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Bezos-backed Beacon builds on Beacon.com

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Company upgraded its domain from .co.uk.

logo for Beacon is the word Beacon in white letters on orange backgroundSupply chains are a vital cog in the wheel of the interconnected global economy. Optimal supply chain management is vital, which may be why the worldwide supply chain management market was worth $15.58 billion in 2020, with that figure expected to rise to $30.91 billion by 2026.

Despite the industry’s value, many customers face supply chain challenges, including forecasting issues and supply chain disruptions.

In 2018, Dmitri Izmailov and Fraser Robinson founded Beacon to solve pain points that exist across many supply chains. By offering a digital platform, Beacon promotes a technology-first approach to supply chain management, with data readily available to improve efficiency and perform vital analysis.

Its business really took off during the COVID-19 pandemic when consumer demand, online spending, and increases in freight rates meant that supply chains were under considerable pressure. Companies turned to Beacon’s digital platform to find a solution.

It isn’t just businesses that have taken notice of Beacon. Investors have, too. The company has raised $65 million, including an oversubscribed $50 million Series B funding round announced this month.

A list of Beacon’s early backers is who’s who of business leaders. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and Uber co-founders Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick have all taken part in at least one Beacon funding round. Amazon founder and centibillionaire Jeff Bezos has also contributed to Beacon’s funding, acting as a lead investor in the company’s Series A round.

Beacon, a British company based in London, started its journey on the UK ccTLD, .co.uk. It also owned Beacon.co, but it took Beacon until 2020 to acquire Beacon.com.

WHOIS history shows that Beacon.com changed hands in 2018, with brokerage company Media Options listed as the registrant before ownership changed to Internet Real Estate Ltd. Media Options’ CEO, Andrew Rosener, confirmed the acquisition of Beacon.com in a 2018 tweet.

By May 2020, Beacon had acquired Beacon.com.

A company with international aspirations will struggle to thrive on a ccTLD such as .co.uk, which may be why the company paid an undisclosed fee to upgrade from Beacon.co.uk to Beacon.com.

As is often the case, the acquisition of Beacon.com happened just before the company announced its Series A funding round.

With a rapidly growing workforce and a new office in Hong Kong, Beacon is a truly international company, and it now has the domain name to match.

This company’s original name was restrictive, so it made a big domain upgrade

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Gem’s original name restricted its services.

Logo for Gem shows a blue diamond and the word "Gem" in black letters

With advances in technology, the process of hiring the right person for a role should be simpler than ever before. However, CNBC recently reported that job openings have soared to 10.9 million in the US as companies struggle to fill vacancies.

Many entrepreneurs have focused on the recruitment process to try to bring new software, tools, or innovation to tackle a plethora of problems that have led to this abundance of vacancies. The likes of Phenom, Lattice, and ZipRecruiter are all Unicorn companies, valued at $1 billion or more, helping to create a new experience for recruiters.

Another company that has recently joined the billion-dollar club is Gem. This software developer has produced a powerful recruiting platform that is aimed at modernizing the entire hiring process.

Gem originally launched as ZenSourcer in 2017, using the ZenSourcer.com domain name. The company was co-founded by Steven Bartel, an early Dropbox employee who was influential in growing the Dropbox team drastically, and Nick Bushak, a former Facebook engineer.

Together, the pair guided ZenSourcer to early success, with the company raising $2 million in seed funding just months after launching. Early investors included Y Combinator and Dropbox’s co-founders.

Dropbox, Slack, and Robinhood were among early ZenSourcer customers, but the ZenSourcer brand name was restrictive. Potential customers thought the company simply focused on candidate sourcing, limiting the ambitious founders, so ZenSourcer transitioned to Gem. CEO Steve Bartel told Business Insider:

“We hope with our name brand, we hope to start getting people to think of us as more than a sourcing product. The idea that we can expand our product to help companies build relationships with people over time is something we want to move towards.”

The rebrand, which was announced along with a $9 million Series A funding round in 2019, was preceded by the acquisition of the Gem.com domain name. Gem.com was originally registered in 1992 and previously used by the Gemini Facilities Core Group.

Gem acquired Gem.com in February 2019. A source told me at the time that the domain was sold for a seven-figure fee paid in installments via Escrow.com.

Since switching to Gem and Gem.com, the company has developed its product offering further and now boasts over 800 customers that have made over 5,000 hires via Gem.

In the last year, Gem has reportedly tripled its annual recurring revenue (ARR). Growth leads to growth, and the company recently announced it raised $100 million in Series C funding at a valuation of $1.2 billion.

A domain that rides on China’s global strategy

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This company smartly upgraded its domain when it went global.

Image with green background that states "Domain Upgrades"

The best deal is where all parties win, and this is also the principle that China promotes in its global strategy. One company must have heeded the advice and even implemented the principle in its domain.

