Tech Crunch reported about an hour ago that Top10.com received $8 million in Series B funding. The article also touched upon when the domain Top10.com was purchased back in 2010. Frank Michlick from Domain Name News had the exact facts back in 2010 on the deal.
From Domain Name News:
Incubator Idealab sold the domain name Top10.com for $200,000 USD in cash and a 7% equity stake in the new Top10.com Media Ltd. company. Idealab founder Bill Gross will join the advisory board of the company.
Top10.com has been purchased by the team behind Top 10 Broadband and Top 10 Mobile Phones, comparison sites targeting the UK market.sector. Prior to today’s rebranding the company’s sites attracted a combined 1.5 million UK users a month according to their press release. Both sites have been amalgamated and are being re-launched under the Top10.com umbrella as of today. The company, which was founded in 2006, appears to also own the top10.co.uk domain name. Top10.com Media employs 20 staff in its Central London offices and is privately owned by its four co-founders, Tom Leathes, Harry Jones, Alex Buttle, and Andrew Cartland.
The Top10.com website started out as a play on mobile phones and broadband comparison. They sold that business in 2011 and now Top10.com is a hotel metasearch engine.
Hotel metasearch startup, Top10.com, has closed an $8 million Series B funding round, led by Balderton Capital, following what it describes as rapid growth over the past 12 months. Its total funding raised to date is now $12.5 million, including this latest chunk.
It evidently hung onto the Top10.com domain name though, purchased back in 2010 for $1 million. The current specific focus on hotels is a pivot from a broader social recommendation and discovery platform which it focused on after exiting its earlier price comparison segment.
Top10 raised $3.5 million, from Accel Partners and others, back in 2011 for that social recommendation platform, which included things like music, with a Spotify app for collaborative music playlists, entertainment and travel.
Read the full article here
It seems a shame to me to narrow the use of Top10.com to hotels only. I guess the next best thing for a broader Top 10 site, is our domain eTop10.com.