I recently wrote about a new member of the unicorn club, Remote, which has seen increased interest in its services since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Another startup that has thrived amidst COVID-19 is Class, a young company that brings learning and teaching tools to Zoom.
With millions of students confined to remote education in the last year, teachers and education authorities have scrambled to find solutions to make the virtual classroom more engaging.
Founded by Michael Chasen in 2020, Class claims that everything you can do in a physical classroom, you can accomplish with its suite of tools.
Despite essentially being a Zoom app, which some may say negates the need for a good domain name, Class invested in its exact-match domain early on.
Based on WHOIS data, Class acquired Class.com in January 2021, less than a year after launching.
The acquisition of Class.com, as we often see, fell close to a significant funding round. In this case, Class announced a $30.8 million Series A funding round just weeks after acquiring the name.
The Class.com domain, which was previously listed for sale at Uniregistry Market, was a significant upgrade from the company’s original domain, ClassEDU.com.
Since acquiring Class.com, Class has well and truly been in session, raising another $117.3 million across two funding rounds. The latest, a $105 million Series B funding round, includes backing from legendary quarterback Tom Brady.
Brady and the other investors in Class have now helped the company to go global. In a recent announcement, founder Michael Chasen revealed that Class will now be accessible to schools, colleges, and corporate learning teams worldwide.
Class’ globalization makes its ownership of Class.com even more important. Class.com is the company’s virtual shop window, where potential users can find out more about the Class platform. The unequivocal simplicity of the Class.com domain name will make it easier for users from all over the world to now find and interact with the Class brand. I believe that with its former domain, ClassEDU.com, this interaction would have been more difficult.
Class identified the need for a great domain name relatively early on, and now it is capitalizing on that acquisition with its globalization attempts.
This should be interesting to see how marketing goes and whether Class can catch on or not. When I think of “class”, I think of it as a term that separates people based on social status. Rarely in my adult life have I heard it thrown around by itself when referring to a classroom. In fact, the #1 definition of “class” on Dictionary.com is my first impression of this so I might not be wrong here, and, it is a dated term. I think they will find themselves rebranding in the future.
Interesting. I didn’t think that but it might have been influenced by the post explaining what it is. Other than school, I think of “classy” when I see the word. But I understand what you’re saying and it’s a good point.
Class used to be owned by username recons. com on namepros. Hope he sold it for good figures and not the low 6 figures .
Class*com is a great domain. Just short for classroom. Owning Class.com positions the brand to breakaway from being just another ‘zoom app’.
In fact, in 5 years they may be a COMPETITOR of Zoom in the online education vertical.