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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> Great names are made not found.

> But for most people just like their logo it's it's not that important until you become big

Exactly this. If you look at the most successful companies in all sectors out there, most of them have logos that range from plain to just ugly, and many of them feel like they were initially created as a formatted company name on top of some document, back when the company's secretary first discovered Microsoft Word.

The more I see things and think about them, the more I believe that this whole talk of logos being "very important since it's what your customer looks at all the time" is a big scam perpetuated by graphics designers, because they make (a lot of) money on you believing you need the slick, $expensive new brand image.

Check out this short video by a well known graphic designer (Michael Beirut). He explicitly talks about how logos are inherently NOT important and are overemphasized in the world. Rather it is the consistent actions of a company that give a logo meaning and builds a "brand": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jw-Q7r-ng

That's exactly how I see it. Your logo has an important function - of an anchor. It's a symbol that can bring up all the feelings and memories people have associated with your operation. But it isn't magic, it has no power if people's feelings aren't there.

Exactly. It's the same reason there is no such thing as branding per se. Everything you do is branding. From your packaging to your customer service to your employees.

> The more I see things and think about them, the more I believe that this whole talk of logos being "very important since it's what your customer looks at all the time" is a big scam perpetuated by graphics designers, because they make (a lot of) money on you believing you need the slick, $expensive new brand image.

Patio11 has actually A/B tested two different logos. His conclusion was that "Your logo could potentially add or subtract 10% from enterprise value"[0].

[0] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/08/04/does-your-product-logo-a...

> "Your logo could potentially add or subtract 10% from enterprise value"[0].

...for a very small enterprise with 0 previous brand recognition, choosing logos at random.

BCC site's main goal is to not look like a scam, so people understand it's a legitimate product, not a "steal $10 and disappear" site. That's important, but not as important if your product is already more substantial and credible than "pictures you could download free from the internet, for a small price."

I'm reminded of Mr Plow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OElW2BrB6So

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTY5EKN6bzM

The new logo is bad because it doesn't communicate what the product is.

I wont even get into the amount of issues with testing a logo via A/B testing. Patios A/B test is anecdotal not by any metrics statistical.

I don't think the logo is important but that's a different topic. If you at most successful companies in all sectors out there, they have their .com.

Yes but thats exactly the wrong point to make. The question is whether the name made them big or whether they got a good namer after they had success.

For entrepreneurs, the domains name should be the least concern.

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.

Twitter and Yahoo are dictionary words, and Google is just a misspelling (intentional or accidental, it's unclear) of a dictionary word.

All three did own their .com domain names from the very beginning.

> All three did own their .com domain names from the very beginning.

Twitter did not; it started out as twttr: http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/15/is-twttr-interesting/

'Yahoo' and 'twitter' actually are words that existed in the dictionary before the respective companies.

All companies that have their .com, and have had since the beginning as far as I know.

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.

> 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.

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

I agree - he even signals to that by noting that only 2/3 of the current batch owns their dot com. I predict this number will go down for the next batch, and the next one, and ...

I found an available 6 letter domain name ( http://TapRun.com ) about a year and a half ago. I've found others since then...

this is nonsense. I registered normally a good speakable 5 letter .com domain just 3 weeks ago.

It's hard to find an available .com. But that doesn't mean you can't get one: https://instantdomainsearch.com/aftermarket/

BoxGal.com is currently available. I'm sure others are as well.

This sounds implausible to me. I have acquired a couple five letter domains in the past year or three. They kind of suck and are hard to pronounce but they exist.

Sorry but that's complete nonsense. That's over 2.5 billion domains. You probably mean all 6 letter English dictionary words -- which might be true.

And Twitter started as twttr, if I recall.

And Facebook as thefacebook.com

Since pretty much every huge, successful company has their .com, I suppose the question is when they acquired it and the compensation.

Little details are always important as long as they don't require big effort.

Agree. Problem is changing your name, to most people, is a big effort :)

and even when you stay big, your brand name is big enough that your domain doesn't matter (e.g., teslamotors.com)

Correct.I am trying to think of one instance where someone would refrain from working with Tesla, buying from them, or doing any sort of business with them because: Teslamotors instead of Tesla.

It’s also strange to me since more then once when discussing startup naming I’ve quoted this earlier article Paul wrote where he makes nearly the opposite argument: http://aux.messymatters.com/pgnames.html

I think it's still relevant. That was before most of the TLD expansion so .com was just about the only option. I the gist of the article is that you have a lot of options in naming and many/most of them will be fine (as long as you get the .com).

I guess to me the main point of the new article seemed to be that the prestige and “signaling of strength” associated with the .com is what makes it important, while the older article argues having a traditionally prestigious name can actually be a negative, in signaling that maybe the founders “have more money then brains”. (I understand he's referring here to names that are obviously bought from squatters, but still the main point seems to be don't worry if a name fits into the traditional mold or seems 'prestigious' as long as its unique, memorable and ideally communicates something about your business. I'd also never expect a newer startup to be able to find "stripe.com" or "parse.com" without paying significantly for them today.)

I’d also say the proliferation of new TLD domains has made them more, not less acceptable for new companies, especially ones like .io and .ly that have come to be pretty closely associated with the startups in general. Like you say, in 2006 nearly everything still was .com so a non .com might have stood out more as a negative, and even then pg says he still had no problems with del.icio.us

Also the last section stood out for me as a contrast with the title of this one:

"Whatever name you choose, be careful. Names stick. You need a way to refer to things, and whatever you call something rapidly becomes its name."

Great names are made not found.

If you didn't know Tide was a brand of laundry detergent, what would it mean to you?

There are different strategies and it certainly can be an advantage if you have a single word .com domain that encompasses a core value or offering.

A lot of things can be advantageous. But lets keep in mind that 99.99% of all companies are not going to be unicorns with budgets to buy +100K domain names anytime soon.

That doesn't mean they can't become a hugely successful company.

My general point is just that you shouldn't prematurely optimize because you end up spending a lot of time on it. Unless you stumble on a great name that you can afford it's most of the times simply not worth the effort.

How many jokes have been told about 1990s-era dot-coms spending $200k on domain names and then going under 6 months later.

Color.com :)

Definitely, prioritizing is important - $100k on development will bring your startup much further along and having a great domain may be an artificial crutch.

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