5 ms·

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.

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 terms like "Gmail" and "YouTube" thinking this is how they are supposed to visit web sites. What's more, tech-savvy users wouldn't think twice about visiting domain name ending in ".io", ".ly" and so on. (Hence their proliferation.) * I can't help but wonder if this article is some kind of prank--it's far too ill-considered compared to Graham's usual standards.

brudgers 11y ago
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 signalling and that's what makes it attractive.
- GuiA 11y ago
  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.
  - nostromo 11y ago
    Airbnb.com actually did come later. It was originally airbedandbreakfast.com.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    I take it that the article is aimed at early stage startups and is premised on the idea that choosing a name is worth about 20 minutes of time by a founding team and an experienced investor. I find Airbnb useful because "air" has nothing to do with the current company. Any connotations to air mattresses are probably non-positive at this point and the company's success came after pivoting away from low quality low cost accommodations.
dweekly 11y ago
The good news is that if paulg was testing to see if HN was just an echo-chamber that applauds everything he says even if he gives terrible advice, HN just passed the test with flying colors. :-) Hooray for critical thinking!
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
rl3 11y ago
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.
- stephengoodwin 11y ago
  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/ http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/ [2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook/funding-rou...
  - CmonDev 11y ago
    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.
- jscheel 11y ago
  .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.
pbreit 11y ago
"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.
- nostromo 11y ago
  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.
  - corobo 11y ago
    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
    - CmonDev 11y ago
      What about https:\\ though?
      - corobo 11y ago
        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
    - pbreit 11y ago
      .ly is particularly bad because Lybia's maintenance is a real risk.
- booruguru 11y ago
ricree 11y ago
thefacebook.com also comes to mind.
RowanH 11y ago
So I started with a non .com address, after watching a client trying to find my homepage with .com my heart sank. The first thing anyone does is write in abc.com or their local country tld (in my case .co.nz). 3 weeks ago I purchased the .com after the original owner let it expire, cost me more than I wanted to pay bet less than I would have paid. I was ecstatic, feels so much better to say abc.com ... !
smoyer 11y ago
I wondered about the tone too ... perhaps we've got a fake-paul-graham in our midst? The thought experiment referenced by [1] is pretty weak. I don't think it's the attachment to a name but more commonly the lack of a better name - and it's especially hard to find a name you like that still has a .com domain available. Having a .com name like stripe indicates a position of strength because (at this point in time), someone paid extra for the privilege.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
paulsutter 11y ago
Exactly - his statistics are missing the important number, how many of those late stage YC startups had purchased the .com after they had raised substantial funding? (ie, could it be the pattern rather than the antipattern)
- snowmaker 11y ago
  It's a good point, but I think empirically not many. Dropbox is the only one I can think of; they were originally getdropbox.com.
guywithquestion 11y ago
> There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage. The point (and title) of the essay is "change your name," not "make sure you get the .com."
jccc 11y ago
You're thinking of customers looking at your company. Could it be that pg is actually talking about investors looking at your startup? 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.
bhartzer 11y ago
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).
- ghufran_syed 11y ago
  Yes, you would think it would be easy to analyze two yc portfolios, one with .com, the other with every other domain, controlling for the time since formation, and compare results, both survival and valuation. That would probably be a lot more meaningful, since the most highly valued companies are almost certainly also the oldest (surviving) companies. However, I do think the point he is making is correct, that there are a number of constraints, but that the optimal decision involves a different weighting of them to that of many founders (my interpretation). I would argue that the constraints for startup founders naming companies are: 1) short and easy to say & remember 2) available (cheaply) 3) domain (.com vs others) 4) intrinsically meaningful 5) related to the business Some founders compromise on 3 and give more weight to 4 and 5: what I think he's saying is that 1,2,3 are much more important than 4 and 5, to the point that "almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name is a sufficiently good one".

brudgers 11y ago

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 signalling and that's what makes it attractive.

GuiA 11y ago
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.
- nostromo 11y ago
  Airbnb.com actually did come later. It was originally airbedandbreakfast.com.
- brudgers 11y ago
  I take it that the article is aimed at early stage startups and is premised on the idea that choosing a name is worth about 20 minutes of time by a founding team and an experienced investor. I find Airbnb useful because "air" has nothing to do with the current company. Any connotations to air mattresses are probably non-positive at this point and the company's success came after pivoting away from low quality low cost accommodations.

dweekly 11y ago

The good news is that if paulg was testing to see if HN was just an echo-chamber that applauds everything he says even if he gives terrible advice, HN just passed the test with flying colors. :-) Hooray for critical thinking!

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rl3 11y ago

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.

stephengoodwin 11y ago
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/ http://mashable.com/2006/08/25/facebook-profile/ [2] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook/funding-rou...
- CmonDev 11y ago
  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.
jscheel 11y ago
.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.

pbreit 11y ago

"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.

nostromo 11y ago
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.
- corobo 11y ago
  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
  - CmonDev 11y ago
    What about https:\\ though?
    - corobo 11y ago
      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
  - pbreit 11y ago
    .ly is particularly bad because Lybia's maintenance is a real risk.
booruguru 11y ago

ricree 11y ago

thefacebook.com also comes to mind.

RowanH 11y ago

So I started with a non .com address, after watching a client trying to find my homepage with .com my heart sank. The first thing anyone does is write in abc.com or their local country tld (in my case .co.nz). 3 weeks ago I purchased the .com after the original owner let it expire, cost me more than I wanted to pay bet less than I would have paid. I was ecstatic, feels so much better to say abc.com ... !

smoyer 11y ago

I wondered about the tone too ... perhaps we've got a fake-paul-graham in our midst? The thought experiment referenced by [1] is pretty weak. I don't think it's the attachment to a name but more commonly the lack of a better name - and it's especially hard to find a name you like that still has a .com domain available. Having a .com name like stripe indicates a position of strength because (at this point in time), someone paid extra for the privilege.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

paulsutter 11y ago

Exactly - his statistics are missing the important number, how many of those late stage YC startups had purchased the .com after they had raised substantial funding? (ie, could it be the pattern rather than the antipattern)

snowmaker 11y ago
It's a good point, but I think empirically not many. Dropbox is the only one I can think of; they were originally getdropbox.com.

guywithquestion 11y ago

> There's no point in buying an expensive domain name for a company that may not survive past the startup stage. The point (and title) of the essay is "change your name," not "make sure you get the .com."

jccc 11y ago

You're thinking of customers looking at your company. Could it be that pg is actually talking about investors looking at your startup? 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.

bhartzer 11y ago

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).

ghufran_syed 11y ago
Yes, you would think it would be easy to analyze two yc portfolios, one with .com, the other with every other domain, controlling for the time since formation, and compare results, both survival and valuation. That would probably be a lot more meaningful, since the most highly valued companies are almost certainly also the oldest (surviving) companies. However, I do think the point he is making is correct, that there are a number of constraints, but that the optimal decision involves a different weighting of them to that of many founders (my interpretation). I would argue that the constraints for startup founders naming companies are: 1) short and easy to say & remember 2) available (cheaply) 3) domain (.com vs others) 4) intrinsically meaningful 5) related to the business Some founders compromise on 3 and give more weight to 4 and 5: what I think he's saying is that 1,2,3 are much more important than 4 and 5, to the point that "almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name is a sufficiently good one".