After analyzing 3,101 newly funded start-ups that raised a combined 11.2+ billion dollars in funding during 2015, I’m back with a Q1 report for the new year which is based on 1,085 newly funded startups who raised a whopping 5.1 billion dollars in funding during the first 3 months of 2016. This is once again more data than we had in previous quarters and we can all agree that data beats opinions.
Q1 2016 TLD Popularity for Startups
Exactly one year ago the data showed that .Com was the absolute king with a market share of 75% followed by the ccTLD with 8% and .Co and .Io claiming a combined 11% of the pie. So what (if anything) has changed during the last 12 months? Let’s find out!
.Com remains the absolute top choice for funded startups by miles. Their slice of the pie is a tiny bit smaller compared to a year ago however which is caused by the increasing popularity of the ccTLD. The country code domain names have seen a steady rise in adoption, being pushed especially by the high number of Indian startups that raised funds over the last year and often use a .In domain. The ccTLD now claims a impressive 14% of the chart. The second most popular alternative to a .com is .Co closely followed by that other techie extension: .Io. The combined market share of these two guys was just under 7% this quarter.
With more than 350 new available domain name extensions for startups to choose from the new gTLDs keep performing poorly. Only 14 startups (or 1.3%) fell for the “not-Com” marketing and launched with one of the many new extensions that were supposed to change the domain name landscape forever.
Q2 2016 Report
Q2 is based on 1,110 startups that raised a cool 4.9 billion dollars in funding during the second quarter of this year.
Three months ago the data showed that .Com was the absolute king with a market share of 73% followed by the ccTLD with a strong 14% and .Co and .Io claiming a combined 7% of the pie. Despite a ever increasing number of extensions the gTLDs still performed poorly with just 1.3% of the pie last quarter. So what are the most popular domain name extensions for newly funded startups today? Let’s find out!
With 73.7% .Com remains the absolute kingpin of domain name extensions for funded startups by miles. Their slice of the pie is the exact same as it was in Q1 of the year. The country code domain name keeps a firm second place with just under 14%. The second most popular alternative to a .com is still .Co but they can feel the ever increasing popularity of .Io breathing down their neck. My forecast is that .Io will have overtaken .Co in popularity among newly funded startups in Q3. The combined share of the pie for these two extensions is 7.3% for this quarter which is slightly up from 3 months ago. The new gTLDs saw a nice win at the expensive of .Org, .Net and .Me as their share grew from 1.3% last quarter to 2.3% today. .Xyz was the most popular among the new Gs with 6 out of 25 startups launching with this extension.
Q3 2016 Report
Q3 which is based on 1,218 startups who raised a cool 6.1 billion dollars in funding during the third quarter of this year.
Exactly one year ago the data showed that .Com was the absolute top dog with a market share of 75% with the ccTLD being the runner up with 12% and .Co and .Io claiming a combined 7% of the pie. The new gTLDs only accounted for a measly 0.5% 12 months ago. So what (if anything) has changed since then? Let’s find out!
The king of TLDs keeps it dominant position but drops around 5% compared to 3 months ago. The decrease is mainly caused by the increased popularity of ccTLDs which grew from 12.6% last quarter to 15.6% in Q3. The most popular ccTLD with 28 startups is .In again and there’s a notable mention for .ai that saw 15 startups using the country code top-level domain for Anguilla as a hack for artificial intelligence. .Co and .Io remain in a neck-and-neck race with both extensions claiming just over 4% of the pie. The new gTLDs lost a bit of ground compared to Q2 as they went from a 2.3% to a 2.1% slice. The most popular new gTLD was .tech with five startups launching on the Radix owned extension in Q3.
