
Change Your Name - franze
http://paulgraham.com/name.html
======
booruguru
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.

~~~
pbreit
"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.

~~~
booruguru
Not everybody finances a startup with a mountain of cash. If you're funding
your business with your life savings and credit cards, it's difficult to place
a premium on a domain name while contemplating how long you can pay your
mortgage and put food on the table.

Also, blind optimism is not required for success. And no domain name is an
antidote for a shitty idea that nobody cares about.

~~~
marincounty
You are right about the chitty idea, but decent .com names are dropped every
day. (You need to scout for names every day though, but will become a nasty
habit in no time.) I have found that people, outside of tech, will remember
weird, odd .com domains. I got people to remember physibles(and how to spell
it.), and these were senior citizens. (I guarantee these people have never
been on the mother site either!)

I tried a different domain with a .io domain; and it just wasen't worth it the
effort.(they knew about .net. ,org, but that's it.). There's almost a anger
that comes up when a domain ext. gets to specific, like .photography?

------
ThomPete
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 become big and you can become big without .com name. Whether you can stay
big is another discussion.

Far too often we fool ourselves thinking the wrong things are important.

But just as you most probably can easily find another name because your
current one isn't as great as you might think, you can probably also wait a
little until it becomes an actual issue.

~~~
squiggy22
Couldn't agree more.

Google, Yahoo, Twitter.

Three global brands that aren't dictionary names, and don't have to be. You
don't need a dictionary word .com to survive either.

~~~
tajen
All combinations of 6 letters .com are taken. All 16k words of the dictionary
are taken in English. It wasn't even the case 2 years ago. I wonder whether
pg's impression that if is possible to get a .com is outdated.

~~~
mehrdada
> All combinations of 6 letters .com are taken.

Do you mean this literally for any 6 random characters? It rings true for 4,
but I believe you can easily find a 5 character domain name even now. In fact,
I just registered three five character and a six character domains without
much trouble.

~~~
ghufran_syed
we registered a new 6 letter .com 8 months ago for 20 dollars.

------
rjvir
> 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.

That's not a straight comparison. A better stat would be, what percentage of
the top 20 YC companies had the .com while they were in the active YC batch?

~~~
jlarocco
I think a lot of the comments here are missing the point.

If somebody is already using the <yourname>.com domain, then that name is
already being used for something and creating a new business with the same
name is a bad idea. I guess in the worst case scenario they could file a
lawsuit claiming that you're infringing their trademark.

People can try to justify it by saying everybody just searches anyway, but if
the .com name is already established it'll be a never-ending battle to keep
your name in the top search results.

I mean, nobody would try to use ford.io or yahoo.tk for their startup, doing
the same thing but with a smaller company is an equally bad idea.

~~~
creeble
Yea, I would agree that this is really the key point. If it's a fallow .com
name (that you can't afford), then maybe you'll be lucky with an alternative
TLD. But it's probably a poorer choice than changing your name.

------
sivers
Best advice I've ever seen on naming a business is from this old Seth Godin
gem:

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/06/naming_a_bus...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2003/06/naming_a_busine.html)

I read that in 2003, and have never forgotten the "Lemon Pie" example since.

~~~
rubiquity
I've done some scuba and I don't get the Lemon Pie name in that context. Care
to explain?

~~~
zyxley
It's the whole point of the linked article.

> The LESS it has to do with your category, the better.

~~~
rubiquity
Apparently I'm still really, really bad at this.

~~~
function_seven
:). Just think to yourself what apples have to do with computers and phones.

~~~
Stratoscope
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!)

~~~
rebekah-aimee
That's cute! I didn't know that, thanks.

------
xamuel
>Don't believe a domain is for sale unless the owner has already told you an
asking price.

One of my favorite examples: [http://nissan.com](http://nissan.com)

~~~
electic
or tesla.com

~~~
cpeterso
I've always wondered how long will domain squatters wait before they
negotiate. Surely Tesla Motors has approached tesla.com and apparently been
turned down. Telsa Motors has shown they don't _need_ that domain name to
succeed. So when will the squatter, if ever, cave to Tesla Motors' offer?

~~~
rwallace
Maybe never. The Homo Economicus model of human behavior as optimizing for
expected economic return is only a first approximation. In some cases, human
behavior is more accurately modeled as "Mine! My precious!"

~~~
TeMPOraL
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.

~~~
vacri
Shouldn't that be tesla.edu rather than .com? Their current .org would also be
more appropriate than a .com...

~~~
imrehg
It can't be, unless time travel...

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."

------
ssharp
To anyone naming their company and moving on when the Whois comes back as
registered -- if you're really like the name, you should follow up with
whoever owns it!

I was recently trying to come up with names for a website / app I've been
working on and wanted to finalize a name. The couple of ideas I had were
already registered, including the name I really wanted. I ended up sending out
emails to the contact on record for the domains I was interested in and ended
up buying the exact name I wanted for around $100, which was far less than I
was expecting them to settle for. The name had been registered for 13 years
and nobody who owned it ever did anything with it.

------
nostrademons
"It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name
is a sufficiently good one, and the number of such domains is so large that
you can find plenty that are cheap or even untaken."

So, after reading this advice, I decided I'd actually try it out - it's easy
enough to download a word list and write a script that pings a WHOIS API to
check every single word or word pair. Turns out most such APIs are rate-
limited, so I couldn't get as far as I wanted, but in a random spot check of
30 or so words off the word list, _every single one of them was taken_ (as was
the word-pair that I'm actually using for my startup). Even things as out-
there as absurder.com or tektites.com.

I think it's a good bet that somebody has already done this and registered
every single English word and many word pair in the .com TLD.

The good news is that by shitting all over .com, there will be no more
startups founded with .com domain names. Either companies will buy them as
they get bigger, creating a big transfer of wealth from startups to domain
squatters, or more likely they'll just give up and we'll get more .ly, .io, or
other gTLD domains in the future.

