
Ask HN: How much should a startup pay for a .com? - rajacombinator
How much should a startup be willing to pay for a .com address? I&#x27;m currently bootstrapping a project that&#x27;s entering private beta. The domain I&#x27;d like to get is currently owned by a &quot;domainer&quot; who is asking for way more than I&#x27;d like to pay.<p>I&#x27;m thinking &lt;$1000 is reasonable for a pretty good domain that has no natural traffic flow. (think snapchat.com in 2010.) Am I way out of line? Should I be willing to pay more? If it matters, the domain I&#x27;m seeking has no existing trademarks.
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patio11
AppointmentReminder.com wanted $30k. AppointmentReminder.org was available for
$8.95. You'll note that I'm still #1 on Google due to the exact match bonus,
so mission accomplished plus $29,991.05 in my pocket. This is still an
attractive option if you're doing something where brandability isn't all that
important.

If you're going for something a bit more brandable, there are plenty of
domains in the sub-$2k range which are at least as good as, say, Dropbox,
Kabbage, Snapchat, etc etc, and probably many more which are not obviously
attractive names but won't hurt your company at all (Twilio, Airbnb, etc).

There's also a virtually infinite number of NAMEapp, getNAME, NAMEnow, etc etc
available on any TLD you care to name available for the registration fee. Many
startups start that way.

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selmnoo
Concerning .org tld, here's a relevant wiki paste: "It was one of the original
domains established in 1985 and operated by the Public Interest Registry since
1988. The domain extension was originally created for non-profits, but this
designation no longer exists and today it is commonly used by schools, open-
source projects, and communities as well as by for-profit entities, some of
which may use the suffix in an attempt to misleadingly suggest their non-
profit status"

I bring this up because indeed .org tld is used generally for non-profits, or
the non-profit/philanthropic arms of for-profit companies (google.org, etc.),
so branding .org tld for your little startup would seem like a misguided
decision, and may possibly impair the professional look one is going for. I
know you've just said that this is an attractive option where brandability
isn't important, but I'm hoping you can discuss this just a little bit more.
Is using .org for one's startup a total no-no or is there some conceivable
scenario in which it would actually work out?

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patio11
If wiki articles start purchasing SaaS I will begin to care what they say, but
office managers purchase SaaS quite routinely, and empirically they don't
care. If you doubt this, you're welcome to chat up the office manager at e.g.
your dentist. Ask them to a) name a TLD, b) name three common TLDs, and c)
explain the difference between those TLDs.

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chatmasta
But your first point stands: you can only use the .org because you willingly
forego brand building. If you want to build your brand, you need the .com,
because branding must agree with consensus, which is that powerful brands own
the .com. I argue this is common fact.

So if you are not buying the .com, you are choosing not to build the
AppointmentReminder brand. Why? Surely, more markets exist for you to sell to.
The recognizability of a brand bridges market segments. Since every market
segment communicates in its own language (because of varying contexts), they
need standard identifiers of solutions to problems, which a brand provides.
With a solid brand, you control a channel of communication between markets.
Thus, you naturally expose the company to new markets.

There is nothing stopping you from growing AppointmentReminder 10x, at least.
The markets exist for you to capture. So why don't you try to do capture them?
The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials
first).

~~~
tptacek
Did you actually try his experiment? You should. Find someone who might
actually buy an appointment reminder service --- the person who manages the
calendar for a professional services company --- and ask them the difference
between .COM and .ORG.

Your "common fact" is "common" on message boards. You have message board
blindness, and it's begging you in this instance to spend $30,000 on something
that would potentially not improve sales at all. That's a disastrous decision
for an early stage startup.

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interstitial
Just remember that dropbox started out as getdropbox.com, istock.com started
out as istockphoto.com. As long as you are free and clear on the trademark,
get something close. Also technical start-ups are having great luck with .io

~~~
rajacombinator
Yea ... I just read some rumors of how Dropbox paid several hundred thousand
to get their domain. That would make me sick...!

Non-technical startup in this case, consumer facing.

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trafficlight
But they didn't buy the domain until the company was over a year old. And
they've had $250 million in financing over the years.

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thejerz
If you can get it at a steal, take it. Otherwise, a "perfect" domain is
something to be purchased at a much later stage (e.g., Series B). Startups are
all about priorities -- where to best spend your time and your cash -- and
this is a perfect example of that.

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tmikaeld
As soon as the startup get any press, all domains will be gone and kept at
ransom for you to cash out for insane amounts.

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r0h1n
If a startup has managed to grow successfully and raise a Series B, as the
parent says, then I wager they can continue operating with their own domain.
There's no reason why they cannot continue ignoring the .com (and the
"ransom") and focus on growing their real business.

