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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…
Of course, signalling architecture has become less important over time, and probably the same will become true of the domain name equivalent.
Today, we consider the .COM to be the true, authentic, creme dela creme. However, available .COM domains are becoming harder and harder to find, while there has been an explosion in new TLDs such as .ly, .io, .pro, .guru, .camp, .rentals, .pub, .management etc.
More and more, we will be seeing startups and large companies with alternative domain names which they will promote online, in magazines, on TV, etc. It will be common to see alternative TLDs. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Super Bowl had a couple ads which included an alternative TLD. Marketing is about rising above the noise and right now a .PRO is much more noticeable than a .COM.
Many commenters and PG acknowledge that while .COM names are less valuable today than they were just a few years ago, they are still perceived to be very valuable. However, that is less and less true for the younger generation (which is the trend I believe PG is missing). As they grow up seeing ly, .io, .pro, .guru, etc., a .COM will have no more inherent authenticity than any other TLD. Would they really be more attracted to a magazine/tv/online ad with sportsshoe.com than to sportsshoe.pro? More willing to eat lunch at goodfood.com over goodfood.pub? More likely to attend bestsummercamp.com over bestsummer.camp? More likely to download a fun app from puzzle.com over puzzle.app?
As a potential investor, does spending time and money securing a .COM really signal someone's dedication and company strength? Should a startup founder really spend a lot of money to secure a .COM so the company appears stronger? Seems like a false metric.
Is this signaling as simple as having a .com ? Or are there other considerations such as SEO uniqueness, easy-to-pronounce (especially critical for enterprise software), length of url. Is kuickkoder.com a better domain than quickcoder.io ?
If the .com is kuicksuperkodderdudes.com, then quickcoder.io is superior. Yes to length of url - if your only option is a .com that is 25 letters long, or a .io domain that is six letters, then the .io wins.
For most of the cases in which a .com ends up being inferior to a .io, it's due to a naming exploration failure. You can still easily find good two word .com addresses today. Unless you've got coder.io or similar.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So were Stripe and Parse, as it happens. We reached out to the owners of domains that looked unused / potentially for sale.
How did you start that process, and (if you don't mind saying) around how much did it cost? I've been looking at what it would take to buy some domains that are marked as taken and get pointed to domainagents.com by my registrar, but it's $199 minimum bid with a $30 deposit (with $10 going straight to the seller simply for responding), and I worry that they'll ask for like $100K, which I'm obviously not going to pay…
A few thoughts.
When possible try to buy your domain before any sort of serious traction, first thing people who own domains are going to do is Google their domain and see what comes up. So if you're running on GetHappy.com and are blowing up, you're making the generic domain "happy.com" more valuable every day. Even with a TM, a rocking responsive site, and editors pick in the app store, the value of Happy.com improves right along side your KPIs, your entitlement to the domain however does not.
If you're running on a generic term like "Happy" and things are going well, chances are the term is being picked up by other developers. If you're thinking "no one is going to go after that domain, it's mine!" you're wrong. The guys running theHappyapp.com and haappy.io have likely already pinged the owner trying to buy the domain. So has your arch rival getunhappy.com ... just because they want to screw you. The longer you wait the more people will try to buy the domain. The more interest in an asset, the more potential for the domain to become increasingly expensive.
A good domain name really is an asset. It's likely that for at least the next 10 years or more, a solid .com is going to be an asset that will, at worst, hold it's value. So even if Google enters your market, eats your lunch, then Facebook follows to finish you off, if you own happy.com, you will still have something that you can potentially borrow against, or sell to fund a pivot.
And finally, if you've got a round locked down, see if you can buy the domain you're after before it's announced.
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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.
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…
The point (and title) of the essay is "change your name," not "make sure you get the .com."
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Maybe never. The Homo Economicus model of human behavior as optimizing for expected economic return is only a first approximation. In some cases, human behavior is more accurately modeled as "Mine! My precious!"
Even if Tesla is not willing to pay the amount the squatter wants, he may be hoping that Tesla's competitor will. By the way, the coolest thing Tesla could do, that would buy them a lot of love and good press, would be to buy tesla.com and donate it to Nicola Tesla Science Center.