Domain Upgrade with James Iles: May 2022

Every month, hundreds of companies manage to secure a domain name upgrade. Each time this happens, the pool of available premium domain names reduces.

Here, I’m highlighting 7 premium domain name upgrades that were revealed or discovered in May 2022.

Bux.com

If you can’t get your exact-match .com, a path that many startups use is to add a prefix. Words such as “get”, “try”, or “go” are popular prefixes that offer a cheap alternative to an ultra-premium .com.

Investment company Bux started life with a prefixed domain, operating on GetBux.com, since the company was formed in 2014.

Bux, which has raised $115.8 million in disclosed funding, made the decision to secure Bux.com. The acquisition looks to have happened in October 2021, but it was discovered in May 2022 by researcher Jaimie Zoch.

The Bux.com upgrade came months after Bux announced its $67 million Series C funding round.

Ballet.com

Cryptocurrency companies interested in long-term success are making moves to acquire ultra-premium .com domains.

These assets elicit trust and set these companies apart from others. The likes of Exodus.com, Crypto.com, Swan.com, Gemini.com, and Ledger.com are all owned by ambitious companies with long-term goals in the cryptocurrency industry.

Another company has joined those ranks. Ballet is a cryptocurrency wallet provider that was founded in 2019 by Bobby Lee, who previously co-founded BTCC, a major Chinese cryptocurrency exchange.

Lee’s new project, Ballet, hasn’t disclosed any funding, but nonetheless, the company reportedly paid a seven-figure sum to secure the Ballet.com domain, moving from BalletCrypto.com.

Reach.com

This is technically a rebrand, but the domain deserves to be mentioned regardless. A lending company called Liberty Lending underwent a significant switch in May, moving from its dated Liberty Lending brand to Reach Financial.

The company also moved from LibertyLending.com to Reach.com. There was very little fanfare about the rebrand but acquiring Reach.com deserves some recognition.

Reach.com is one of the top one-word .com domains in existence and harnessing the power of this domain will only benefit Reach Financial as it grows.

Hyena.com

Animal names are among the most versatile brand names. Financial institutions, car manufacturers, and insurance companies are among the brands that have adopted animal names.

A South African energy company arrived at an animal brand name thanks to an amalgamation of the words Hydrogen, Energy, and Application, forming the brand name Hyena.

Hyena operated on HyenaEnergy.com since it launched but managed to secure Hyena.com for an undisclosed fee in May 2022.

Gigs.com

Telecoms as a service provider, Gigs is a young company that was featured in the Winter 2021 batch of Y Combinator startups. As a result, Gigs secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

Describing itself as Stripe for SIM cards, Gigs is heavily reliant on its website, dashboard, and API to effectively provide its product.

With its online presence supremely important to the brand, Gigs recognized the need for a domain name upgrade. The company, which launched using Gigs.tel, secured the Gigs.com domain in May 2022.

As of publishing, the domain hasn’t been deployed by the company, but it’s only a matter of time before Gigs.tel becomes Gigs.com.

M1.com

Online-centric finance companies are among the businesses that can benefit most from owning a premium domain, adding an extra layer of trust and legitimacy.

M1 Finance, which dubs itself “the super finance app,” helps make investing more accessible to a wider market.

Up until recently, M1 Finance operated on its exact-match domain, M1Finance.com, but the company secured M1.com, one of only 520 two-character .com domains in existence.

The price paid for M1.com is unknown, but the value of these short domains can run into the six-to-seven figure range.

M1 Finance is a well-funded company, raising $323.2 million in disclosed funding. Allocating a relatively small amount of funds to secure M1.com is a smart move by the finance business.

Gala.com

Since launching in 2018, Gala Games has been redefining the gaming industry. Co-created by Zynga co-founder Eric Schiermeyer, Gala uses blockchain technology to produce pay-to-earn games in its own decentralized ecosystem.

Gala, though, has grown to become more than a gaming company and it has outgrown its original domain, Gala.games.

The acquisition of Gala.com, discovered in May, has allowed Gala to introduce Gala Music and Gala Film, two initiatives that see the company move beyond its roots as a gaming studio.

Gala is sensibly housing its Gala Music and Gala Film ventures on the Gala.com domain.