Data company that uses a new TLD gets more funding.
Slowly but surely, businesses that use new top level domain names are becoming more common.
Austin, Texas-based Data.world has snagged $19 million in funding, bringing its total capital raised to $32.7 million.
The company bills itself as a “social network for data people.” It was founded by Brett Hurt, who previously founded Bazaarvoice.
DataWorld.com is an existing business that provides SAP consulting and integration services. I can imagine that the owner of DataWorld.com gets a number of inquiries meant for Data.world.
.World is one of Donuts’ top level domains.
M. Menius says
Really glad to see this pairing of a new company and an excellent new tld. The left and right of the dot are a perfect fit.
Josh says
No doubt they were tasked with getting the dot com or changing the name, watch.
Snoopy says
That will probably depend on whether they are successful or not. If they aren’t successful it won’t matter, if they are then it will be a big expense down the line.
Given there is a company on it it is likely a 7 figure acquisition which they would find very hard to justify to investors given their size.
Adam says
Natural evolution. Some companies try it out and then the nerds, marketers, consultants, and others end up going to cocktail parties and then relay how much confusion their customers are having trying to navigate their way to their site. Then the tide changes and everyone goes back to .com.
Around 2002 companies started removing the .com from the ends of their domains in advertising because that became the cool, hip, techie and marketer thing to do. Within about two or three years everyone abandoned that dumb idea completely.
Watch, that’s how the story will mostly play out with new TLDs. It’s not so cool and fun when your customers can’t find you.
Mark says
Great domain, best of luck to them. I remember reading about the sale of data.world some time ago..
168 says
IMHO if your customer can’t find you search for more intelligent customers 🙂
Explaining the new options once is much more economical than constantly having to explain what blablabla.com does.
The beauty of the New “G”s that .com or other non-discript extensions can’t duplicate or compete with.
I think I’m going to move to Austin.
Thanks for posting yet another “serious” business that sees the value.
Cheers
Snoopy says
If your customers can’t find you that is the fault of business not the customers. They’d be better off finding a more intelligent CEO in that circumstance.
wayne says
I can feel a legal challenge coming on….
Raymond Chai says
Data.World was sold $10000 in 2015
Josh says
Before the boost in funding, money decision and a bad one. What is this “world” stuff 1999, it is not acceptable and will change or die.
R P says
Did they takeover DrKoop.com’s old building off MoPac?
People tend to have a short memory. Most startups die or get sold for less than investors put up.
Think it’s a bit premature to call anything in tech land “surely”.
When I lived in Austin saw lot of good innovation, lot of hype, and then a lot of carnage.
Andrew Allemann says
It is the old Dr. Koop building…but they don’t have that much space
R P says
Gotta be kidding me. Was just trying to be funny. Always be weary of startups that overspend from the get go. Thats an expensive location. Haven’t been back to A-town since ’04. Great place.
david cohen says
So 1 out of how many .world or GTLD received funding? Might as well denote the power ball winner this week as well. Point is, there are always going to be exceptions (extremely rare ones at that) to the rule. Eventually the company rebrands or goes after the equivalent .com. Bleeder traffic is estimated at 15-20% so any company with any budget of any substance will want the .com, otherwise your advertising is 20% less effective and 20% more expensive on the low end, those are recipes for disaster. Missing by that much on any budget equals start up failure among other things but that is a big one. Just my two cents…
Snoopy says
Companies raise fund on bad domains, .co, .io, .net etc. I don’t know if VC people care all that much a lot of the time.
From a business point of view the main business objective for a tech style startup is actually to raise funds. In terms of actual customers having trouble with the domain, it is potentially something to look at down the road. Most won’t be successful so it won’t matter, they’d all like a one word .com but if they have $15million funding it is not going to be a good look if they spend $1million of that on a domain. Lastly most of these companies have no real revenue so bleeder traffic is the least of their worries.
clasione says
If the service is fantastic the actual domain name or TLD just won’t matter anyway. There are plenty of sites which have gotten immensely popular with totally retarded domain names, words spelled wrong, crazy tlds, such as fiverr.com, flickr.com, Visual.ly Last.fm – people will just Google it. That is what shit is coming down to.
KoolBranding says
I’ve just signed up to their service and I like the design and functionality of the site and the actual premise of their business idea. I think it’s brilliant and will be useful to a lot of companies especially Startups. Taking Data sharing and collaboration to the next social level and opening it up for the little guys. The domain is great and intuitive and they may not need the .com equivalent because they are not geared towards the usual social network users, this is a TECH site geared towards people in the field who work with Datasets of all types. I personally think they can succeed without the .com and without suffering any substantial traffic leakage.