Kin Raises $82 Million Using Kin.com

Company rebranded to a .us and then upgraded to the matching .com.

InsurTech startups seem to be prime candidates for securing domain name upgrades. In 2019, homeowners insurance provider Hippo paid $3.3 million to acquire Hippo.com, while more recently, car insurance firm Root took ownership of the Root.com domain.

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Consumer-facing companies, especially those that provide critical services like insurance, often benefit from owning ultra-premium domains because of the immediate trust and brand longevity that they emit.

Another leading InsurTech company caught my eye this week after it completed an $82 million Series D funding round, bringing its total raised to $238.2 million, according to Crunchbase.

The company in question, Kin, stood out to me thanks to its domain name, Kin.com. Another insurance company with a stunning domain name.

Founded in 2016, Kin was originally named Bright Policy, with co-founders Sean Harper and Lucas Ward unveiling the company at a 500 Startups mini-conference. The duo received plenty of early interest, raising $650,000 in seed funding just months after launching.

By the time Bright Policy raised its seed funding round in mid-2017, it had already rebranded. The company filed a trademark for Kin in early 2017, and by March, the company was operating on Kin.us.

In July 2017, a month before disclosing its $3.3 million seed funding round, Kin made a move for Kin.com. Up until Kin’s acquisition, Kin.com was in the hands of tech giant Microsoft, which secured the name in 2009 before launching its short-lived mobile phone, Kin.

As a side note, Microsoft reportedly invested more than $1 billion in developing the Kin platform before scrapping it in 2011. Kin.com was left redundant.