~~~
Riseed
There are still a few one-word domains left in the .com TLD (e.g.
naziisms.com, regularizing.com, castigators.com). I myself registered one
earlier this summer.

[http://www.randomdotcom.com/](http://www.randomdotcom.com/)

~~~
mikeash
I can just see it now.

"Certainly there are some unfortunate connotations with our name, but we feel
that the advantage of having a memorable, one-word dot-com domain name is
worth it." \- Bob Q. Startup, Founder and CEO of Naziisms, Inc.

------
loup-vaillant
> _The problem with not having the .com of your name is that it signals
> weakness._

Note to anyone who disagrees with Paul Graham on this one: he's not talking
about the genuine importance of the domain name. He's talking about its
_perceived_ importance by important people —namely the investor community.
That's the way it is with most status signals: they're not very important by
themselves, but how they influence the people who have power over you _is_
important.

Simply put, if the investor community believes that lacking the relevant .com
name is a sign of weakness, then lacking such a name signals that weakness. As
such, they will be less likely to invest, making your company weaker. It
doesn't matter if they're right in the first place. Their belief is
sufficient.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy: if investors believe you're weak, that belief
can _make_ you weak.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It also suggests that any investor willing not to believe in such signals can
stand to make a lot of money.

I sometimes wonder how much bullshit do people at the top of the foodchain
believe and act on, given the material targeted towards executives (like
magazine articles or presentations of software development methodologies) are
so full of it.

------
flylib
this is telling

Just take a look at all these successful startups which either had a temporary
domain name, or which still have a different domain name to their name:

Square was squareup.com, DropBox was getdropbox.com, Facebook was
thefacebook.com, Instagram was instagr.am, Twitter was twttr.com, Foursquare
was playfoursquare.com, Basecamp is basecamphq.com, Pocket is getpocket.com,
Bitly was/is bit.ly, Delicious was del.icio.us, Freckle is letsfreckle.com

[https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-name-your-
startup](https://blog.bufferapp.com/how-to-name-your-startup)

~~~
jl
I only know the backstory of Dropbox, but I'm certain Drew Houston would tell
you that it was a painfully distracting process to obtain dropbox.com. I
suspect if he could have done it all over again, he would have spent the 30
minutes and few hundred dollars to buy something different. Of course, there
were a lot more options back in 2007.

------
matt1
If you're struggling to find a solid available .com for your startup, I'd
encourage you to check out my free service, Lean Domain Search [1]. The site
asks you for a keyword then pairs your keyword with 5,000 other words and
instantly shows you which are available. For example, if you search for "food"
[2], it will pair it with "free" and check "FreeFood.com", "hub" and check
"FoodHub.com", and so on, and it also allows you to sort the results by length
or popularity of that additional word. With a few searches you should be able
to find a great domain, saving you a lot of time and potentially a lot of
money.

[1] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com](http://www.leandomainsearch.com)

[2]
[http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=food](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/search?q=food)

~~~
danneu
Another favorite tool: [http://impossibility.org](http://impossibility.org)

You feed it a word and it will prefix/suffix it with random
verbs/nouns/adjectives + '.com'.

------
johnhess
100% of the top 20 by valuation have their .com

What proportion had it at their founding or shortly after? Surely a well
funded and successful company had the means and motivation to purchase their
.com

~~~
iiiggglll
A great example: how long did it take Square to get their hands on square.com?
Even now it's just a redirect to squareup.com.

~~~
jnpatel
Another example: Dropbox originally had getdropbox.com, and didn't obtain
dropbox.com until more than 2 years after founding.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_(service)#2007-2011](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dropbox_\(service\)#2007-2011)

~~~
erichurkman
And another: Box launched as box.net, and spent about $1 million to buy
box.com. [0]

For earlier companies, you can buy a lot of engineers, product, and marketing
for $1 million.

[0] [http://www.cnet.com/news/how-box-net-became-box-com-for-
just...](http://www.cnet.com/news/how-box-net-became-box-com-for-just-shy-of-
a-million-bucks/)

------
jim_greco
I have some personal experience with this. Our company is Direct Match. We
used to use the directmatchx.com website. Adding an X on the end isn't that
odd in the trading world, but we would get comments on it all the time.
directmatch.com ended up costing us $8k and well worth the purchase.

For me it came down to, how can I tell customers, recruits, or investors that
I'm going to be this huge impactful startup if I didn't even own the .com of
my name? I couldn't. And now I never get a question about if my company's name
is "Direct Match X" or why there's an X at the end of the domain name.

