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Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

relate.so

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Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#11

Post by codetrotter »

stickfigure wrote: post #9
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names. I suffered 8 hours of excruciating downtime back in 2012 when the .st nic went down: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Beware-cutesy-two-l... I learned my lesson, I'll take the .com every time, even if I have to get creative with the name.

> I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names

Here in Europe all of the national TLDs for countries I can think of off the top of my head are two letter TLDs, and will be regarded as trustworthy in their respective countries.

.no .se .dk .fi .fr .it .de .ch .at .pl .es .sk and so on and so forth

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#12

Post by fsckboy »

codetrotter wrote: post #11
stickfigure wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names. I suffered 8 hours of excruciating downtime back in 2012 when the .st nic went down: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Beware-cutesy-two-l... I learned my lesson, I'll take the .com every time, even if I have to get creative with the name.

> I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names Here in Europe all of the national TLDs for countries I can think of off the top of my head are two letter TLDs, and will be regarded as trustworthy in their respective countries. .no .se .dk .fi .fr .it .de .ch .at .pl .es .sk and so on and so forth

I certainly trust those and globally, cuz "in their respective countries" is not a high enough bar

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#14

Post by ransom1538 »

fsckboy wrote: post #12
codetrotter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names Here in Europe all of the national TLDs for countries I can think of off the top of my head are two letter TLDs, and will be regarded as trustworthy in their respective countries. .no .se .dk .fi .fr .it .de .ch .at .pl .es .sk and so on and so forth

I certainly trust those and globally, cuz "in their respective countries" is not a high enough bar

There is always therelateteam.com

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#15

Post by shagie »

soheil wrote: post #8
jitl wrote: post #3

I work at Notion. I advise you to avoid the .so TLD - there’s a lot of institutional bias against Somalia’s TLD, like blanket blocks in many corporate firewalls. This problem will be worse if you serve public user-generated content from that TLD because the chain of communication from you to SomaliNIC might have a bunch of unknown third party intermediaries where an abuse report can get lost. Today Notion is large &…

I like the .so TLD. If enough people keep using it I don't see how that would still make people nervous. It's a nice sounding TLD and if people have a problem with Somalia they shouldn't take it out on an innocent suffix.

The question is "what control can the government of Somalia have on names that are registered under its TLD?" Can it seize the name? In 2010, it was regulated by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. In 2015 it was a different government and managed by Somali Network Information Center. In 2018 it was transferred to The National Communications Authority. Will the policies change? If the country cuts ties with all non-Somali entities will the email addresses continue to work for a time? Or will they be snapped up by scammers?

Additionally, registration financially goes to the government of Somalia (see the controversies with .io TLD).

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#16

Post by rl3 »

eins1234 wrote: post #10

This is obviously based on anecdata, take it with a healthy helping of salt, but from what I've heard from a bunch of founder friends who have applied to YC with varying results, I get the sense that if you want to get in, you might be better off applying before you even start working on your startup. Once you actually start, the bar for getting in seems to get much higher, because there's suddenly a lot more concret…

>Once you actually start, the bar for getting in seems to get much higher, because there's suddenly a lot more concrete data points to benchmark your startup against.

I started in late 2013 and was rejected by YC in 2016. Haven't applied to anything since, with the exception of Apollo. Certainly was very aware of that dynamic at the time.

As a solo founder who lacks the aforementioned impressive resume, and who's nearly a decade in, I no longer have much hope for accelerators.

This was written less than a month before COVID inflicted a great deal of pain and delayed things by a little more than a year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429827

But hey, at least I'm at step one now.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#17

Post by InCityDreams »

codetrotter wrote: post #11
stickfigure wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names. I suffered 8 hours of excruciating downtime back in 2012 when the .st nic went down: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Beware-cutesy-two-l... I learned my lesson, I'll take the .com every time, even if I have to get creative with the name.

> I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names Here in Europe all of the national TLDs for countries I can think of off the top of my head are two letter TLDs, and will be regarded as trustworthy in their respective countries. .no .se .dk .fi .fr .it .de .ch .at .pl .es .sk and so on and so forth

Gov.uk - love it. .co.uk - always smelled of cheap, second hand, gaudy.

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#18

Post by mchusma »

IncRnd wrote: post #13

Congratualtions on your temerity! I looked at relate.so, and I already use a CRM that does everything listed on your website. What are the new features that relate provides compared to other CRMs?

Yes, I had the same question. I'd love to know what makes this different than other CRMs (Salesforce, front, hubspot, pipedrive).

Re: Our five failed YC applications and one successful one

#19

Post by eftychis »

codetrotter wrote: post #11
stickfigure wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names. I suffered 8 hours of excruciating downtime back in 2012 when the .st nic went down: https://github.com/stickfigure/blog/wiki/Beware-cutesy-two-l... I learned my lesson, I'll take the .com every time, even if I have to get creative with the name.

> I would avoid all of the two-letter domain names Here in Europe all of the national TLDs for countries I can think of off the top of my head are two letter TLDs, and will be regarded as trustworthy in their respective countries. .no .se .dk .fi .fr .it .de .ch .at .pl .es .sk and so on and so forth

ccTLDs are two letter correct. Avoiding two letter TLDs is non-practical. If you focus on the local market just take your country's TLD.
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