I feel like I preach the importance of owning an exact match domain name until I’m blue in the face but the fact is, there are SO many companies that complicate things dearly and do not own EMD’s!
There are a lot of companies who do understand the importance though and I will continue to point them out with facts and numbers! If you missed an earlier mention, Y Combinator, a well established incubator of startups provided a brief hit with some numbers relating to domain names.
Paul Graham, Y-Combinator co-founder: “If you have a US startup called X and you don’t have x.com, you should probably change your name.” Here are some numbers that will make you think as well: “100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another.” Source, earlier article on DotWeekly about Naming A Startup.
- 100% of the top 20 YC backed companies own EMD’s! 100%
- 94% of the top 50 own .com domains (most EMD’s)
So lets look at another company that heavily invests in companies. Greylock, who just secured another $1 Billion for a new fund! I manually collected the data on the 76 companies they display on there website, Greylock.com
89.47% of Greylock backed companies own EMD .com domain names! Only 8 of 76 do not. Of those 8, only 5 use a TLD other than .com! 6.8%
- Discord uses DiscordApp.com
- Silver Peak uses Silver-Peak.com
- Jelly uses AskJelly.com
- Tech Process uses TechProcess.co.in
- Attic Labs uses Attic.io
- DWNLD uses DWNLD.me
- Houseparty uses JoinHouse.party (worst domain of the batch IMO)
- Musical.ly
The remaining 89.47% own EMD’s and there are plenty of high class domain names like Medium.com, Operator.com, Pandora.com, Gladly.com, Instagram.com, Lookout.com, Vessel.com, Workday.com, Redfin.com, Redhat.com, Docker.com, Convoy.com and many more!
The average length of the domain name of Greylock backed companies is: 7.8 characters long, excluding the TLD.
I will once again express the importance of owning your brand as a .com domain name. Show strength, go with the natural and use a .com exact match domain name!!! If you do not, you are in the minority and not just by “a little”, by A LOT!
*a few of the YC backed companies are also backed by Greylock
