Crunchbase data shows that global venture funding in May 2022 totaled $39 billion, the first time it fell below $40 billion in almost a year. Overall, VC financing plummeted 14% month over month in May from $45 billion in April. For comparison, it was $49 billion last May, 20% up from the current figures.

The venture slowdown has had the most significant effect on late-stage and technology growth investing this year. Last month, venture investors spent $22.3 billion on late- and growth-stage companies, down 38% from the monthly average of $36.2 billion in 2021. Early-stage financing also showed a significant downfall to  $13.7 billion, down 22% from the $17.6 billion average monthly funding in 2021. Seed funding seemed to be the most prominent investment stage, managing to increase 11% last month compared to May 2021. Just one unicorn, the India-based supply chain services business Delhivery, went public last month. 

Real estate and infrastructure investments topped the list of VC’s preferred sectors, with the financial and technology, Electric vehicles and charging infrastructure, and Autonomous following close behind.

Namepicks

Acrisure

Acrisure is an insurance brokerage company that offers financial services solutions for insurance, reinsurance, real estate, cyber services, and asset and wealth management to a wide range of medium and large business customers throughout the US. The war in Ukraine has pushed up rates, resulting in an 11% rise in worldwide commercial insurance premiums in the first quoter of 2022. Acrisure benefited from the price spike and closed a $750 million round led by the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and two other investors at the end of May 2022, valuing the company at $23 billion.

In 2020, Acrisure launched a new logo and tagline, “Powered by Exceptional Partnerships and Technology.”

The new brand symbolizes our commitment to tech enabling every facet of our business and is an outward display of these intentions.

Greg Williams, Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Acrisure for BusinessWire

The exact brand match domain name acrisure.com perfectly complements the company’s identity and growth and induces confidence and credibility in its customers.

Caribou

Caribou is healthcare planning software for the financial service industry. The company launched as MotoRefi and soon after rebranded as new services and products were added to its portfolio, and the initial brand name became restrictive. After the rebrand, Caribou started using the gocaribou.com domain name and later upgraded to the exact brand match caribou.com, a natural choice for most internet users and a great asset on the way to building a solid brand to last. Here are some reasons entrepreneurs should consider domain names as assets and not hesitate to invest in the right one for their business. Last month, Caribou reached a $1.1 billion valuation following a $115 million Series C funding round.

Kitopi

Kitopi is the world’s leading managed cloud kitchen platform. Kitopi (pronounced: “Kee-Toh-Pee”) stands for Kitchen Utopia and is an excellent example of a short, catchy, derivative, and descriptive brand name. In May, Kitopi raised an additional $300 million in its Series C round, extending the round’s size to $715 million. The funds will support the company’s expanding business and investments in brick-and-mortar restaurants.

The company is featured in our Best startups you need to watch out for in 2021 by Cloudways and Food and Beverage startups and their domain name choice article. Kitopi has secured the exact brand match domain name kitopi.com.

Innoviti

Innoviti is an Indian-based digital payment solutions provider that brings small and large businesses on a collaboration platform. The company raised an additional $9.6 million as part of the second close of its ongoing funding round. The funds will help Innoviti meet its working capital needs, market mid-market products, and improve its technology for online and business-to-business payments.

Innoviti has chosen an exact brand match domain name innoviti.com for their online presence. Fintech companies prefer exact brand match domain names, according to our research, because they generate instant credibility, trust, and authority, all of which are essential in the financial sector.

Highlights

More than half of the companies on the list have chosen to operate on exact brand match domains (387 out of 743), with 511 opting for a .com domain extension. More than half of all websites on the internet use the.com domain name extension, making it the most natural choice for users when searching for a company online.

56 companies operate on the .io extension. .io is the extension for British Indian Ocean Territory. It has gained popularity with startups in recent years, even though, according to many, it faces an uncertain future.

12 companies use the relatively new .xyz extension. .xyz was proposed as part of ICANN’s New generic top-level domain (gTLD) Program, and it went live on June 2, 2014. The domain name was chosen because the three letters are the last in the Latin script alphabet. The .xyz domain extension made its big breakthrough in 2015 when Google Alphabet Inc., the parent company of the search engine giant, began using it. Since then, it has become popular among developers and designers.

4 entries have chosen the .me extension. .me is the domain country extension for Montenegro and is currently open for everyone to register. Personalized domains, call-to-action domains, and social network activities all benefit from .me domains, which are also popular for blogs, resumes, and personal sites.

14 businesses have decided to use a dash in their domains. Dashes are often included with two-word brand names or added words when the business has to compromise on their domain if the exact brand match name is taken/not within reach.

While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.

Other resources

• Top 100 Most Inspiring Brands 2022 by Wunderman Thompson and Their Domain Name Choices
• Domain Name Strategies for Business Owners
• Maximising Your Domain Name Strategy: The Benefits of Premium Domain Names for SMEs
• I don’t need to invest in a domain name, everyone finds me on Google anyway…or do they?

How does your brand name match your company vision? What new horizons can a better name open? Get in touch if you feel your brand deserves a better name, we are always happy to help.

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