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Change Your Name

paulgraham.com

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Re: Change Your Name

#251

Post by ssharp »

To anyone naming their company and moving on when the Whois comes back as registered -- if you're really like the name, you should follow up with whoever owns it!

I was recently trying to come up with names for a website / app I've been working on and wanted to finalize a name. The couple of ideas I had were already registered, including the name I really wanted. I ended up sending out emails to the contact on record for the domains I was interested in and ended up buying the exact name I wanted for around $100, which was far less than I was expecting them to settle for. The name had been registered for 13 years and nobody who owned it ever did anything with it.

Re: Change Your Name

#252

Post by stephengoodwin »

rl3 wrote: post #250
booruguru wrote: post #117

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…

This is what Product Hunt did. Originally it was producthunt.co, and once there was sufficient traction, producthunt.com was acquired for a few thousand dollars (if memory serves). I don't think anyone would argue that Product Hunt should have chosen a different name because the corresponding .com was taken.

Facebook originally operated under "thefacebook.com" and bought "facebook.com" for $200,000 in August 2005.[1]

Looking at Crunchbase, they had raised around $13M at that point, so I'm sure spending $200,000 seemed like a lot at the time.[2]

[1] http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/

[2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook/funding-rou...

Re: Change Your Name

#253

Post by pbreit »

ThomPete wrote: post #13

Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…

Since pretty much every huge, successful company has their .com, I suppose the question is when they acquired it and the compensation.

Re: Change Your Name

#254

Post by pbreit »

booruguru wrote: post #117

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.

Re: Change Your Name

#255

Post by onedev »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #171
ThomPete wrote: post #13

Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…

> 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…

Check out this short video by a well known graphic designer (Michael Beirut). He explicitly talks about how logos are inherently NOT important and are overemphasized in the world. Rather it is the consistent actions of a company that give a logo meaning and builds a "brand": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jw-Q7r-ng

Re: Change Your Name

#256

Post by pbreit »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #171
ThomPete wrote: post #13

Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…

> 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…

I don't think the logo is important but that's a different topic. If you at most successful companies in all sectors out there, they have their .com.

Re: Change Your Name

#257

Post by nostromo »

pbreit wrote: post #254
booruguru wrote: post #117

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.

It also depends on your market.

If ProductHunt disappeared tomorrow, I'd be sad, but that's it.

Stripe and Parse on the other hand both needed to signal strength to their customers from day one. There are many customers that would not entrust their payment details with getstripe.ly.

Re: Change Your Name

#258

Post by BinaryIdiot »

natch wrote: post #159
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 d…

I didn't ignore PG's argument at all. My point is how can there be any perceived weakness when the thing in which we're calling a weakness doesn't exist to most users?

When I, admittedly anecdotally, poll people I've met who were practically born after the Internet started, almost none of them even type in .com and a few didn't even know what that was. I'm convinced this sentiment is going to become more common especially with so many squatters on .com domains it's almost impossible to have a good company domain name anymore without spending stupid money to get it. Yet you can get the same name with a different TLD for cheap and you show up at the top of search results.

I'd love to see more search engines or maybe even a decentralized search infrastructure to help facilitate this but that's pretty difficult.

Re: Change Your Name

#259

Post by nostromo »

GuiA wrote: post #247
brudgers wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reading was that at an early stage it's just better to come up with another name and be done with it...if airmatressbreadandbreakfast.com is taken, just buy airBnB.com. Consumers won't care. In cases like Stripe, where the target is B2B and the businesses are mostly small businesses, then a good name matters because it's marketing and its cost is just a cost of doing business. To push it further a .io domain is si…

That's a bad example though. If airbnb.com is taken, should you take airbnb.io or airmatressandbreakfast.com? Paul's argument is: neither, get a different short name for which you can get the .com.

Airbnb.com actually did come later.

It was originally airbedandbreakfast.com.

Re: Change Your Name

#260

Post by pbreit »

J2K wrote: post #245
ThomPete wrote: post #13

Great names are made not found. I think Paul for once have it the wrong way around. If you become big enough and happen to have enough of a market you might need to .com name to optimize your numbers. If you happen to find a good name you can afford that you still think represents you and is .com you should most probably change your name. But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you…

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).
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