What % are actively operating but don't have any website... not counting a placeholder "coming soon" page?
I suspect the answer would be surprising.
More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
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Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#42From my perspective as a user, maybe someone who would visit your domain, I’m indifferent to the specific TLD used. You might be able to compose a clever word that grabs my attention, which I’ve seen a lot from .ly domains. However, from an email marketing perspective, TLDs are not interchangeable. Some TLDs (think .xyz) see a lot of abuse, tanking the reputation and deliverability for good actors using them too. So…
As a personal user of .xyz I couldn't agree more. People often get a chuckle at my web/email address when I give it out. Sometimes I have to repeat it because (especially non technical) people aren't expecting it to end in .xyz but often it works to my advantage. The repetition and uniqueness makes it memorable. Also .xyz is generic enough to be used for business and for personal sites. It's also not a ccTLD so I don't have to worry about registration restrictions.
But... Even with using a correctly configured major provider to deliver my mail, it gets sent to spam all the time. Which for personal email, fine. Most of my recipients know to check spam, and mark me as safe. But I know of at least one destination that flat out rejects my mail and if I were a business that'd be nightmare. Also on the web front a lot of proxy and filter providers just block .xyz all together.
When I purchased it I hoped Alphabet having abc.xyz would've helped with .xyz's reputation, but it hasn't. Oh well. Mine is for personal use so I'm willing to tolerate it. Businesses be warned though.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#43Manhattan's overpriced. People are moving to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is overpriced, people are moving to Queens.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#44I think this is honestly less about the notoriety of .com, and more about the lack of affordable and available domains for startups to purchase. Got a five letter named startup? That’ll cost you tens of thousands of dollars, IF you can even get it. Meanwhile there’s hundreds of gTLDs that you can buy a domain on for $10-$30/yr.
To prove your point I got borg.games for $20/yr for my p2p cloud gaming startup yesterday. Although lots of other good names were "premium" and costed upwards of $5000.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#45There's an old game fan site that had an unpronounceable five letter dot com. I made a lowball offer and since then Unregistry has periodically tried to sell me this expensive domain to me, including by setting up a fake site temporarily to make it look like it was in use.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Meanwhile my four letter domain, lwei.com, gets no offers and is appraised at like $1000. There’s still stuff available for reasonable prices but it’s just a lot of work so it’s easier to get some random tld.
Well sure you can also run a random string generator and get a short .com TLD, but that's not the point.
Today I realized how xkcd prob got it's name
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#47I have a .co but I've been to and love Colombia.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#48I think this is honestly less about the notoriety of .com, and more about the lack of affordable and available domains for startups to purchase. Got a five letter named startup? That’ll cost you tens of thousands of dollars, IF you can even get it. Meanwhile there’s hundreds of gTLDs that you can buy a domain on for $10-$30/yr.
Having a dotcom is a signal of the organization's wealth. If your company is worth $3B, and your cash position is good, spending 0.01% of your valuation on a dotcom ($300k) is a no brainer. It might add to your legitimacy and prestige (even if marginally) and it's an asset that will most likely increase in value over time.
> an asset that will most likely increase in value over time.
This is actually a myth. See the changing of hands of sex.com. Also, Domain names are being less important as users stay within apps / content platforms like FB, Instagram and TikTok. Also Google Search and soon ChatGPT.
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#49.com domain availability has dried up and alternate TLDs dropped the price of squatted .coms. .io was too popular for a while and now everyone seems to be going with a .ai even if their product is far from actual AI. For my startup, I went with .dev. Don’t know if that was a good idea, but I was able to readily get a simple three-letter TLD there.
I don't know much about the marketing potential for .dev vs others, but I think .dev is one of the safest TLDs in terms of registry management and longevity. It makes sense for Google to keep their TLDs priced reasonably to keep the web accessible and there are some big anchor domains on .dev; web.dev, pages,dev, etc..
Re: More than half of YC startups don't have a dot com
#50I think this is honestly less about the notoriety of .com, and more about the lack of affordable and available domains for startups to purchase. Got a five letter named startup? That’ll cost you tens of thousands of dollars, IF you can even get it. Meanwhile there’s hundreds of gTLDs that you can buy a domain on for $10-$30/yr.
Having a dotcom is a signal of the organization's wealth. If your company is worth $3B, and your cash position is good, spending 0.01% of your valuation on a dotcom ($300k) is a no brainer. It might add to your legitimacy and prestige (even if marginally) and it's an asset that will most likely increase in value over time.
Speaking of (and confirming your point), ai.com redirects to chatgpt as of ~1 week ago...!
https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-ai-dot-com-domain-name-...