------
jimminy
_> "Whereas (as Stripe shows) having x.com signals strength even if it has no
relation to what you do."_

I would contest that it has no relation, I could be wrong since I have no
knowledge. That said I always saw it as a relation to the cards themselves and
the magnetic-strip on the back of the card.

~~~
matthiasb
I thought the exact same thing. I was really surprised by this comment coming
from PG.

This Forbes/Quora article explains how the name was chosen:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/02/how-did-
stripe-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/02/how-did-stripe-come-
up-with-its-name/)

------
Animats
The latest "new TLD" thing was a money-making scheme for domain registrars.
Nobody goes to those domains. Even the previous round of TLDs (".museum",
".aero") are not used much; ".aero" has entries for all the major airport
codes, but they're redirects.

Amusingly, even if you have your very own TLD, it doesn't help you. Most
browsers send single-word lookups to a search engine before they send them to
DNS. Try "ca" in a browser. There is a web site at "ca". But to get there,
you'll have to use "ca.", to force a DNS lookup from the root. Nobody knows to
do that unless they're into how DNS works. There are some low-level bugs
embedded in very common C libraries which cause problems with single-word
domains, and they probably won't be fixed.

As for the original poster's advice, the price of the domain you want in .com
is probably more than YCombinator's initial funding. With all of today's
domain hoarding, the ".com" domain usually comes later. Facebook started as
"thefacebook.com".

~~~
Tepix
There is no website at "ca". Did you mean www.ca? That redirects to circa.ca

~~~
Animats
For a clearer example, try "[http://ai."](http://ai.") No redirection; there's
a web site there.

~~~
silverwind
There's no DNS record for "ai.". It's actually the browser prepending www in
search for a site and "www.ai." happens to exist.

~~~
Animats
No, there is a DNS record for "ai":

    
    
        $ nslookup ai
        Server:	127.0.1.1
        Address:	127.0.1.1#53
    
        Non-authoritative answer:
        Name: ai
        Address: 209.59.119.34
    

Rechecking using Google's DNS server:

    
    
        $ nslookup
        > server 8.8.8.8
        Default server: 8.8.8.8
        Address: 8.8.8.8#53
        > ai
        Server:	8.8.8.8
        Address:	8.8.8.8#53
    
        Non-authoritative answer:
        Name: ai
        Address: 209.59.119.34
    

It's pingable:

    
    
        $ ping ai
        PING ai (209.59.119.34) 56(84) bytes of data.
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (209.59.119.34): icmp_seq=1 ttl=46 time=133 ms
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (209.59.119.34): icmp_seq=2 ttl=46 time=132 ms
        64 bytes from offshore.ai (209.59.119.34): icmp_seq=3 ttl=46 time=132 ms
        ...
    

And it speaks HTTP:

    
    
       $ wget ai
       --2015-08-09 14:26:26--  http://ai/
       Resolving ai (ai)... 209.59.119.34
       Connecting to ai (ai)|209.59.119.34|:80... connected.
       HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
       Length: 1257 (1.2K) [text/html]
       Saving to: ‘index.html’
       100%[======================================>] 1,257       --.-K/s   in 0.001s  
       2015-08-09 14:26:26 (842 KB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [1257/1257]
    

It doesn't respond to HTTPS, though. So we don't get to see a cert issued for
a TLD.

A base level TLD site is rare; most TLDs don't have one. But it's supported in
DNS.

------
sandGorgon
Is this signaling as simple as having a .com ?

Or are there other considerations such as SEO uniqueness, easy-to-pronounce
(especially critical for enterprise software), length of url.

Is kuickkoder.com a better domain than quickcoder.io ?

~~~
adventured
It's a sliding scale.

If the .com is kuicksuperkodderdudes.com, then quickcoder.io is superior. Yes
to length of url - if your only option is a .com that is 25 letters long, or a
.io domain that is six letters, then the .io wins.

For most of the cases in which a .com ends up being inferior to a .io, it's
due to a naming exploration failure. You can still easily find good two word
.com addresses today. Unless you've got coder.io or similar.

------
Brushfire
I'm not sure.

I'd rather have a memorable name with a sub-par TLD, than I would have a
confusing / hard to remember name with a .com.

Obviously, the ideal is memorable + .com, but most of those will cost
50-100k+, which is not feasible for seed-stage budget.

Sounds like a series A problem.

~~~
pjscott
According to the article, there's a third option:

> It turns out almost any word or word pair that is not an obviously bad name
> is a sufficiently good one, and the number of such domains is so large that
> you can find plenty that are cheap or even untaken. So make a list and try
> to buy some. That's what Stripe did. (Their search also turned up parse.com,
> which their friends at Parse took.)

------
tptacek
If your numbers are going up and to the right, what does it mean to "signal
weakness" with your name?

~~~
Rauchg
I think the essay is missing crucial elaboration on the central point. That
is, the idea that .com is associated with strength, and lack of .com with
weakness.

~~~
sarciszewski
.com is supreme

.com is love

.com is life

Surrender your soul unto VeriSign

------
pknerd
Evan Williams of Blogger/Twitter fame disagree with it.

[http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-
impo...](http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-
important.html)

------
ikeboy
>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. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest,
one way or another.

How much of that is due to the pressure that he admittedly puts on them to
change names? (And that higher valued ones are likely to be older and have had
this pressure for longer?)

