Whois records show that Forge bought an important digital asset this month.
Traditional investing has become more of a level playing field thanks to companies such as Robinhood that have made stock trading accessible to everyone with an Internet connection. The race is now on to provide a solution for trading shares in private companies, and one startup is forging the path.
Founded in 2014, Forge is an investment platform that offers liquidity to shareholders of private companies.
According to its website, investors using Forge can buy and sell shares in companies such as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, payments giant Stripe, or community platform Discord. It has over 400 tradeable companies.
Since it launched, Forge has received backing from Peter Thiel, Wells Fargo, and BNP Paribas, among others. The company raised $150 million in funding three months ago, bringing its total funding to $238.5 million.
Yet, from a digital branding perspective, Forge has lacked something important. Until now.
Forge has relied on the domain ForgeGlobal.com as its virtual shop window. All interactions with the company’s platform have begun with a visit to the ForgeGlobal.com web address.
While ForgeGlobal.com matches the company’s registered business name of Forge Global Inc., the platform is more commonly known as Forge. Throughout Forge’s own website and social media pages, it refers to itself as simply Forge.
Recently, though, Forge took a step to remedy its sub-par domain name by acquiring Forge.com.
Historical Whois records show that the company acquired the domain this month. The domain moved from Afternic escrow to Marksmen Inc., a company specializing in acquiring assets such as domain names. The Whois record now shows Forge Global Inc. as the owner.
Forge hasn’t yet activated the domain; it still resolves to the previous owner’s holding page. It will be interesting to see if it uses it as a forward or migrates from ForgeGlobal.com. [Update 8/20/21: the domain is now forwarding to ForgeGlobal.com.]
This domain will distinguish Forge from the tens of other companies branding around the Forge name. It will also create trust and legitimacy for a brand with competition from established names such as JPMorgan Chase.
Ugh. Absolutely top-tier, ozone layer name. To create, to advance, place of creation, in five characters. Loaded with imagery, no superior synonym. I hope the seller hung onto this with his or her little hind legs until the very top dollar.
Amazing that Manahatta assets like this are still changing hands. A renewable five-year lease would have been the right number. Since the prior landing page for Forge.com was an arty b&w of a Shelby Cobra engine, maybe the seller has an imperfect (or disaffected) relationship with money. (Now, if the prior landing page had been car porn of a Volvo P1800…that guy is going to require you to leeese.)