Overview

October 2022 saw global venture capital financing hit $27 billion, down more than 50 percent from the previous year, shows Crunchbase’s latest data.

Each funding stage fell compared to previous years. Late-stage financing fell 60%, while Early stage dropped 40% and seed 20%.

The number of enterprises that have been supported has also decreased. We began the year with about 3,400 businesses funded in January 2022. In October, that number had dropped to 1,800.

According to a news release from S&P Global Market Intelligence, the technology sector is the most appealing to investors. Other sectors that contributed to a double-digit percentage of capital raised in October include healthcare (18%), financials (11%), and industrials (10%).

Falling valuations of technology companies and rising interest rates did not stop the technology, media and telecommunications sector from remaining the most attractive target of venture capital investors globally.The sector pulled in 43% of the total capital raised in October.

S&P Global Market Intelligence press release

Namepicks

Step

Step was founded by financial industry veterans CJ MacDonald and Alexey Kalinichenko, with more than 50 years of combined financial technology experience. The tech company that allows teens and young adults to invest and earn cryptocurrency through an app made headlines last month when it secured $300 million in funding. Step’s total capital raised now stands. With the new funds, the company will accelerate product infrastructure investments and continue to deliver ground-breaking financial products to the next generation.

Gen Z is the generation of creators, entrepreneurs and investors. They are redefining norms and taking control of their financial futures earlier in life thanks to products like Step. We are excited to partner with the Step team to continue scaling the business to millions of financially-savvy teens and young adults.

Jim Labe, Co-Chief Executive Officer at Triplepoint Capital

Companies of all sizes are being pushed by younger audiences to improve their marketing strategies and think outside the box. Step founders have made a smart move by investing in the exact brand match domain name Step.com. A premium domain name can be a valuable instrument for a company’s internet marketing and branding.”Step” is a popular, meaningful keyword and search term with a high search volume that appeals to the younger audience, creating a solid brand identity and helps win the loyalty of its target demographic.

Sushi

Sushi is building a comprehensive Defi ecosystem with AMM, leverage & margin trading platform, token launchpad, and NFT artist platform. The project stands as one of the top 10 Defi protocols and the second-best decentralized exchange in the Ethereum network. The company has raised  $5.3 million from a Seed round in October. 

The company started with the domain name SushiSwap.fi. Future Fund, a venture capital firm, announced in February 2021 that it had acquired the Sushi.com domain name on behalf of SushiSwap.

Future Fund stated in the announcement that the simplicity is an improvement, stating that “a strong domain will greatly increase internet traffic and exposure to the sushi brand.”

Obtaining a short and memorable.com domain name, such as a dictionary term, is an important first step in the process of developing a global brand.

Wise

Wise, a UK-based fintech company, focused on money transfers, received a £300 million debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank UK.

Initially launched in 2011 with just money transfer services, TransferWise changed its name to simply Wise in February 2021. On March 2nd, Wise explained that it wants to reflect the broader change of the company beyond its original roots as a money transfer company. The company announced on its Twitter account that it would move its brand from TransferWise.com to the EBM (Exact Brand Match) domain name Wise.com.

It was about time for our name to catch up with what we are bringing to customers.

Kristo Käärmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Wise

Zvilo

Zvilo, a credit-led digital bank for the Balkans and emerging markets located in London and Pristina, Kosovo, has secured €50 million in debt funding. The funds will be used to scale and expand the company’s provision of working capital to the Balkans’ 800,000+ SMEs.

This announcement is a huge vote of confidence to Zvilo’s business model. Following the recent success of securing our lending (factoring) license from the Central Bank of Kosovo, we have kick-started our supplier finance program and are in the exciting final stages of optimising our innovative Supply Chain Finance platform with an artificial intelligence engine. The platform will be an invaluable tool for Zvilo to scale its SME supplier onboarding and funding across the Balkans and assist with our ESG reporting.

Shahem Samian, CFO and COO of Zvilo

Zvilo has invested in Zvilo.com – an exact brand match .com name. This is most internet users’ natural choice, and securing that domain for their business is a clear indication that Zvilo is here to stay.

Byju’s

Launched in 2015, Byju’s is India’s largest ed-tech company that offers personalized and effective learning programs. In June, Byju’s became India’s most valuable unicorn with a valuation of $16.5 billion.

Like the majority of the companies in our Edtech unicorns list, Byju’s has secured the exact brand match name Byjus.com. This ensures their brand is well protected online and avoids traffic and email leaks as well as confusion amongst their customers and business partners.

Highlights

There are 470 companies in our list using the most popular domain extension .com.

17 companies operate on the .co extension. .co is a top-level domain extension and it’s the acronym for company or corporation.

.io is used by 57 companies. .io is a common choice among startups, despite scandals about who in fact benefits from the sales of .io domains.

Another popular among tech startups extension .AI has been used by 39 companies.

More than half of entries, 345 out of 670, operate on exact brand match domains. One of the most noticeable advantages of investing in an EBM domain is its potential to achieve high search engine rankings for the phrase contained in the domain and related phrases.

14 companies use a dash in their domains. One of the downsides of using a hyphen in a domain name is that adding it to your domain name makes it harder to reach when typing.

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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