~~~
leroy_masochist
In addition to having had the pressure for longer, they have the money from
having raised multiple rounds of financing.

~~~
ikeboy
Well, yeah, that's what "higher valued ones are likely to be older" implies.

------
gwu78
Hypothetical:

Let's say you are a founder and VC tell you that you need to pay off someone
to get a certain domain name that matches your startup name.

Let's say that someone knows how badly you need this name, and they charge you
an absurd price.[1]

Finally, let's say your startup fails.

Question:

Who gets the domain name?

Considering the money that has been spent to get it, the domain name could be
your startup's most valuable and liquid asset?

[1] "Absurd" because the cost of creating and maintaining a domain name
(editing a zone file and running a DNS server) is quite low. In the early days
of the www, domain names were registered for free. These days some people pay
thousands of dollars for "domain names". Funnily enough, in some cases the
names being "sold" for thousands of dollars are the same ones that were once
given away for free. After one has paid a one-time, exorbitant "price" for a
domain name, then they must pay the annual fee each year to keep the domain
name registered. Usually this fee is under $100. Even the annual fee charged
is far above the cost of creating and maintaining a domain name.

Maybe I should start a new TLD, e.g., ".startup".

I could distribute a copy of root.zone with .startup added.

I could give away a free, preconfigured localhost DNS cache, freeing users
from ISP provided DNS, open resolvers like Google and Cisco (OpenDNS), and
most importantly freeing them from the ICANN racket.

Then I could give away domain names for free, upon a proper showing of need.
No hoarding.

Nah, it would never work. No one wants "alternative" TLD's.

(I wonder how much pure profit .io has made in recent years.)

------
Olivier26
I have a related question. When you have one product, which name is different
from the company's name, is it better to use comapany.com or product.com?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Perhaps both? Company.com can describe the company, show your products, etc.
Product.com could be either a landing page advertising your product or, if
it's a service, perhaps that's the login / primary access for your product.

Just my thoughts.

------
persona
Someone from Google, er, Alphabet didn't read PG's essay:
[https://abc.xyz](https://abc.xyz)

~~~
hoodoof
The timing is exquisite.

------
humanfromearth
We'll buy it when we raise series A. We'll use our hipster version until then.
Thanks.

------
alialkhatib
My sense of Graham's thesis - and I'm reading this really loosely here - is
that he's saying a name's not worth sticking with if obvious metrics suggest
it's a bad choice. The most obvious metric of whether you have a good name or
not is whether it's already been taken, especially by someone else with their
own idea and access to 6 or 10 or 20 dollars per year or whatever the annual
registration fee is. The space for available names (the "name space", if you
will ;) is still large enough that being very stubborn about your startup's
names is probably hazardous, and certainly not a sign of health.

Ignoring the minutiae of the rest of the post (and you can argue I'm really
doing this quite intently), I think I agree with the principle. The name's not
that important. If you're processing financial transactions you could be named
_Pay_ Pal, sure, but you could also be named Stripe or Square or BrainTree[0]
or any of dozens of weird names that make no sense at face value (if these
names are in fact deeply meaningful, I'd be curious to hear the stories...
privately, or on Twitter, not necessarily here/now).

There are reasonable things to get stuck on - if you're committed to being a
B2C product or service, and others are telling you your startup is more of a
B2B idea, then you should wrestle with that. But you shouldn't be wrestling
over the name for such a great deal of time. If Paul Graham tells you to
change your name when you're pitching to him so you can get a .com, you
probably shouldn't (he argues) protest all that much.

I don't think I hold his view as strongly as he does, but I'm neither a
successful VC nor widely respected in Silicon Valley, so his argument about
perception is admittedly a little self-fulfilling and it seems impossible to
reject.

[0] the irony is not lost on me, now that I check, that BrainTree doesn't own
braintree.com - although first glance suggests Square only has squareup.com,
square.com redirects to it; I'd be interested to hear Graham's thoughts on
that, and I think it would signal strongly whether I understood his argument
correctly.

------
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/](http://www.rsaconference.com/)

~~~
jscheel
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.

------
graycat
Not sure the domain name really matters much now. Reasons:

(1) Do users really pay attention to the extension, COM or anything else?

(2) IMHO, now users mostly just click on links while paying little or no
attention to the actual URL or domain name. Of course, the HTML link _element_
( _tag_ ) doesn't have to expose anything about the extension.

So, why do 1+ billion users know or care about COM?

For PG's point about the most successful YC companies use COM, that was then,
when COM didn't cost so much, not now.

------
martin-adams
So it feels like this is a prejudice against startups who aren't using the
.com TLD and I suspect would come more from investors and partners than users.

Maybe the point is that for startups that do get traction and funding, finding
a .com is an inevitable task, one that could save a lot of money/energy by
addressing it in the early stages. That inevitable task may be borne out of
the CEO being tired of answering why they didn't go for a .com.

There has actually been no justification as to why a .com is required. Simply
saying non .com is "marginal" and "it signals weakness" is not a root reason.
All it shows is that some people have a differing opinion on the value of a
.com and not agreeing with 'them' means you're weak.

I personally do feel more comfortable having a good sounding .com, but if I'm
going to do it, it has to be for the right reasons. That I don't think has
been clearly expressed in this essay.

My reasons are that it's a global identity, globally indexable by search
engines, the most common global LTD and therefore the most memorable by end
users, and more stable from a root server point of view. Would I think a
startup with another name is weak? No. I would assume that they understand the
implications of a non-.com TLD.

------
rebekah-aimee
If you're better at coming up with different names, as PG apparently is (he
mentions in the article), then yeah, this would be a net win to just change
your name.

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. ;)

\---

*Although if you were that foolish and then that inflexible, you probably weren't going to get anywhere anyway.

------
Shed
Man, this advice may be tough to hear, (especially for someone like myself who
currently only owns sellervision.net for the app I've been working on for ten
months) but if the 'Godfather Of Startups' PG believes it's vital to have a
dot com, then I'd change the name of my app in a heartbeat. Now I'm just
waiting for YC to take me on to their Fellowship or main intake so I can have
some budget to buy a cracking new name...ha ha!

------
endymi0n
It's a hard choice to make, but especially when building a B2C brand & product
and a large enough SEO channel (where a domain change might hurt your
rankings), I'd definitely stick with PG here.

Lots of good examples and counterexamples in the comments, but if you want
something memorable AND searchable, sometimes it's best to just churn out the
money early on if you know very well what you're doing.

For justwatch.com we paid a small fortune - almost a tenth of the seed
investment - to a shady squatter that just wouldn't give in, but in retrospect
I'd still say it was definitely worth it.

Even in 2015, it still makes you come across a tad more serious, determined
and professional to outsiders and the brand searches and direct openings of
the domain are significant.

When you've built a brand already, squatters will be happy to charge you for
the work you did (which might or might not be a better deal overall than
burning the valuable money in the beginning). YMMV.

If you're shooting for a B2B SAAS business that's more sales or SEM driven, I
guess you're off just fine with an .io or temp domain, but your main focus
should be a clean search neigbourhood then where you have the chance to make
the Google front page eventually.

------
dshankar
PG is recommending you get the X.com, but that doesn't mean you need to pay
$50,000 for X.com on Day 1 of your startup. I see people making this mistake
all the time, buying expensive domains before validating their startup in the
first place.

Think about what Dropbox, Stripe, and AirBnB did!

    
    
      getdropbox.com          -> dropbox.com
      devpayments.com         -> stripe.com
      airbedandbreakfast.com  -> airbnb.com

