Donuts Receives “Emergence Award” for 2014

Each year Emergence Capital gives out an award to a portfolio company called the "Emergence Award." The Emergence Award is not for a big successful sale or IPO, but for the company that is working its tail off, executing, making its customers happy, all often without much public recognition.

We give this award, because we know that success does not come from a sudden stroke of genius or a mysterious super-power. It comes from years of hard work, planning, evangelizing, fundraising and countless tough decisions. The Emergence Award is not about who has become famous, but who will be famous in the next 2-3 years.

This year we want to recognize and congratulate Paul Stahura, founder and CEO of Donuts.

Donuts CEO Paul Stahura and Brian Jacobs, Emergence Capital General Partner[/caption]

Paul is a real domain expert. Previously, he founded eNom, which grew to the second largest domain name registrar (behind Godaddy), and sold it to Demand Media. Having spent years selling domain names, Paul recognized that the Internet could move beyond the web we know with everything ending in .com or .net.

His vision for the new web incorporates true meaning into website addresses, with photographers using sites then end in .photography, with accountants using .accountant as their domain names and venture capitalist using .ventures.

While Donuts is showing some spectacular results today, it was almost 10 years in the making. He started by recruiting a world class founding team of individuals who had demonstrated success in every aspect of the business, and together they spent years analyzing the semantic value of various strings - calculating which suffixes would improve on .com and have the demand sufficient to make a healthy profit.

When ICANN launched opened their application process, Donuts filed 307 applications, about 3x their nearest competitor, Google. Luckily, Paul raised about $90 million, predicting that the company would face Google and Amazon in auctions to resolve overlapping applications. He made a substantial personal investment alongside the venture investors, and using his instincts, experience and mathematical modeling capabilities, Donuts went head to head with these tech giants and won a majority of these contests.

Today, Donuts offers domain names with ending such as:
bike, restaurant, florist, shoes, diamonds, camera, farm, agency
technology, computer, email, digital, network
rentals, vacations, condos, cruises, flights, holiday
bargains, discount, deals, cheap loans, insure, credit, tax, investments
healthcare, surgery, dental, clinic, care ventures, capital, partners, associates, fund

Donuts launched the first names in January of 2014, and sold their millionth name in October. With average prices of about $25 per names, the company is seeing spectacular growth and is already cashflow positive. Paul’s 2015 plans are bigger, bolder and will change the way we think of the internet.

We are thrilled to congratulate both Paul and Donuts for receiving the Emergence Award for 2014!