information Data Driven: Which Extensions Are Startups Using in 2020?

[James Iles]

Trends. Domain name investing is very often about profiting from trends. Many investors have made significant money from selling names in trending niches such as cryptocurrency, and CBD while some have even carved out a profitable corner by becoming experts in a specific domain extension.

One of the primary buyers of domains in alternative extensions, such as .CO or .IO is a startup. Alternative extensions to .COM prove to be popular because there’s more choice, and there’s a higher chance of getting a premium .whatever brand name to promote their business.

Companies such as Swipe (swipe.io), Feed (feed.co), and Generate (generate.co) have all adopted alternative extensions to get a more memorable left-of-the-dot experience. Are companies still opting for .CO and .IO over all others?

I’m going to take a look at some data on startups that have been founded in 2020 so far to see what extensions startups are using, to see whether there are any pieces of information that we can glean from it to help form decisions about our own investments.

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[Bob Hawkes]

Very nice analysis @James Iles .

Not surprised that 61% of companies chose .com, and definitely good news for .io that 7% use that extension. Somewhat surprised that your other category, that includes .org and .net as I understand it, only took 4%. And about the same number use .co as .net and .org combined.

The 10% of startups that use new gTLDs was higher than I would have guessed (and as I understand your numbers that is nearly 100 different companies?). Not surprised that .app dominates among the new extensions used by startups. I am surprised a startup uses .fun, even though I think it is a fun extension for some uses .

Great article and analysis, with valuable intelligence for domain investors.

Thanks again,

Bob

 

[Chinwong]

Domains with .com still stands out amongst other gTLDs.

Great analysis there.

 

[King]

.com is king & always will be

 

[FolioTeam]

Thanks for sharing

 

[James Iles]

Very nice analysis @James Iles .

Not surprised that 61% of companies chose .com, and definitely good news for .io that 7% use that extension. Somewhat surprised that your other category, that includes .org and .net as I understand it, only took 4%. And about the same number use .co as .net and .org combined.

The 10% of startups that use new gTLDs was higher than I would have guessed (and as I understand your numbers that is nearly 100 different companies?). Not surprised that .app dominates among the new extensions used by startups. I am surprised a startup uses .fun, even though I think it is a fun extension for some uses .

Great article and analysis, with valuable intelligence for domain investors.

Thanks again,

Bob

Thanks, Bob. The .NET usage was certainly higher than I expected, which accounted for a fair number in the "other" category. I wasn't overly surprised at the new gtld usage since that, I think, is largely the target user base for most new g's. It gives those on a low budget the chance to use a memorable domain without having to spend five or six-figures.

 

[Furquan]

Thanks for sharing. A good in-depth look.

 

[Reddstagg]

A very worthwhile read. It will be interesting to see how these same figures evolve for the rest of the year and beyond.

Are there like for like statistics available for hyphenated names as these too can reduce barriers to entry in terms of cost and widen the number of domain names that may be available to buy or register by the emerging start-ups of today.

Again, I'd like to see the comparison to find out whether there are any identifiable trends.

Regards,

Reddstagg

 

[dombastic]

The 10% of startups that use new gTLDs was higher than I would have guessed

They do not. And it is not written in the article. Just 991 companies.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

They do not. And it is not written in the article. Just 991 companies.

??
from article (and also given in graph)

"In total, all new gTLD’s (such as .club, .xyz, and .app) account for 10% of domains, with .APP a heavy favorite amongst the new gTLD’s. Google’s new domain extension has obviously struck a chord with app makers."​

Or are you making reference to the data used? Clearly any study does not look at every company started in world. This one uses 991 Crunchbase-listed companies started in first few months of 2020. I thought it would be obvious my reply was with respect to the data source of the article we are discussing.

"The data collected is from Crunchbase Pro, collated using information from 991 companies that are listed as being founded between 1st January 2020 and 12th May 2020."​

Bob

 

[BaileyUK]

with .APP a heavy favorite amongst the new gTLD’s. Google’s new domain extension has obviously struck a chord with app makers."

Thanks for highlighting that part about .app. From my perspective it really is just intuitive that .app should be doing well. But, I've never looked at the figures before.

Still don't hold any - I do believe it's a very difficult area to speculate in, and it's really developers territory

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Still don't hold any - I do believe it's a very difficult area to speculate in, and it's really developers territory

I should probably not take James' thread too much off the overall data trends of the article, but I agree with your sentiments. For a bunch of reasons I think .app will emerge strong. As you noted, the purpose of the TLD is clear, Google's backing is a positive imo, the registry seems well run and registrations were never significantly discounted, and the extension, at least among those I interact with, has got known more than most TLDs, and most importantly the app market is huge and growing.

All that said, I 100% agree with:

it's a very difficult area to speculate in, and it's really developers territory

I have looked periodically at .app but it seemed really hard to me to find names without high premium costs that did not encroach on TMs that I thought were high probability sales. I only ever invested in a single .app domain name, and have none right now, personally. So I think .app and .dev will both be highly successful, but more for developers and end use than as domain investments. Yes, I do realize some have already turned .app investments into nice profits, but many have not.

The continuing growth in strength of .io is perhaps the most important point from @James Iles excellent analysis. I had wondered if that would have waned by now, but opposite seems to be happening. I am hugely surprised more did not choose the non-generalized country codes.

Thanks for your comments, and thanks to James for a great analysis.

Bob

 

[BaileyUK]

The continuing growth in strength of .io is perhaps the most important point from @James Iles excellent analysis.

Yeah I still can't quite get my head around that one . Try as i do all I keep seeing is either Indian Ocean which of course it is, Or IN/OUT just because of the Technical history.

I'd love to know why it seems to do OK - And I mean a rational/logical explanation NOT a domain speculators one.

 

[pb]

Yeah I still can't quite get my head around that one . Try as i do all I keep seeing is either Indian Ocean which of course it is, Or IN/OUT just because of the Technical history.

I'd love to know why it seems to do OK - And I mean a rational/logical explanation NOT a domain speculators one.

I think the trend was started by usage of the tld by projects such as atom.io and github.io (for github pages) and it further popularized (esp. outside of "geek culture") by agar.io (online game), popularity of which spawned many other ".io games". It may also be significant that the TLD is not attached to any country, just a small cluster of island swith no native population (the indigenous inhabitants were all evicted 50 years ago) so it's relatively safe from politics etc. I think that google also treats it as a global extension in the results.

 

[BaileyUK]

Thanks for that PB. that puts everything nicely into perspective. Myself, not being a Gamer let IO go over my head. I can now see why it would be popular with the younger generation. It is still a British overseas territory though, not that they would have much influence (or want to) in the domain

 

[dombastic]

I can now see why it would be popular with the younger generation.

It is cheap (meaning: available for registration).

 

[EZPZYO]

Here's another interesting read