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damian2000
Personally I wouldn't pay for an expensive domain at the stage of being
bootstrapped ... if the project is good, it shouldn't matter much what the
name is?

~~~
philip1209
Along these lines - I would find spending a lot of money on a domain a red
flag as an investor

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PhasmaFelis
"Domainer"? When did we stop calling them "scalpers"? There's no reason to
give purely parasitic middlemen the benefit of a euphemism.

~~~
rajacombinator
Well there's a reason I put quotes around it.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Fair enough.

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jdross
Another option is to rent with an option to purchase.

If they want $5000, you can say, "I'll give you $100 in year 1, $1000 in year
2, and purchase it for $10,000 in year 3"

If the business is successful, $10,000 hopefully will not matter. If it isn't,
you don't have to pay and the owner keeps the domain.

~~~
rajacombinator
I would be happy to go with that option, but I doubt the current owner will be
reasonable about negotiating. (They seem to be a large scale professional
domainer.)

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Kluny
If you haven't sold anything yet, $15. If you have and it looks like you're
going to make money this year, $1000.

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birken
Just for an anecdote that somewhat differs with the popular sentiment here:
Thumbtack paid 5-figures for the domain (thumbtack.com) on seed funding long
before any traction.

There is no way to prove whether or not we would have been as successful with
a random domain, but I think in the early days it helped make us seem more
established to the non-tech savvy user (which was and still is the majority of
the users) than we were at the time. I think if your users are more tech savvy
it doesn't matter as much, but for "consumer brand" types of things, I think
if your name is good, and your name and domain name match, that will be
noticed and will make you appear more reputable.

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rpedela
Use whatever money you are willing to spend on a domain on the company
instead. Given the current stage of the company, I strongly recommend the
mindset of "anything greater than $0 is expensive". That mindset has kept me
(I am also bootstrapping) from spending money on things that are not important
in the short-term.

If you absolutely must get your desired .com domain, I would recommend finding
a new name for the company that has an available .com. You might even find
that you like the new name better.

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jlgaddis
The most you should pay is the $10 or so to get the same domain name but with
a different TLD.

Once you're up and running and generating revenue, then you can worry about
paying for the .com.

(The price that the "domainer" is asking isn't going to come down. It comes
him practically nothing (<$10/year) to hold onto the domain name -- which
he'll definitely do now that he knows someone is interested -- since he is
your only option if you really want it.)

~~~
astrofinch
I'd expect the "domainer" to increase his asking price if the different-TLD
site seems to be doing well.

~~~
rajacombinator
yea this is why I'm not eager to get working on a different TLD. I don't want
to inflate my own market. Apparently Dropbox trademarked their name and filed
a complaint against the dropbox.com owner so I could conceivably pursue that
route but it's somewhat shady.

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diminish
your total domain related costs including. com must not exceed 50K per year
once you are big, 10000 per year once you got a 7 figure investment and 1000
when you get traction and 100 when you dont have customers, all in usd.

~~~
rpedela
Can you explain? I don't understand. Why those numbers? Why not just $10/year
regardless of company size? Or ($10 * numDomains) per year regardless of
company size?

~~~
diminish
I just summarized my previous search on the same topic, from multiple
resources. Fred Wilson of USV has an article on avc.com on this matter too. I
tried to relate the investment into different parts of a startup. Main idea is
to start slow, as you are more sure, go on to buy more. So if you don't yet
have customers don't invest crazy sums.

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taunonn
There are plenty of decent domain names available for startups that you can
registr for $10. If you can't think of a good name, try using a domain name
generator like www.namestation.com

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staunch
I agree. I think $1000 is perfectly reasonable in almost any serious project,
but anything higher is only rarely worthwhile.

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prawn
Unless you have money coming in or are especially committed, either keep
brainstorming or add a prefix/suffix to your name to find something available
for $10. You can still see success this way and it doesn't encourage the
domainer.

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chrismcb
It depends on whether you already have an established brand and name. If you
don't then find a name that hasn't been taken. Unless it is THE PERFECT NAME,
it isn't worth more than your standard new name.

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michaelkavanagh
When vine ran up against a similar issue they registered the .co tld and it
hasn't held them back. Plus, .co's are selling for around $10 still for decent
names. This might be a good area to look at.

~~~
rajacombinator
Thanks I was not aware they used .co

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27182818284
Given that Facebook used to be thefacebook and Dropbox used to be getdropbox,
I think you should go with the cheap option.

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ceekay
$0. If you become famous, people won't have trouble remembering any name you
come up with.

