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data Domain Data: 78% of TechStars Companies Use .COM

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The worldwide entrepreneurial network Techstars has been helping startups grow since 2006. Co-founded by angel investor David Cohen, this network has invested more than $3.5 billion in over one thousand companies including SendGrid, ClassPass and Digital Ocean.

These companies plus hundreds more have gone on to become hugely successful businesses. Morgan Linton, domain investor and co-founder of Bold Metrics, is a mentor for Techstars retail startups.

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In this edition of Domain Data, we will take a look at 541 startups that Techstars have invested in to see what type of domain names they are using. These are companies that have been listed in Crunchbase and have received funding from Techstars. It will be interesting to see what type of domain names are used by these companies.


The Companies

We took data from 541 companies that have been listed on Crunchbase as having received an investment from Techstars. The average total amount of funding received in all rounds by each company is $5.5 million, with the mode funding total being $118,000. This isn’t necessarily just the funding amount received from Techstars, this data includes figures from other funding rounds.

The company with the highest funding amount from our list is ClassPass, who has raised $154 million in six funding rounds after receiving seed funding from Techstars several years ago. The lowest total funding amount on our list is SocialEngine, who raised just $12,000 from Techstars before being acquired in 2013.

The average creation date for the 541 companies is April 14th, 2012, with the newest company being Stackery.


The Domain Names

Since the companies we have analyzed have typically received a lower total funding amount than other data sets we’ve looked at in the past, you may be forgiven for thinking that .COM usage would be lower as startups opt for other domain extensions in order to get a shorter domain that may not be available in .COM due to its price or usage.

However, you’d be wrong. An impressive 78.18% of companies analyzed are using a .COM domain name. This is 11% higher than companies backed by 500 Startups but 8% less than companies funded through Y Combinator. From the data we have, we can see that fourteen companies have opted to use “get+keyword” .COM domain names such as GetDrizzle.com. Many of these companies could have used alternative extensions but stuck with a longer .COM domain instead. Several companies also opted to use “the+keyword” domain names including Foodworks, which uses TheFoodworks.com.

Some companies in our list have managed to upgrade their .COM domain names. Latch, for example, used the name LatchAccess.com before buying Latch.com earlier this year. Latch’s latest funding round netted $10 million.

A .COM domain name in our list is nine characters in length, on average, with the shortest domain being Pana.com and the longest being the twenty-character domain name CoolChipTechnologies.com.

The second most popular extension is .IO with 8.68% usage. Domains used in this extension tend to be shorter, one-word domains that wouldn’t be available as a .COM. These include Keen.io, Bright.io and Reflect.io. A company called Universal Basket is using the two-letter domain UB.io, although the company doesn’t own UniversalBasket.com.

The third most popular extension is .CO with 4.25% followed by .AI with 1.84%. New domain extensions make up just 0.55% of the list, with .MONEY, .LIVE and .TODAY being actively used.
 
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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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Let's don't overlook this date within the article.

"The average creation date for the 541 companies is April 14th, 2012"
 
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As usual; @James Iles Thanks for this information with valuable data.

Cheers
 
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Let's don't overlook this date within the article.

"The average creation date for the 541 companies is April 14th, 2012"
makes little sense as the nGTLDs mentioned didnt launch until 2014
 
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Perhaps a more relevant statistic for domain investors would be the percentage of startups which acquired an aftermarket domain - and of those what TLDs they chose, one-word vs two-word or LLLL, brandable, etc characteristics and median price paid by domain type. Most startups choose rather crappy domains IMO.
 
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nice one can i see the full 541 companies list
 
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I think a few % here and there, but, the future stats will be similar as well.
 
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makes little sense as the nGTLDs mentioned didnt launch until 2014

The companies in question are:

Atlas (using atlas.money), launched in 2014.
Cargo (using getcargo.today), launched in June 2016
Switchboard Live (using switchboard.live), launched in August 2014.
 
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nice one can i see the full 541 companies list

The data was gathered using a Crunchbase Pro license, so, unfortunately, we're unable to share the exact data, although we can report on it.
 
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