How to use Crunchbase to Become a Better Domain Investor

In 2007, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington launched Crunchbase, a platform for finding information about private and public companies.

Since then, Crunchbase has become one of the essential business resources on the Internet.

Thanks to a combination of machine learning, an in-house data team, and an active community, Crunchbase can gather accurate information on hundreds of thousands of established companies, startups, and their founders.

The data at Crunchbase can be used to make you into a better domain investor. Here’s how:

Research

Research plays a vital role in the life of a domain investor. It can help create and refine a strategy and discover trends.

Using Crunchbase, you can find out what type of domain names newly formed companies are using by visiting CrunchBase.com > Companies and building a custom query to show companies formed within a specific period. Adding a “Website” column will allow you to see which domain name each startup is launching with.

Buying Domains

Before buying domain names, you need to know what end users are buying. Building on your research, Crunchbase can help you identify domain extensions that are currently popular as well as brand name trends. This can help form your criteria as you look for domains to buy.

Crunchbase can also help you determine how popular keywords are as brand names. For single-word domains, in particular, typing them into Crunchbase and counting how many companies use the exact-match word you’re searching for can indicate a name’s popularity.

For example, typing “Catalyst” into Crunchbase shows over twenty companies branded purely as “Catalyst.” This would signal that a domain such as Catalyst.co would be valuable as it has multiple potential end-users.

Selling Domains

Inbound domain name sales can be few and far between for many, so some domainers turn to outbound marketing as a way of producing regular income from their domain portfolio.

As a business database, Crunchbase can help domain owners to procure targeted leads for their domain name.

For exact-brand-match domains, searching for your domain’s keyword on Crunchbase will produce a list of companies using that keyword as a brand name. For example, searching for “Nectar” will create a list of companies using the “Nectar” brand name.

Crunchbase also allows you to create a list of companies in a specific industry. So, if you are selling a domain name that could benefit multiple companies in the same industry, Crunchbase will help.

Each company profile offers information on the founders, funding, and company activity, useful for outbound marketing.

A premium subscription is required for the full range of Crunchbase’s tools. As of publishing, subscriptions start at $29 per month, billed annually.