~~~
alialkhatib
Graham mentions this in a footnote, essentially not to assume such a thing
unless the domain squatter has actually given an ask price. I'll extend on his
argument by pointing out that Nissan and Tesla still don't own their .com
names, and evidently Houston (of Dropbox) went through a lot of pain to get
dropbox.com well after it'd been validated.

If your idea seems worthless, a squatter might figure this is the time to shed
a worthless domain for a few hundred or thousand bucks. If you're at the helm
of a runaway multi-million-dollar success, I imagine the squatter is going to
try and squeeze you for significantly more.

------
throwthrowty
I agree with some other commentators here - I am surprised at this article and
it doesn't appear to be up to PG's usual standards. There are trends I believe
PG is missing.

Today, we consider the .COM to be the true, authentic, creme dela creme.
However, available .COM domains are becoming harder and harder to find, while
there has been an explosion in new TLDs such as .ly, .io, .pro, .guru, .camp,
.rentals, .pub, .management etc.

More and more, we will be seeing startups and large companies with alternative
domain names which they will promote online, in magazines, on TV, etc. It will
be common to see alternative TLDs. I wouldn't be surprised if the next Super
Bowl had a couple ads which included an alternative TLD. Marketing is about
rising above the noise and right now a .PRO is much more noticeable than a
.COM.

Many commenters and PG acknowledge that while .COM names are less valuable
today than they were just a few years ago, they are still _perceived_ to be
very valuable. However, that is less and less true for the younger generation
(which is the trend I believe PG is missing). As they grow up seeing ly, .io,
.pro, .guru, etc., a .COM will have no more inherent authenticity than any
other TLD. Would they really be more attracted to a magazine/tv/online ad with
sportsshoe.com than to sportsshoe.pro? More willing to eat lunch at
goodfood.com over goodfood.pub? More likely to attend bestsummercamp.com over
bestsummer.camp? More likely to download a fun app from puzzle.com over
puzzle.app?

As a potential investor, does spending time and money securing a .COM really
signal someone's dedication and company strength? Should a startup founder
really spend a lot of money to secure a .COM so the company appears stronger?
Seems like a false metric.

------
noobie
Exactly! This why I commended Casey Neistat for waiting to announce his
startup name to the public _until_ he secured the domain name.

------
lsc
I think that changing your name is almost always the wrong thing to do. It's a
sort of 'reputation bankruptcy' that only makes sense when your "credit" has
been damaged beyond repair.

I imagine it would be different if you are primarily concerned about your
reputation with your investors rather than your reputation with your users;
but I think that big companies regularly undervalue the customer familiarity
with their brand.

Sure, when choosing a name, choose a name that has an available .com. Why not?
Before you've invested anything in a name, it is all but valueless, so the
cost to getting a .com is very low.

The value in a name is in how many people recognize and remember it; if nobody
knows your name, it's worthless. If people do remember it, it doesn't matter
how awkward or weird the name is; the value is in that recognition. Once you
have that, don't fuck with it.

------
tedunangst
Actually, paypal owns x.com, not Stripe. :)

~~~
philippnagel
True, but x is a variable in this case.

~~~
sarciszewski
Should've use ^([^\\.]+)\\.com$ for clarity.

~~~
bgaluszka
Or just example.com :)

------
declan
The advice seems like a bit of an anachronism in the mobile world.

Nice, short .com domain names were probably more important for desktop web
browsing -- and I suspect are less relevant to startups that are focused on
the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, third-party app stores, Twitter,
Facebook, etc. for discovery.

~~~
paulpauper
exactly ..people go to the app store. Few ever go to snapchat.com They hear
about it on Facebook, on twitter, the press, through word of mouth

------
phantom_oracle
I read through all the comments, hoping for someone to match the irony of this
Paul Graham article.

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.

------
caf
So having the .com of your name is the equivalent to, in earlier times, banks,
churches and police basing themselves in large, impressive stone buildings.

Of course, signalling architecture has become less important over time, and
probably the same will become true of the domain name equivalent.

