Jeff Dachis’ latest company, currently using a .today domain name, raises $8 million.
One Drop, a diabetes management platform that uses the domain name OneDrop.today, has raised $8 million in a round led by RRE Ventures.
One Drop is the latest startup from Jeff Dachis, who was the founder and CEO of .com darling (and ultimately bust) Razorfish. He later was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Austin Ventures, where he then created social media company Dachis Group. He ran that company until early last year.
His background at Austin Ventures is relevant because Austin Ventures is also an investor in Donuts, which is the registry behind .today. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was introduced to new top level domain names through that connection.
RetailMeNot, a coupon codes site, also has a connection to Austin Ventures and Donuts. Austin Ventures invested in the company. When Donuts launched the .Codes top level domain, RetailMeNot scooped up about 1,000 of the domains with ten year terms on the first day of Early Access. Presumably, RetailMeNot did a bulk deal with Donuts and didn’t pay day full price to register domains like 2014couponcodes.codes on day one of EAP. I wouldn’t be surprised if Austin Ventures connected RetailMeNot to Donuts for the deal.
Konstantinos Zournas says
RetailMeNot did not get the .codes domains on EAP day one but actually a few hours before EAP started. Look at the time of registration. EAP starts at 16.00.
It was a small window between sunrise and EAP that Donuts used to sell domains to RetailMeNot.
Wrote this article http://onlinedomain.com/2014/08/19/news/how-did-retailmenot-got-849-codes-domains-in-sunrise-without-any-trademarks/ and then Donuts explained that these were not sunrise registrations but a direct deal with RetailMeNot.
Andrew Allemann says
That confirms my suspicion, then. Thanks.
Joe Crescenzi says
Definitely no special advanced access or they would’ve grabbed couponcodes.codes instead of 2014couponcodes.codes, which is pointless.
Joe Crescenzi says
$8 million for the company. Perhaps they will end up spending some on a .com.
SoFreeDomains says
Good news again for one of the new gTLDs.
John says
I don’t care. I am still not buying it. No new TLDs for me
Chris says
John, that makes one of you. New TLD registrations topped 6 million today.