271–280 of 355 posts
Is there a way to start a name consultancy? I'm fairly good at coming up with names, and wouldn't mind offering my services, but I'm not sure how to secure my idea before selling it. I would also be open to testing my skills for anyone looking for a company name.
Whether you like it or not, domain squatting seems to be the most popular way to do that.
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…
"There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage." This is exactly why the .com domain wins. They do not have this attitude. Their attitude is to be in it to win it and do what it necessary to be successful. That's the .com signal.
Also, blind optimism is not required for success. And no domain name is an antidote for a shitty idea that nobody cares about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't appearing weak by not shelling out potentially tens of thousands of dollars for a domain name be, well, accurate? I mean...these are startups, not established companies. I think showing weakness could be to the advantage of a startup, which PG seems to ignore.
How is showing weakness an advantage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s also strange to me since more then once when discussing startup naming I’ve quoted this earlier article Paul wrote where he makes nearly the opposite argument: http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html
I think it's still relevant. That was before most of the TLD expansion so .com was just about the only option. I the gist of the article is that you have a lot of options in naming and many/most of them will be fine (as long as you get the .com).
I’d also say the proliferation of new TLD domains has made them more, not less acceptable for new companies, especially ones like .io and .ly that have come to be pretty closely associated with the startups in general. Like you say, in 2006 nearly everything still was .com so a non .com might have stood out more as a negative, and even then pg says he still had no problems with del.icio.us
Also the last section stood out for me as a contrast with the title of this one:
"Whatever name you choose, be careful. Names stick. You need a way to refer to things, and whatever you call something rapidly becomes its name."
The latest "new TLD" thing was a money-making scheme for domain registrars. Nobody goes to those domains. Even the previous round of TLDs (".museum", ".aero") are not used much; ".aero" has entries for all the major airport codes, but they're redirects. Amusingly, even if you have your very own TLD, it doesn't help you. Most browsers send single-word lookups to a search engine before they send them to DNS. Try "ca" i…
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> Great names are made not found. > But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you become big Exactly this. If you look at the most successful companies in all sectors out there, most of them have logos that range from plain to just ugly, and many of them feel like they were initially created as a formatted company name on top of some document, back when the company's secretary first…
> The more I see things and think about them, the more I believe that this whole talk of logos being "very important since it's what your customer looks at all the time" is a big scam perpetuated by graphics designers, because they make (a lot of) money on you believing you need the slick, $expensive new brand image. Patio11 has actually A/B tested two different logos. His conclusion was that "Your logo could potenti…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OElW2BrB6So
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTY5EKN6bzM
The new logo is bad because it doesn't communicate what the product is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
signaling weakness is an important factor for a fraction of companies for most others that is the very least of their worries. PG talks from a perspective that does not apply to most companies in this world. Again if you get a .com name that is great. But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it already is another discussion all together.
> But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it already is another discussion all together. Whether or not you agree with pg, finding a decent .com is pretty cheap in terms of time and money when you have free domain name checking services that give you available .com variants of desired keywords. Even though I know this, I'm still always surprised when I see the 2-3 syllable .com domain na…
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…
"There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage." This is exactly why the .com domain wins. They do not have this attitude. Their attitude is to be in it to win it and do what it necessary to be successful. That's the .com signal.
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…
Whereas if you force yourself to buy an untaken .com domain, you are pushing yourself to think creatively. You might even get so lucky to come up with a fantastic name such as Airbnb or Zenefits.