------
dis123233
I'm skeptical to see that PG wrote this article. There is no doubt that owning
a snazzy .com domain is good but saying this

    
    
        If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name.
    

doesn't make sense. Sorry.

~~~
brianmurphy
It makes plenty of sense. Try finding the ford modeling agency by typing Ford
into google. (without longtail modifiers) Guess what... ford.com is your first
hit.

------
machbio
I have a doubt about names - sorry to stray away from the topic but it would
help me giving away the domain i have for the future.

I have a domain name which is registered as trademark by one of the
organizations, can the organization claim the domain name since they own the
trademark ?

~~~
astrong
Did you register the domain name before their trademark ? There are several
ways under the Uniform Domain Resolution Policy whereby they can come after
the domain name. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-
Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Domain-Name_Dispute-
Resolution_Policy)

To answer the other question posted to your question. Registering a trademark
in an attempt to take a domain name from someone else is know as Reverse
Domain Name Hijacking
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_domain_hijacking)

~~~
machbio
thank you that really helped learn more about the topic..

------
Mz
This makes me so tempted to write up the name history of BigCo where I used to
work. I have searched before and cannot find a good write up on line. But it
would basically require me to out myself because much of what I know is from
having worked there for over five years. I can't find online sources with some
of this information. But, previously, I have just stated I worked at BigCo and
not named the company.

I was actually considering doing such a write up a day or two ago. So it
really hits a nerve to see this here today.

Short version of the story: Even really big, wildly successful companies do
name changes and most folks founding a company are waaaay over-attached to
whatever they first decided to name their baby.

------
jxm262
After reading this, I'm a bit perplexed and sad at the same time. My current
strategy was to not use a .com since it was up for sale more than I'm willing
to pay. Instead, I decided to go with something similar but different and
hopefully change it once the idea/company got traction.

Whether or not I agree with this, PG is a source of authority, which makes me
think about my current strategy. Sort of sucks, do I listen to my gut and what
many others here are saying, or fork over the money into a domain that could
be used for other areas in the business?

I'm going with option#1 btw, just sucks to hear this from someone I respect,
because it makes me believe it's true.

~~~
matco11
Anybody remembers getdropbox.com before dropbox.com?! :-) Or...
thefacebook.com before facebook.com?!

Name, logo, domain name, are all important things, and - like for all things -
their importance changes over time. You go in a circle of executing to "good
enough" for the stage you are at (keeping in mind that you do not want to
create problems for yourself in the future with the choices you make today)
and then move on to the next item on the execution priority list.

If you wait to have the perfect logo before launching, you will never
launch... Then 6 or 12 months later you might find yourself analyzing the
perfect palette of Pantone colors to go with your brand...

------
rsardeha
I couldn't agree more. We see more and more startups end up with the wrong
name for their business. That's why we created and launched the "Unused
Domains" index a couple of weeks ago.

We index all(+50M so far) domains that are unused and give you access to them
here: undeveloped.com/search

At least now you know which options you have and which alternatives are out
there. The search and acquisition of the right name for your startup doesn't
have to be that painful anymore.

PS: we help/advice/consult startups for free with finding and picking the
right name in the right extension. So feel free to reach out to us if you're
struggling with your name.

------
elwell
My startup's name is Purple. This is what we have to deal with :
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple.com)

~~~
ESBoston
Didn't you know that before you named your company?

------
dave1619
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).

~~~
starshadowx2
Try sites like these:

* Namium - [http://www.naminum.com](http://www.naminum.com)

* The Name App - [http://thenameapp.com](http://thenameapp.com)

* Wordoid - [http://wordoid.com/](http://wordoid.com/)

There are some more sites like these but more focused on domain names, all
from here - [https://blog.growth.supply/300-awesome-free-
things-e07b3cd5f...](https://blog.growth.supply/300-awesome-free-
things-e07b3cd5fd5b)

------
snake117
Nowadays, it seems that if your startup is primarily a web application, then
choosing the right domain is a little more important than if you make an app
like Snapchat. Is there really a big difference if you type in "snapchat.com"
vs "snapchatapp.com"?

However, if you can avoid more obscure and complicated URLs, then by all means
do it. I think its best practice to have something straight forward so the
user doesn't have to search first to come on your site. You never know what
kind of distraction can present itself in those few seconds leading a user
away from your site.

------
rsp1984
There is another problem with Paul's suggestion, which is that it only really
works for very young startups that don't have many customers or other business
relationships yet.

Once you sell product and have established partnerships changing your name
just doesn't make sense any longer and becomes a measure of last resort, e.g.
if your brand is so damaged that continuing business under the old name
becomes very complicated. But then again, if you're in that kind of a
situation you probably have a lot more things to care about which are at least
as important.

------
taytus
We started working in our startup one week ago. I'm signaling weakness because
I don't want to spend 5 grands in a .com domain? This post is so confusing.

~~~
joeyaiello
No, you're signaling weakness because you don't change the name to something
that doesn't cost 5 grand to get the .com for.

That's what the article says at least.

------
baristaGeek
If you search for a .com domain and it's already taken, you're not being
creative enough. You're looking where someone has already looked in the world
of ideas, you're not expanding the world of ideas.

Whereas if you force yourself to buy an untaken .com domain, you are pushing
yourself to think creatively. You might even get so lucky to come up with a
fantastic name such as Airbnb or Zenefits.

------
tzury
PG

    
    
        a) Thanks for writing new posts. I have been missing your
           writings for quite long.
    
        b) IIRC, Dropbox started as getdropbox.com, just later on,
           when money "was not an issue", they purchased the more 
           expensive one - dropbox.com. 
           
           same applies to uber.com, square (which started as 
           squareapp.com) and many others.

