acquires secondary meaning in the field of rentals, they will be able to exclude others from the field. I can see it now, "Pillow.com vs. TheComfyChair.com."
 
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Charles - great to see you here. Pillow wouldn't be a fanciful mark, it'd be an arbitrary mark, correct?
Zillow is fanciful though. Interesting correlation.
 
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