New CMO brought in as part of a marketing shift.
Top level domain name company Donuts has named Mina Neuberg its Chief Marketing Officer.
Neuberg comes from Revolution Math, where she was CMO of the online math education service. Before that, she was SVP of Marketing and Consumer Insights for BAMKO, a promotional merchandise company. She resides in Los Angeles.
A spokesperson for the company told Domain Name Wire that the hire signifies a changing marketing strategy for the company that will become apparent in the future.
It will be interesting to see how Donuts markets its domain names going forward. Historically, it has not created brands and awareness around individual top level domain names, other than to sell premium domains. Instead, it has focused on marketing new top level domains in general with a strong emphasis on the registrar channel.
The company also owns domain name registrar Name.com, which gives the company leverage to test marketing through the registrar channel.
Strings into Platforms. I believe it is the only way Donuts becomes a multi-billion dollar platform before their window to do so closes forever.
Contrast these two comparables:
1. WP Engine with a ~$1 billion market cap. It is a world class provider of a technology tool. There are no transactions and no network effects.
2. Shopify with a $51 billion market cap. It is a world class platform with transactions and network effects.
WPEngine will eventually be a trade sale — no IPO prospects there, and limited long term defensive moat around their cash cow.
Donuts can become a network of networks, connected by single-sign-on and a unified transactional framework.
The Abry folks are not fools and clearly saw more than a chance to monopolize a bunch of strings off Main street.
We shall see!
It won’t ever be a “multi-billion dollar platform”, new tlds now have close to zero growth. Didn’t you learn anything from tooting the new ltd horn last time?