In September 2021, Jamie Zoch reported that the Branch.com domain name may have changed hands thanks to some WHOIS data updates that happened in March 2021.
The Branch.com domain began hosting a landing page for an upcoming financial startup that aimed to “fix banking.”
Few details were available regarding Branch, aside from the fact that it raised $25 million in funding in October 2021. The New York-based company looked to have the perfect start. A $25 million fund, and the perfect domain name in Branch.com.
However, two weeks ago, Branch announced that it was to rebrand to Fruitful. Its LinkedIn post described what Fruitful meant, and what the company will become.
From a domain perspective, all I could see was a step in the wrong direction. The company had moved from Branch.com to Fruitful.co. Navigating to Fruitful.com currently shows an error page.
It’s likely that behind the scenes, issues arose that made the quick rebrand necessary. There’s another finance-related company called Branch, operating on BranchApp.com, that may have taken issue with the emergence of this new company, who knows. There are dozens of possible scenarios that could have resulted in the rebrand. Alternatively, the founders may simply have liked the name Fruitful better than Branch.
Whatever the reason, it’s a notable move for this startup. Is it a step in the right direction?
Definitely a step in the wrong direction.
Hmmm, the bottom of the fruitful.com (not .co) landing page states:
Copyright © 2021 | Branch App, Inc
whoops, my bad, that was the fruitful.co page that has that copyright notice