YC startups are abandoning .com
A cohort study of 6,135 YC companies reveals a major shift: .com now accounts for less than half of YC portfolio domains. In YC's early years, nearly every startup used a .com, but by 2026, only 47% do, with .ai surging to 27%. The data, grouped by YC batch year, shows the rise of alternative TLDs like .io, .co, .dev, and .app, and even rare one-offs like .ist and .al. The analysis also covers domain length trends, with the median domain at 12 characters.
In YC's first years, almost every startup lived on a .com. Two decades later, fewer than half do.
- vlucas
> YC startups are abandoning .com
They are not "abandoning" .com domains. They are just really hard to find available or cheap enough to buy, so they launch with something else instead!
.com will always be king
- CodesInChaos
Which gTLDs are reliable besides the classics (com, net, org,...)? By that I mean that the TLD owner won't screw you over a few years from now, for example by raising prices?
I kind of like the idea to use .com for the marketing site, and .app for the actual web-app.
- Grombobulous
If you take .ai out of it, .com is still dominant.
- the__alchemist
Is non .com/.org, and hyphens still haram? I registered a new domain last week; I went with non-hyphenated .com. More verbose than ideal, but I chose based on my previous understanding.
I remember .ly was a thing for a while, then the tech companies would do *ly.com instead.
- tosh
.com is evergreen but it's more and more difficult to get good .com names
I wouldn't call this 'abandoning .com' though
it's basically still .com dominated with a good chunk .ai
and I guess the ones with good .com are keeping the .com