This four-letter .com domain rebrand went under the radar at the time, but the company looks to be thriving a year after its name change.
Founded in 2018, Puzzl began developing a payment processing product for the gig economy after its founders became frustrated by the lack of options available to manage gig workers adeptly.
Puzzl received early backing from Y Combinator as part of its class of Summer 2019, resulting in a $150,000 pre-seed funding round in 2019, followed by a $1.4 million seed funding round in 2020.
The company, which operated on JoinPuzzl.com, raised a Series A funding round in 2021 worth $13.8 million. The announcement of this funding round coincided with a radical rebrand. Puzzl became Zeal. Co-founder Pranab Krishnan announced the rebrand on Twitter, noting that “Zeal embodies the fervor and passion our team feels about building the future.”
This announcement also comes with a HUGE rebrand. We’re officially renaming our company from Puzzl to Zeal (send me your zeal puns)! We feel that Zeal embodies the fervor and passion our team feels about building the future. You can find us at https://t.co/fl2Euv3tnV 🙂
— Pranab Krishnan (@PranabKrishnan) August 27, 2021
The rebrand came with a new domain name, Zeal.com, a premium domain name that the company invested in, in stark contrast to its original JoinPuzzl.com name.
It’s not the first time Zeal.com has been used by a startup. In 2013, John Danner founded Zeal Learning, an online math tutoring company. Danner, a serial entrepreneur with Internet ventures dating back to the 90s, secured Zeal.com for his tutoring businesses.
After that closed down, Zeal.com was dormant until 2021, when Puzzl picked up the domain ahead of its rebrand. MediaOptions‘ founder, Andrew Rosener, confirmed to me that his company brokered the sale of Zeal.com in 2021. Details of the sale haven’t been disclosed.
Today, Zeal offers its payroll services to large business enterprises and platforms as more sizable companies start to implement modern solutions for managing their payroll. Zeal, and its Zeal.com domain, handles the growth, scope, and ambition of the business well. Would large enterprises be as keen to trust Puzzl, using JoinPuzzl.com, to manage a payroll?