Awinic is an integrated circuit (IC) design house that supplies chips to handset makers including Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo. On August 16, it went public at the Shanghai Stock Exchange, making its CEO Hongjun Sun the latest billionaire in China.

Awinic (艾为) was founded in 2008, and used Awinic.com.cn as its corporate domain.

In the early years, the Awinic.com.cn domain was probably fine because the business was domestic. Also, Awinic.com was already owned by a Chinese electronic component supplier. However, the Awinic.com site was closed by the government in 2010 due to failure to obtain an ICP license.

Awinic.com became active again in 2019, and this time it is owned by the IC design house. English contents were also added to the site, signaling the launch of the company’s global business. Awinic.com.cn now forwards to the new corporate domain.

How does the domain Awinic.com reflect the “all parties win” principle? According the its site, “awinic” is made up of “a” (meaning “all”), “win”, and “IC”. So, you have an IC supplier wanting to make sure all parties win.

The Chinese brand name Ai Wei (艾为) was likely created from the English brand name because Ai Wei sounds like “awinic” and has no meaning. In other words, the English name came first before the Chinese name.

(AiWei.com is owned by a Chinese pesticide company and AiWei.cn is still for sale.)

Here are my observations:

  • There are many Chinese companies like Awinic that prefer English-based domains.
  • .com is the first choice in China
  • .cn is secondary and less important

So, if you have English-based .com domains, you may want to find out if any of them just happen to fall into the path of domain upgrade for a company in China. Try “Three steps to Chinese end user research” and “7 ways to find contact email addresses for Chinese companies“.

What domains should this startup should consider upgrading to?

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This Chinese startup should consider upgrading its domain. Here are some suggestions.

the word "domain upgrade" on a red backgrounder, black arrow pointing upward inside a circle

I read news about companies in China regularly, and I often see many choosing domains that are difficult to remember and not brand matching. Here is one that I recently came across.

Kuai Tu (快兔=speedy rabbit) is a logistics startup founded in 2017. When it began, Kuai Tu settled on the domain KTU56.com. The name consists of three parts: K from “Kuai”, Tu the entire word, and 56, which rhymes with Wu Liu (物流=logistics). These three different parts make the domain difficult to remember.

Business boomed. Kuai Tu completed Series Pre-A and Series A rounds in 2018. The startup then expanded its services to multiple cities in China. In 2019, it raised Series A+ funding and then Series B round early this year. Kuai Tu also changed its name to Kuai Yun Tu (快运兔=speedy transport rabbit).

Apparently, the startup has not upgraded its corporate domain. Entering its new name in Baidu still leads me to KTU56.com. What are the domains Kuai Yun Tu should consider upgrading to? Here are my suggestions.

  • KYT.com
  • KYT.cn
  • KuaiYunTu.com
  • KuaiYunTu.cn

All of the domains are brand-matching. The best one must be KYT.com because it is short and easy to remember. In addition, KYT.com can be used both inside and outside China because it is much easier to pronounce than “Kuai Yun Tu” when used outside China. Many companies have chosen this route to go global, such as JD.com (Jing Dong), ZBJ.com (Zhu Ba Jie), and DJI (Da Jiang Innovations).

There are still many companies in China like Kuai Tu waiting to upgrade to better domains. Since corporate China prefers .com, this also suggests opportunities for domain investors holding short and meaningful .com domains.

A subdomain may lead to an upgrade

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Companies using a subdomain for a business unit might want to upgrade to the matching second-level domain.

Image with green background that states "Domain Upgrades"

This company should consider one of these domain upgrades.

If you see a brand using a subdomain of its parent company’s domain, there may be an opportunity to sell your domain which matches the subdomain. That’s what I thought when I read a Baidu article (Chinese) about the entertainment startup Mao Yan.

Tianjin Maoyan Culture Media “owns the largest online movie ticketing website in China” according to Wikipedia. Although the company’s name is long, it’s generally referred to as “Mao Yan” (猫眼), a 2-pin name which literally means “cat’s eyes”.

Mao Yan was incubated inside the group-buying startup Mei Tuan. In response to strong demand for group buying of movie tickets, Mie Tuan set up an independent division in January 2012 to cater specifically to that need. They called the new division “Mei Tuan Movie” but subsequently changed it to “Mao Yan”, operating from the brand-matching subdomain Maoyan.meituan.com.

In August 2013, Mao Yan upgraded the domain to Maoyan.com after acquiring it earlier from a domain investor (price not disclosed). It became an independent company in 2016 and then listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2019. The company has expanded its services to include entertainment contents, ecommerce, and advertising.

Here are several things we can learn from this story:

  1. A brand of a large company operating from the company’s subdomain may upgrade to its own domain.
  2. 2-pin names are popular in China. In this case, both Mei Tuan and Mao Yan are 2-pin names.
  3. Brand-matching .com is popular, as illustrated by Meituan.com and Maoyan.com.
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