261–270 of 355 posts
If the .com name you want is already registered, you can always buy it later once you business is successful enough to justify the investment (much like betali.st and getdropbox.com). There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage. Note: a large swath of web users don't even understand the concept of a domain name or address bar...instead they google term…
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> Yeah. I heard this 13 years ago too. http://shirky.com/writings/domain_names.html So because someone suggested it 13 years ago makes it not true today? Look at how the new TLDs are working out; if you want to find a company using a funny TLD you just search for their name and unless the .com is higher ranked the company comes right up to the top. Look at it from a user's perspective; do you know anyone who actually…
The absolute lowest friction is to have a .com domain. And yes, it's still true.
Also, only anecdotal because I can't find any studies one way or another, but I can't find anyone in the younger generation who actually types in any domain names. I even had a frustrating experience telling someone who's used the internet all his life what .com even was as he had never typed it before. Plenty of people in my generation still type it though.
Also many of the older generation folks I've worked with who had their internet start with AOL don't seem to type in domain TLDs either.
So until I see some solid, current research regarding the behaviors of the different generations I'm not convinced a .com is lower friction; you type less when you just type the company's name and most browsers nowadays will give you the option to autocomplete directly to their website.
> 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?
Exactly. Maybe it's because the top 20 stuck around in YC long enough to be badgered by Paul Graham into getting a .com? That said, I don't disagree with him on .com, I just don't think this particular factoid adds anything to the argument.
Twitch.com redirects to twitch.tv, but was a music site as late as the end of 2014.
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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.
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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.
I was actually considering doing such a write up a day or two ago. So it really hits a nerve to see this here today.
Short version of the story: Even really big, wildly successful companies do name changes and most folks founding a company are waaaay over-attached to whatever they first decided to name their baby.
If the .com name you want is already registered, you can always buy it later once you business is successful enough to justify the investment (much like betali.st and getdropbox.com). There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage. Note: a large swath of web users don't even understand the concept of a domain name or address bar...instead they google term…
3 weeks ago I purchased the .com after the original owner let it expire, cost me more than I wanted to pay bet less than I would have paid. I was ecstatic, feels so much better to say abc.com ... !
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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.
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Care to share how much you paid for it? I typically see north of $5k. For a very early stage company its hard to justify even just $5k.
Was answering the question above and came across this so figured I'd share -- though maybe Patrick/Stripe has changed his/their mind since then :-) > We'd rather not disclose the amount, but it was less than you might think. http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-Stripe-com-spend-on-their-...
My startup's name is Purple. This is what we have to deal with : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple.com