Twelve .WORK Start-ups Receive $168 million in Initial & Growth Funding Year To Date
Minds + Machines Group Limited (AIM: MMX), one of the world’s leading owners and operators of Internet Top-Level Domains ("gTLDs"), is pleased to announce that as at the end of July 2018 early stage businesses using the Company’s .work gTLD have received $168 million in initial or growth funding, making it the most investment supported new gTLD for start-ups in the current year, based on an analysis of data provided by crunchbase.com. The data shows, that in total 288 companies in 107 new gTLD extensions have received $1.05 billion in start-up funding (defined as Angel, Seed, Debt, Crowd, Grant, Private, Venture, Series A/B/C*). This is a significant increase from the circa $450 million of like-for-like funding received by early stage businesses using new gTLD extensions during the previous two years. Originally launched in 2015, MMX has seen registrations in .work nearly quadruple over the last 12 months to circa 420,000. Sites running on .work include Amazon.work which is used as an employee portal. Toby Hall, CEO of MMX, commented:“We are witnessing a major shift in sentiment amongst new-start enterprises and underlying investors towards new gTLD extensions. We expect this trend to continue and believe it is additionally benefiting from the public offerings of enterprises that have adopted alternative endings, $9 billion having been raised by such companies YTD**. The support by the investment community of businesses using new gTLD endings augurs well for our entire portfolio, not just .work.”
Six of the twelve .work businesses that have raised $168 million this year are co-location workspace companies and three are recruitment platforms. Their office locations include New York, London, Tel Aviv, Boston, China, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney, illustrating the international appeal of the .work address. These businesses include Hyr.work, Covet.work, Zinc.work, Ambi.work, Mixer.work, Nash.work, Commonground.work and Campfire.work.