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Change Your Name

paulgraham.com

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Re: Change Your Name

#331

Post by CmonDev »

stephengoodwin wrote: post #252
rl3 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Well, that's 13M that you don't need to give back personally (unlike some bank loan). And .com is pretty important for a site like that. Fb.com is even better though.

Re: Change Your Name

#332

Post by ozim »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #323
ozim wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree here with Natch, compare point about signaling weakness with sending your CV from "fancy_kid_45@gmail.com" to "firstname.lastname@gmail.com" or even "firstname@lastname.com" what looks most professional? Can you imagine reading CV of a person with fancy kid mail?

> Can you imagine reading CV of a person with fancy kid mail? Yes. In fact I did quite a bit of hiring at some of my previous companies and I never cared about email (why would I care about email? This isn't a signal, this is noise). Do people, at least in tech, really care about such things? At least in my deals I never found one. I'd imagine in stuffy jobs it might be something to look down upon but in tech? That s…

If you want to hire someone detail oriented will you look inside his CV if he has "detail oriented" listed or you just see he has typos?

Re: Change Your Name

#333

Post by webmuzer »

Before startup founders disregarding PG's advice about prefering .com domains if feasiable, consider 2015 RSA Conference cyber security speaker Paul Vixie recommendation for corporate sysadmins to filter out new TLD's to cut down on cyberthreats. Startups considering sexy new cheap TLD's may want to reconsider cost / benefit metrics of such path.

On Thursday, April 23 at 9:10am, there is a session called “Domain Name Abuse: How Cheap New Domain Names Fuel the eCrime Economy.” The panel will be led by Paul Vixie, CEO of a company called Farsight Security, Inc.

http://www.rsaconference.com/

Re: Change Your Name

#334

Post by jscheel »

webmuzer wrote: post #333

Before startup founders disregarding PG's advice about prefering .com domains if feasiable, consider 2015 RSA Conference cyber security speaker Paul Vixie recommendation for corporate sysadmins to filter out new TLD's to cut down on cyberthreats. Startups considering sexy new cheap TLD's may want to reconsider cost / benefit metrics of such path. On Thursday, April 23 at 9:10am, there is a session called “Domain Name…

We found that out the hard way. We were getting tons of reports of our product not working. After a lot of investigation, we found out they were all coming from people at Starbucks locations, because Starbuck was blocking .me.

Re: Change Your Name

#335

Post by jscheel »

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.

.co is pushed hard in the startup world. I can't stand it though. It's way too close to .com, and results in a lot of messed up traffic.

Re: Change Your Name

#336

Post by gdb »

pc wrote: post #269
BreakoutList wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was answering the question above and came across this so figured I'd share -- though maybe Patrick/Stripe has changed his/their mind since then :-) > We'd rather not disclose the amount, but it was less than you might think. http://www.quora.com/How-much-did-Stripe-com-spend-on-their-...

Yeah, now the challenge is just that I don't remember the exact amount :-). I believe $20k or $30k. We'd raised ~$1.8M by this point and so it seemed like a reasonable amount to spend.

The domain owner initially asked for $30k. We negotiated him down to $12.5k up front and another $12.5k a year later. As an early-stage startup, this structure was a huge win, since we expected we'd either raise money or no longer exist within the next year.

Re: Change Your Name

#337

Post by corobo »

CmonDev wrote: post #330
corobo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really thought about it until now but I don't think I'd even pay for a service on .ly et al even if it was using stripe/PayPal 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

What about https:\\ though?

It's trivial to get a cert for HTTPS. That doesn't tell me if the people behind the site are trustworthy, security conscious or going to be around in a year's time

I know that the dotcom doesn't do that either, it's not a rational thing - just a thing

Re: Change Your Name

#338

Post by bhartzer »

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…

I read this and honestly thought that it's kind of bizarre that he seemingly "randomly" came out with this post. My first impression was that it was a publicity stunt by Verisign.

Nonetheless, Paul's point about naming is a good one. You have to have a good name. But, I see no evidence (and he didn't provide any) why the name has to be associated with a .COM domain. His only 'evidence' that he mentions is the fact that "100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name." This doesn't mean that 94% of the top 50 are right (in owning the .com).

Re: Change Your Name

#339

Post by fractallyte »

dave1619 wrote: post #18

I knew I needed to change our company's name but this article really sealed the deal. The problem is I don't have the skill of naming. If you do, I'd love your help (email me at lalalee at hotmail.com).

There's a complementary post elsewhere in the comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10031735

Re: Change Your Name

#340

Post by pbreit »

corobo wrote: post #317
nostromo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never really thought about it until now but I don't think I'd even pay for a service on .ly et al even if it was using stripe/PayPal 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

.ly is particularly bad because Lybia's maintenance is a real risk.
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