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Change Your Name

paulgraham.com

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Re: Change Your Name

#151

Post by dshankar »

PG is recommending you get the X.com, but that doesn't mean you need to pay $50,000 for X.com on Day 1 of your startup. I see people making this mistake all the time, buying expensive domains before validating their startup in the first place.

Think about what Dropbox, Stripe, and AirBnB did!

  getdropbox.com          -> dropbox.com
  devpayments.com         -> stripe.com
  airbedandbreakfast.com  -> airbnb.com

Re: Change Your Name

#152

Post by nostrademons »

Riseed wrote: post #132
nostrademons wrote: post #124

"It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name is a sufficiently good one, and the number of such domains is so large that you can find plenty that are cheap or even untaken." So, after reading this advice, I decided I'd actually try it out - it's easy enough to download a word list and write a script that pings a WHOIS API to check every single word or word pair. Turns out most such API…

There are still a few one-word domains left in the .com TLD (e.g. naziisms.com, regularizing.com, castigators.com). I myself registered one earlier this summer. http://www.randomdotcom.com/

Probably not for long - with 1.4 thousand domains and $10/domain, it would only take $14K to complete the corner of the .com TLD. Was tempted to do it myself, but my wife would probably have an issue with dropping $14K on the likes of blotchier.com, naziisms.com, ossiffies.com, chastens.com, etc.

(BTW, after clicking through random domains 50 or so times, I had some of them come up 3 times, which makes me think that there are more like 50-100 untaken .com domains than the 1.4K they say.)

Re: Change Your Name

#153

Post by brudgers »

baddox wrote: post #103
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #52

I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote about this. Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it…

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.

In B2B weakness in the form of undercapitalization is important because companies don't want to make middle term or long term bets on a technology with uncertain prospects for support, maintenance and further development. Signaling "this product might be legacy in 18 months" is worth avoiding.

A rose by any other name still smells sweet, but thornbush isn't the way to market it.

Re: Change Your Name

#154

Post by [deleted] »

AJ007 wrote: post #148
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #52

I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote about this. Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it…

An easy thing for a well funded start up to spend money on is their domain name. A good question to ask is when did the top 20 YC companies by valuation buy theirs. Did they pass over really talented devs just so they could drop $500k on a dot com? Things are changing. Talk to 18-20 year olds about how they are using the internet. Throw out an address using one of ICANN's new extensions. Do they even recognize its a…

[deleted]

Re: Change Your Name

#155

Post by loceng »

ThomPete wrote: post #65
loceng wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different strategies and it certainly can be an advantage if you have a single word .com domain that encompasses a core value or offering.

A lot of things can be advantageous. But lets keep in mind that 99.99% of all companies are not going to be unicorns with budgets to buy +100K domain names anytime soon. That doesn't mean they can't become a hugely successful company. My general point is just that you shouldn't prematurely optimize because you end up spending a lot of time on it. Unless you stumble on a great name that you can afford it's most of the…

Definitely, prioritizing is important - $100k on development will bring your startup much further along and having a great domain may be an artificial crutch.

Re: Change Your Name

#156

Post by rwallace »

cpeterso wrote: post #133
electic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or tesla.com

I've always wondered how long will domain squatters wait before they negotiate. Surely Tesla Motors has approached tesla.com and apparently been turned down. Telsa Motors has shown they don't need that domain name to succeed. So when will the squatter, if ever, cave to Tesla Motors' offer?

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!"

Re: Change Your Name

#157

Post by TeMPOraL »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #81
PhilipA wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like we are going back to the AOL keyword days... not a good sign.

> It seems like we are going back to the AOL keyword days... not a good sign. Not really comparable in my opinion. In AOL, if I remember correctly, you had to register or pay for your keyword much like a domain name. So all keywords were owned by a central authority, could only be used within their ecosystem and had the same type of squatter issues as domain names. What's happening today are "keywords" being associat…

> You can't simply pay for the top spot anymore.

There's ton of money being made (sometimes even by honest businesses) on the opposite assumption. Instead of paying the gatekeeper to put you higher on the list you pay some third parties to game the sorting algorithm.

Re: Change Your Name

#158

Post by escaped_hn »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #52

I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote about this. Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it…

Google's search results page is pretty much a DNS Server.

Re: Change Your Name

#159

Post by natch »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #52

I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote about this. Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as meaningful today as it…

You completely ignored PG's argument about it signaling weakness. This is one of those perception versus reality things, where people's perceptions (those who are judging a startup) ARE the reality, whether those perceptions are theoretically refutable or not.

In other words, let's say you're right, and owning the .com domain name is becoming less meaningful (an argument that PG already addressed, by the way). That doesn't mean that .com domains are becoming significantly less meaningful to people's perceptions. And perceptions matter, when going after customers, funders, employees, business partners, etc.

I wouldn't say that the perception that having the .com domain name is important is an incorrect one. Maybe you would disagree and say it is an incorrect perception. But even if you think the perception is incorrect, the perception is still part of the reality that the startup lives in.

This classic "perception IS reality" pattern is something that a lot of people miss.

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