Entrepreneurs who participate in the 54-hour Startup Weekend coding marathons gain all sorts of valuable lessons, insights and contacts. And now they may emerge with something else: a free domain name.
As part of a one-year partnership being announced today, Startup Weekend participants will receive .CO domain extensions for their businesses when the domains are available.
“We’re beyond inspired by the work that Startup Weekend is doing to help aspiring entrepreneurs to come together, build teams and launch startups,” said Lori Anne Wardi, Vice President of .CO Internet. “As a startup ourselves, we’re honored to be able to grant the next generation of startups with scholarships to access the .CO domain names they need to position their new businesses and brands for global success.”
The .CO top-level-domain is the country code extension for Colombia, which in 2010 made the decision to share the domain extension much as .TV (Tuvala) and .ME (Montenegro) had previously done.
.CO Internet SAS is a joint-venture between Columbia’s Arcelandia SA and Neustar, Inc, a provider of managed DNS services and registry solutions such as .US, .BIZ, and .TRAVEL.
To date, more than 1.3 million .CO domains have been registered in 200 countries, including a number in the startup community such as Angel List (angel.co), 500 Startups (500.co), The Founder Institute (fi.co) and Startup America Partnership (s.co).
Only names that aren’t already registered will be provided to Startup Weekend graduates. The new program will start this month as Startup Weekend rolls out 40 different events in two dozen countries.
