Geosign announced this week that they got $160M in funding. Geosign has been operating in a fairly low-profile for the last few years and I was only aware of them through discussions with some of the Tucows crowd. I’ve also seen Product Managers postings for some of their online properties like Hockey.com. Still it was surprise to see them raise $160M and come into the Canadian media spotlight with such force.

From what I understand of their business model they’ve developed a repeatable process for selecting generic domain names, and developing them into revenue generating sites. They have a wide selection of online sites, none of which I would say are industry leading but all of which generate some money.

I think their business model is really another extension of the Long Tail. For years companies like GE have insisted that you need to be market leader in your industry/category to profitable. The Geosign model shows that with a big enough tail of smaller sites you can still be very successful without a leadership position.