~~~
clamprecht
Best case I can think of is facebook, who started with "thefacebook.com", and
later bought facebook.com. Also, didn't AirBNB start with
airbedandbreakfast.com? (which now redirects to airbnb.com)

------
paulpauper
Yea, this article would have been applicable in 1998, but not so much today.
Even domain names are becoming antiquated, with everything moving to apps and
cloud. The most popular blogs I read are still hosted on blogspot and
wordpress...Having a good domain won't save your business if the execution and
other aspects are flawed.

------
Freebo
This can help if you're looking:

[http://www.dopename.com](http://www.dopename.com)

New names coming soon

------
adamzerner
> How do you find them? One answer is the default way to solve problems you're
> bad at: find someone else who can think of names.

Imagine a website where startups could describe what they do and users could
propose and vote on ideas for names. It's been on my list of potentially
decent project ideas.

~~~
ikeboy
Already done, see [http://www.pickydomains.com/](http://www.pickydomains.com/)

~~~
jotm
Oh, wow, that's a throwback to the past! I remember when Dmitry Davydov first
announced it, kinda surprised that it's still around :-)

------
staunch
Buying a credible domain like stripe.com usually requires funding. Should
bootstrappers be stripepay.com?

------
abalashov
The best way to think of names, in an environment where nearly every
intelligible verbal particle is trademarked, copyrighted, or domain-squatted,
is unquestionably Erlich-style:

[https://youtu.be/hsr-QfgFRh8](https://youtu.be/hsr-QfgFRh8)

------
drchiu
I wonder, however, if one wanted to convey a sense of underdog or grass roots
if it's better to choose a non dot-com domain?

For example, sometimes the .com domain just seems too corporate sounding --
but your audience is not. Isn't it more strategic to get a newer extension?

------
gpvos
Pretty ironic that hours after posting this, Google announced it split up
under a new umbrella company called Alphabet, _and it doesn 't own
alphabet.com ._

Although I guess Google is above the rules that startups have to play by.
_Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi._

------
nodesocket
I think there should a distinction made between consumer startups and b2b.

If you are a database or developer tools company, .io actually makes more
sense. .io is the standard, and it has become de facto.

However, if your startup is a food rating service, or Uber for X, you gotta
have the .com.

------
devanti
Is there a way to start a name consultancy?

I'm fairly good at coming up with names, and wouldn't mind offering my
services, but I'm not sure how to secure my idea before selling it.

I would also be open to testing my skills for anyone looking for a company
name.

~~~
cjbarber
You could do an Offer HN I'll help you come up with a name?

The other thing to do would be just to have a gentleman's agreement where they
sign something (TBH I wouldn't worry with a legal contract initially, if you
work with honest customers the gentleman's agreement is OK, and worst case if
it was a big deal you could take to court and likely win)

So the agreement would be something like: I'll come up with a name for you, I
won't make you pay upfront, but if I come up with one you like and you haven't
already thought of it [make them list all the ones they are currently
considering upfront], then you'll pay me $500. Reply to this email with your
full name if you agree. And then just make sure you follow them on twitter and
connect on linkedin or such so that they feel that you would notice if they
screwed you over, but like I say I think most people are nice and worrying
about getting screwed over is likely premature optimization :-)

------
telecuda
If Whois returns a private registration and the site doesn't provide contact
information, try the Wayback Machine
[http://archive.org/web/](http://archive.org/web/)

------
vorg
Why should Coke own "coke.com" when they could own ".coke" one day?

------
beau
.com is dominant. Even domai.nr changed their name to domainr.com. Over 90% of
users at [https://instantdomainsearch.com/](https://instantdomainsearch.com/)
buy .com names.

------
matobago
Much of the comments mention that you should buy the .com until your startup
is well funded (stronger). And that exactly the whole point of this post is
make it stronger since the beginning.

------
BinaryIdiot
I couldn't disagree more with this article and am kinda surprised Paul wrote
about this.

Domain names are transitioning into becoming useless. When you open any web
browser or mobile phone and go to look for a company it does a search. The
most relevant results come back at the top. This type of trend, as we abstract
away from using TLDs, is only going to continue. Owning a .com isn't nearly as
meaningful today as it was 5 years ago.

What I think will happen is ICANN will continue adding more, useless TLDs as
quick cash grabs and the next 10 years you're going to see people stop
referring to their domain name at all. I mean, why would you? You're Uber, you
look for "Uber" in the app stores, you open your browser and type in "Uber".
All of these take you exactly where you need to go.

> 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. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of
> the rest, one way or another.

Correlation is not necessarily causation; this statistic should be compared
with general domain name availability with the time periods mentioned because
an incredible amount are purchased every year making it impossible to even
compare in this way.

~~~
natch
You completely ignored PG's argument about it signaling weakness. This is one
of those perception versus reality things, where people's perceptions (those
who are judging a startup) ARE the reality, whether those perceptions are
theoretically refutable or not.

In other words, let's say you're right, and owning the .com domain name is
becoming less meaningful (an argument that PG already addressed, by the way).
That doesn't mean that .com domains are becoming significantly less meaningful
to people's perceptions. And perceptions matter, when going after customers,
funders, employees, business partners, etc.

I wouldn't say that the perception that having the .com domain name is
important is an incorrect one. Maybe you would disagree and say it is an
incorrect perception. But even if you think the perception is incorrect, the
perception is still part of the reality that the startup lives in.

