311–320 of 355 posts
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…
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…
That seems to be more of what he's getting at here:
The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals weakness. Unless you're so big that your reputation precedes you, a marginal domain suggests you're a marginal company.
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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.
Shouldn't that be tesla.edu rather than .com? Their current .org would also be more appropriate than a .com...
From Wikipedia: "Since 2001, new registrants to the [.edu top level] domain have been required to be United States-affiliated institutions of higher education, though before then non-U.S.-affiliated—and even non-educational institutions—registered, with some retaining their registrations to the present."
Are you all seriously arguing with Paul Graham about something in his realm of expertise that only someone with a vast experience in multiple startups can form an informed opinion of, or someone that has undertaken a serious research study thereof? If you are not one of those two, just smile, nod, and change your name. If pg suggests something, he thinks it's important, if he thinks it's important enough to write an…
You might want to read up on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
If there had been logic, data, or some other proof besides a couple of counter examples, I may need to do more than appeal "argue from authority." They aren't, so I'm sticking with the authority.
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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.
ycombinator is not exactly memorable like a "stripe" or "parse", yet they are presumably one of the most successful accelerators in the world.
Naming is secondary, marketing that name is primary. Of course, you can't have a shitty name like ookabugiedandwig, but ask yourself why English-speaking people know words like: Samsung, Nissan, Ubuntu, Volkswagen and you can even apply that in reverse and find out why people who may not even use English to write, know words like: Apple, Mercedes Benz, Windows.
Also, I don't mean this in a bad light, but I am glad to see people disagreeing with Paul Graham. This shows that HN is healthy and even a YC members opinion can be wrangled down to reality.
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"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.
Maybe I'm just getting old but the .com wins it for me, at an absolute push for online services I'll trust a .net
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:). Just think to yourself what apples have to do with computers and phones.
The Apple name did have a somewhat contrived connection with computers when the company was first started. Back in 1976, Steve Jobs explained the name to me: "Take a byte of the Apple, get it?" And that's where the famous shape of the logo came from. (I almost ended up working for him at the time - but that is a whole other story!)
For most of us who are pretty awful at naming, it may not be a great idea to focus on the name when there are other TLDs out there like .io, .co, or most recently, .tech. And there's also the highly acceptable alternative of using a derivative of your name, such as (name)app.com, get(name).com, and that sort of thing.
It's also notable that a startup registering its domain name is probably early stages and their name may change anyway, because their idea may change. You don't want to spend hundreds or more on lavalamps.com and then later decide you're actually going to sell those puzzle/IQ lights. Doing that might even make you hesitate to change your idea.* But if you spend $12 on lavalamps.net, the cost of heading for greener pastures is epsilon.
If you've got another name stashed on a scrap of paper in a drawer, dig it up and check whether its .com is available. But if figuring out a new name is going to take you a week, just take what you can get for now.
Probably you don't want to use (name).ru, though. ;)
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*Although if you were that foolish and then that inflexible, you probably weren't going to get anywhere anyway.