Sequoia Capital is one of the largest venture capital firms in existence, and since 1972 the company has funded both startups and established companies, with a focus on the technology industry. Sequoia Capital has invested in hundreds of companies, with funding rounds typically ranging from $100,000 all the way to $100 million.
Some of the most famous businesses that Sequoia Capital has invested in include Apple, Instagram, and WhatsApp. According to Crunchbase, Sequoia has raised over $4 billion in funding. On their website, Sequoia Capital lists close to 200 companies they have invested in, and so we wanted to take a look at the domain names that are in use by these businesses.
Extension
As you saw in the headline, 98% of the companies in the list use a .COM domain as their main website. To be precise, that's 97.83%, rounded up to 98%. Just 4 of the 184 companies that we looked at are using something other than a .COM.
Those not using a .COM are:
Length
The average length of a domain in the list we analyzed is 8 characters (not including the extension). The longest domain is the truly awful cambridge-epigenetix.com, who actively use the acronym CEGX on their website.
There is one company on the list using a two-letter .COM, and that company is Electronic Arts, better known as EA. This game developer has been using ea.com since at least 1997, according to archive.org.
Two companies use three-letter .COMs, and four companies are using four-letter .COMs. The most popular domain length seems to be six characters, with 20% of all companies on the list using a six character domain.
There are just nine companies using a domain with fifteen characters or more.
Age
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the age of the domains in the list we're analyzing, so I ran a bulk WHOIS query to find the original registration date for every single domain name in our list. It turns out that many of these companies are using some pretty old domains!
Just under 20% of all the domains are 20 years old or more. Some of these companies have used their domain since the original registration date. Five companies on the list have domains registered in the 1980s, and they have all owned their respective domains since the creation date.
However, many companies seem to have purchased their domains in the aftermarket. One prominent example is Clutter. They began by using the domain clutter.io, and for a while it looked as though they would never be able to buy the .COM. In 2015, they finally acquired clutter.com, a domain with a 1994 creation date.
One of my favorite names on the list is Clever.com, which is 21 years old. A company called Clever was created in 2012, and thanks to various funding rounds, they were able to acquire Clever.com from a company in Scottsdale, AZ.
The oldest name on the list is 3com.com, which has a registration date of December 11th 1986. Conversely, there is a domain in the list that is less than 1 year old, and that is flyzipline.com.
The average age for a domain name in this list is 13 years. The most common age is 10 years.
I found it interesting to see that from this list, 67 out of 184 (36.4%) of the domain names were registered in the '80s or '90s.
Most Common Letters
For our Y Combinator data article, we analyzed the letters that made up each domain name, and we have done the same thing here for reference.
It shows again that vowels,
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We have attached a full PDF of the list of domains we analysed, with additional data such as domain length and creation dates included.
Extension
As you saw in the headline, 98% of the companies in the list use a .COM domain as their main website. To be precise, that's 97.83%, rounded up to 98%. Just 4 of the 184 companies that we looked at are using something other than a .COM.
Those not using a .COM are:
- Bebop is using bebop.co while the .COM is being used by a music startup.
- Keen IO is, as you may expect, using keen.io. They don't own keenio.com, and keen.com is developed.
- Nubank, a Brazilian company, is using nubank.com.br. .BR is the country code extension for Brazil.
- Whisper, the popular app, uses whisper.sh, which I think works well. The .COM equivalent is parked, and is probably not needed by this company.
- Versa Networks is using versa-networks.com. They do own versanetworks.com, but the domain versa.com is in use by another company. In this situation, instead of using a long .COM, I would have used versa.net, which is currently parked.
- Skyhigh Networks is in a similar situation. They currently use skyhighnetworks.com. Skyhigh.com is unused, but is owned by Earthlink, so it's likely that this name is unobtainable. Skyhigh.net is parked and looks to be for sale. Surely skyhigh.net is a better option than skyhighnetworks.com?
Length
The average length of a domain in the list we analyzed is 8 characters (not including the extension). The longest domain is the truly awful cambridge-epigenetix.com, who actively use the acronym CEGX on their website.
There is one company on the list using a two-letter .COM, and that company is Electronic Arts, better known as EA. This game developer has been using ea.com since at least 1997, according to archive.org.
Two companies use three-letter .COMs, and four companies are using four-letter .COMs. The most popular domain length seems to be six characters, with 20% of all companies on the list using a six character domain.
There are just nine companies using a domain with fifteen characters or more.
Age
I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the age of the domains in the list we're analyzing, so I ran a bulk WHOIS query to find the original registration date for every single domain name in our list. It turns out that many of these companies are using some pretty old domains!
Just under 20% of all the domains are 20 years old or more. Some of these companies have used their domain since the original registration date. Five companies on the list have domains registered in the 1980s, and they have all owned their respective domains since the creation date.
However, many companies seem to have purchased their domains in the aftermarket. One prominent example is Clutter. They began by using the domain clutter.io, and for a while it looked as though they would never be able to buy the .COM. In 2015, they finally acquired clutter.com, a domain with a 1994 creation date.
One of my favorite names on the list is Clever.com, which is 21 years old. A company called Clever was created in 2012, and thanks to various funding rounds, they were able to acquire Clever.com from a company in Scottsdale, AZ.
The oldest name on the list is 3com.com, which has a registration date of December 11th 1986. Conversely, there is a domain in the list that is less than 1 year old, and that is flyzipline.com.
The average age for a domain name in this list is 13 years. The most common age is 10 years.
I found it interesting to see that from this list, 67 out of 184 (36.4%) of the domain names were registered in the '80s or '90s.
Most Common Letters
For our Y Combinator data article, we analyzed the letters that made up each domain name, and we have done the same thing here for reference.
A E and I in particular, are the most popular characters. Characters that are popular with Chinese investors, such as Z J and Q are the least popular amongst these companies.--
We have attached a full PDF of the list of domains we analysed, with additional data such as domain length and creation dates included.
