Domain names (take two) — Analyzing startup

Most still use .com.

Picture of woman at a startup with words Startup Domain Names overlayed

Last year I reviewed the domain names that MassChallenge’s incoming Texas class of startups used for their businesses. MassChallenge just disclosed its fresh Texas class, so let’s take a fresh look.

84% of the firms that had a domain name when they were disclosed last year used .com. This year it’s 75%.

Here are the domains used by this year’s class:

.com 39
.co 5
.net 2
.io 1
.xyz 1
.org 1
.careers 1
.ai 1
.in 1

Some of the firms are using subpar domains. For example, Axion Technologies LLC uses axiontechnologiesllc.com since another firm uses the version without LLC. This is a sign that the name you’ve chosen is going to cause issues down the road.

I gave a talk regarding domain names to last year’s MassChallenge class and found out that the domains many of them were using were temporary. Heck, the names they had chosen were just placeholders. These are very early stage firms. So many of the firms that make it to the next stage will change their domain names.

Also on the wire