191–200 of 355 posts
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DNS is already centralized.
That's a different kind of centralized. Everything going thru search engines, means you depend on someone who has no responsibility towards the people they have power over. That's bad; you have to waste time understanding their incentives and staying on their good side.
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It sounds (unsurprisingly, of course) like the perspective of an investor or other tech industry insider. Notice the phrases like "it signals weakness" and "suggests you're a marginal company." Those don't seem like phrases most people are ever going to think about a company, and especially not based only on their domain name.
I disagree. My parents are typical web users. Fairly tech savvy, but not tech insiders. I recall telling them about bit.ly. It took a while to explain that it wasn't bitly.com, bit.ly.com, etc. They ended up just searching for it instead of typing in the domain name. Think of the added friction this causes... and as we all know, every added interaction detracts from the conversion funnel. Taken in aggregate, many sta…
And they found it. That's how a large, large number of people find web sites these days, and it works fine.
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…
Couldn't agree more. Google, Yahoo, Twitter. Three global brands that aren't dictionary names, and don't have to be. You don't need a dictionary word .com to survive either.
I'm skeptical to see that PG wrote this article. There is no doubt that owning a snazzy .com domain is good but saying this If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name. doesn't make sense. Sorry.
After reading this, I'm a bit perplexed and sad at the same time. My current strategy was to not use a .com since it was up for sale more than I'm willing to pay. Instead, I decided to go with something similar but different and hopefully change it once the idea/company got traction. Whether or not I agree with this, PG is a source of authority, which makes me think about my current strategy. Sort of sucks, do I list…
Name, logo, domain name, are all important things, and - like for all things - their importance changes over time. You go in a circle of executing to "good enough" for the stage you are at (keeping in mind that you do not want to create problems for yourself in the future with the choices you make today) and then move on to the next item on the execution priority list.
If you wait to have the perfect logo before launching, you will never launch... Then 6 or 12 months later you might find yourself analyzing the perfect palette of Pantone colors to go with your brand...
At the time of my comment, there are dozens of comments disagreeing with Paul and only 2 agreeing. And this goes to show you - most people will not accept an advice from someone who knows better. If a conclusion must be reached, it must be reached under your own power, and at your own speed. This just can't be helped, it seems. Or can it?
Another possible conclusion, however, is that the world has changed in the years since last time Paul was actually doing this, and people with current experience are pointing out that his advice in this case is actually out of date.
Ignoring the minutiae of the rest of the post (and you can argue I'm really doing this quite intently), I think I agree with the principle. The name's not that important. If you're processing financial transactions you could be named PayPal, sure, but you could also be named Stripe or Square or BrainTree[0] or any of dozens of weird names that make no sense at face value (if these names are in fact deeply meaningful, I'd be curious to hear the stories... privately, or on Twitter, not necessarily here/now).
There are reasonable things to get stuck on - if you're committed to being a B2C product or service, and others are telling you your startup is more of a B2B idea, then you should wrestle with that. But you shouldn't be wrestling over the name for such a great deal of time. If Paul Graham tells you to change your name when you're pitching to him so you can get a .com, you probably shouldn't (he argues) protest all that much.
I don't think I hold his view as strongly as he does, but I'm neither a successful VC nor widely respected in Silicon Valley, so his argument about perception is admittedly a little self-fulfilling and it seems impossible to reject.
[0] the irony is not lost on me, now that I check, that BrainTree doesn't own braintree.com - although first glance suggests Square only has squareup.com, square.com redirects to it; I'd be interested to hear Graham's thoughts on that, and I think it would signal strongly whether I understood his argument correctly.
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Couldn't agree more. Google, Yahoo, Twitter. Three global brands that aren't dictionary names, and don't have to be. You don't need a dictionary word .com to survive either.
All combinations of 6 letters .com are taken. All 16k words of the dictionary are taken in English. It wasn't even the case 2 years ago. I wonder whether pg's impression that if is possible to get a .com is outdated.
Lots of good examples and counterexamples in the comments, but if you want something memorable AND searchable, sometimes it's best to just churn out the money early on if you know very well what you're doing.
For justwatch.com we paid a small fortune - almost a tenth of the seed investment - to a shady squatter that just wouldn't give in, but in retrospect I'd still say it was definitely worth it.
Even in 2015, it still makes you come across a tad more serious, determined and professional to outsiders and the brand searches and direct openings of the domain are significant.
When you've built a brand already, squatters will be happy to charge you for the work you did (which might or might not be a better deal overall than burning the valuable money in the beginning). YMMV.
If you're shooting for a B2B SAAS business that's more sales or SEM driven, I guess you're off just fine with an .io or temp domain, but your main focus should be a clean search neigbourhood then where you have the chance to make the Google front page eventually.