This classic "perception IS reality" pattern is something that a lot of people
miss.

~~~
ThomPete
signaling weakness is an important factor for a fraction of companies for most
others that is the very least of their worries.

PG talks from a perspective that does not apply to most companies in this
world.

Again if you get a .com name that is great. But whether it's worth the effort
of finding one it if you don't have it already is another discussion all
together.

~~~
chaostheory
> But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it
> already is another discussion all together.

Whether or not you agree with pg, finding a decent .com is pretty cheap in
terms of time and money when you have free domain name checking services that
give you available .com variants of desired keywords. Even though I know this,
I'm still always surprised when I see the 2-3 syllable .com domain names that
I wanted, being available without auction or private seller inquiries.

~~~
ThomPete
Thats just not true. It's not some universal law you can apply. You have to
take into considering the amount of time and what kind of name you have access
to.

~~~
chaostheory
> You have to take into considering the amount of time and what kind of name
> you have access to.

I'm not sure I understand. Free name checking services do take into account
what names are available to you and they give you variants of your desired
keywords. Results are returned in seconds. It takes a few hours at most to go
through a bunch of keywords.

------
moubarak
Well bad names which own their .com are far more worse. bvckup2.com?
seriously? too bad for a great product. There are other examples out there it
baffles me.

------
nginx404
"Nearly all your attachment to it comes from it being attached to
you".Interesting.Very interesting as this is truth in the real sense.

------
seasoup
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 article on, he's pretty sure he's right and
it's important.

~~~
tsomctl
You might want to read up on this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority)

~~~
seasoup
But I one disagreeing with him is using logic or proof, they're throwing out a
few counter examples to "prove" their intuition and disregarding someone with
enough experience to have an actual informed intuition about the topic. Given
the choice on an issue you are not that informed on will you trust your own
intuition or one of the leading experts in the field?

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.

------
gojomo
I like how esoterically, the footnotes imply you may want to consider changing
your nationality or religion, as well.

------
Disruptive_Dave
Would have loved to see any form of actual experience to back up the odd claim
he makes (which, coincidentally, stinks of low confidence, to me at least).
Any surveys out there or even anecdotal evidence re: a consumer's perception
of your company as "weak" sans-.com??

------
arihant
> _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. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of
> the rest, one way or another._

I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that landscape has changed in
past 8 years and top 20 YC companies are all at least a few years (5-ish?)
old. I appreciate the rest of the sentiment of the post, but I don't think the
numbers he chose to share clearly support the assertions. Correlation isn't
causation.

~~~
hyperpallium
yes, didn't dropbox used to be trydropbox.com? And, tho non-YC, delicious.com
was del.icio.us (or something). Successful companies can buy their domain.

But I agree with pg; a startup by any other name would succeed as sweet, so
why not choose one you can get.

~~~
ploxiln
del.icio.us is an awesome domain. I'd be inclined to believe someone came up
with the domain before the name.

~~~
eli
I couldn't always remember where the dots went. Not a great property for a
domain name.

~~~
jotm
Which is why I had it on the bookmarks bar. A single bookmark to all of my
bookmarks :-). I haven't used them in a long time, what are they up to these
days?

------
danielrhodes
These days an alternative is to just not have a (public) domain at all.

------
Zigurd
This is why "Zigurd" is a very advantageous name.

------
iamwil
I remember hearing a couple stories about Octopop.

------
pbreit
And if you're Elon Musk you get x.com.

------
erikpukinskis
Gross. What if I don't want to signal strength? What if I don't want every
aspect of my business to be a dick wagging contest?

------
bra-ket
this is all kind of secondary

------
daodedickinson
steam.com is NOT for sale.

------
linky123
If you don't have .com, it looks lame, with few exceptions. Also domains that
are impossible to spell correctly if you just hear the name.

------
curiousjorge
majority of people just enter the name in their address bar and click the
search result. domain name is not as important as it was.

------
DenisM
At the time of my comment, there are dozens of comments disagreeing with Paul
and only 2 agreeing.

And this goes to show you - most people will not accept an advice from someone
who knows better. If a conclusion must be reached, it must be reached under
your own power, and at your own speed. This just can't be helped, it seems. Or
can it?

~~~
rwallace
That is one possible conclusion.

Another possible conclusion, however, is that the world has changed in the
years since last time Paul was actually doing this, and people with current
experience are pointing out that his advice in this case is actually out of
date.

~~~
DenisM
Paul is drawing his conclusion from seeing through hundreds of startups and
still being involved in YC to this day. His opponents draw their conclusion
mostly from seeing through zero startups, that is being in the middle of their
first. Then a much smaller number of people have between 1 and 3. This vast
discrepancy in experience is strike one.

Strike two is that pretty much everyone has an unhealthy attachments both to
their own creations and to their own "identity". It gets even worse when the
two are combined. Even Paul himself, one of few wise men of our times, gets
very defensive when _his_ creations are under fire. It's just how people are.
Yet in this case Paul is a more objective observer, he doesn't have a stake in
the game of naming _your_ company.

The insidious part of strike two is that it's nearly impossible to recognize
while you're in the grip of it. It's like being drunk - most people who are
severely drunk think they are "ok to drive". They aren't.

Accepting advice takes one of the two: either blind deference to authority, or
wisdom to recognize the limits of your own understanding and selective
deference to those who could know better. Not perfect, mind you, just better.
Alas, wisdom is hard to come by, and blind deference has significant
downsides. And so it goes. Most useful advice goes unheeded.

