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Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…
Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it was 5 years ago.
What I think will happen is ICANN will continue adding more, useless TLDs as quick cash grabs and the next 10 years you're going to see people stop referring to their domain name at all. I mean, why would you? You're Uber, you look for "Uber" in the app stores, you open your browser and type in "Uber". All of these take you exactly where you need to go.
> 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another.
Correlation is not necessarily causation; this statistic should be compared with general domain name availability with the time periods mentioned because an incredible amount are purchased every year making it impossible to even compare in this way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yes, didn't dropbox used to be trydropbox.com? And, tho non-YC, delicious.com was del.icio.us (or something). Successful companies can buy their domain. But I agree with pg; a startup by any other name would succeed as sweet, so why not choose one you can get.
del.icio.us is an awesome domain. I'd be inclined to believe someone came up with the domain before the name.
I have a related question. When you have one product, which name is different from the company's name, is it better to use comapany.com or product.com?
Just my thoughts.
> 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another. I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that landscape has changed in past 8 years and top 20 YC companies are all at least a few years (5-ish?) old. I apprecia…
What also bugs me is that there are probably things that: (1) successful companies do often, (2) marginal companies do less often, and (3) aren't actually in any way instrumental to success. It could just be that there's a mindset among successful founders that produces a particular vector of decisions, not all of which are all that important. Graham would probably respond: whether every component of that vector is i…
> 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. That's not a straight comparison. A better stat would be, what percentage of the top 20 YC companies had the .com while they were in the active YC batch?
No, because his thesis is "change your name", not "start out with .com"
> "Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no relation to what you do." I would contest that it has no relation, I could be wrong since I have no knowledge. That said I always saw it as a relation to the cards themselves and the magnetic-strip on the back of the card.
This Forbes/Quora article explains how the name was chosen: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/02/how-did-stripe-...
Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…