Top Level Design, LLC

What does Top Level Design own?
It operates the Porkbun domain registrar and runs top-level domain registries including .design, .wiki, .ink, .art and .group. The registry and registrar businesses share the same Portland team.

Is Top Level Design publicly traded?
No. It is a private LLC, family-owned by founder Raymond King since 2012, with no outside investors.

Who founded Top Level Design?
Raymond King, a domain industry veteran who co-founded SnapNames and created AboutUs.org, founded it in 2012 to apply for new gTLDs.

Where is Top Level Design headquartered?
Portland, Oregon, United States. The company operates from a single office with a small distributed team.

How many brands does it own?
One consumer brand, Porkbun, plus a portfolio of registry TLDs including .design, .wiki, .ink and .art operated under the Top Level Design name.

Who owns Top Level Design?
The King family. Raymond King founded it and maintains control; his brother Peter Brual runs Porkbun's operations.

How big is Porkbun?
It manages millions of domains, placing it among the significant independent registrars, despite a staff of roughly 40 people.

Did Top Level Design raise venture capital?
No. It has been bootstrapped from founding through its entire history, funded by operating revenue.

Raymond King founded Top Level Design in 2012 to participate in ICANN's new generic top-level domain expansion, the largest-ever opening of the domain namespace. His bid portfolio included .design, .wiki, .ink, .art, .group and .gay, betting that the industry needed vertical-specific namespaces beyond .com.

The applications succeeded unevenly through ICANN's contention processes. Top Level Design won .wiki, .ink and .design outright, and later acquired .art from a previous applicant, while .gay went to a partner. The registries went live through 2014 and 2015, selling wholesale to registrars worldwide.

In 2014 the company launched Porkbun, initially a modest registrar branded with a deliberate whimsy that cut against the industry's corporate tone. Its pricing model, essentially registry cost plus a thin margin, and clean interface found a devoted audience among developers and domainers, the professional investors who hold large portfolios.

Porkbun's growth accelerated dramatically in the 2020s. Free WHOIS privacy, transparent renewal pricing and a support culture built on genuine responsiveness made it a favored alternative to the larger registrars. By 2025 it managed millions of domains, a scale reached without venture capital or acquisitions, funded entirely from operations.

Through it all Top Level Design stayed small, roughly 40 people, family-held, and Portland-based, a structure King has described as deliberate. The company has never raised institutional capital and is frequently cited as the industry's proof that a lean, product-led registrar can compete with giants.

ICANN's 2012 new gTLD application round was the industry's biggest structural event since the domain system's creation: nearly 2,000 applications for new extensions. Top Level Design's portfolio of applications reflected King's thesis that the internet needed descriptive namespaces beyond .com, and the company emerged from contention processes controlling .design, .wiki and .ink, later adding .art through acquisition from its original applicant.

The registries went live through 2014 and 2015, with .design finding a genuine niche among creative professionals and agencies. Wholesale distribution put the TLDs on every major registrar's shelves while the company's own retail operation was still small.

Porkbun opened as a registrar in 2014, initially a side project whose deliberately absurd name masked a serious pricing model: registration and renewal at thin margins over wholesale cost, free WHOIS privacy, and no upsell architecture. The domain investor community, professionals managing portfolios of thousands of names, adopted it as a preferred registrar because its economics rewarded volume without games.

The registrar's growth through the 2020s was striking precisely because it was organic. No venture funding, no acquisitions, no marketing machine: a Portland team of roughly 40 people running a registrar that grew to manage millions of domains through community reputation alone. NamePros community awards and registrar surveys repeatedly ranked it at or near the top for pricing and service.