Your name is fine
blog.standupti.me
blog.standupti.me
(Yes, there are always exceptions - like angel.co - and hacks like getdropbox.com also work).
But perhaps the tradeoff of retaining your "perfect" .io domain is not worth the extra friction of convincing influencers that you are credible company, when an hour creative brainstorming session for a .com might solve the problem?
Sure, if you have a hockey stick growth chart growing revenue 100% month over month, it doesn't matter, but it's rare that most startups have that right out of the gate. So why add to your burden?
For instance, the author's own web site is standupti.me. It's actually something I might consider trying out. But it comes across as someone's side project by a solo developer, not a company. As a potential customer, I might still get around to trying it out at some point in time, but I do have a slight negative connotation in that it might just disappear tomorrow. It would be 1000x worse for a larger enterprise customer.
However, from a usefulness & utility standpoint, do you care that when customers type the company's name in to their browser, they end up on their site? Do you care if first contact e-mails, etc. don't get delivered to the business? Even if you don't care about those things, don't you think other people might?
If I tell my friend "Uber is awesome", their first step in using it will likely be heading to "uber.com". If it's not there, they might just end up forgetting about the recommendation. Existing customers would still be happy, but the business itself will have unnecessary trouble in being discovered.
Even if it's only 10% of people (it's probably a lot higher) who go to uber.com, that is a big problem for a business that's trying to grow as fast as possible.
The main questions should be: "How can people successfully close a viral loop?" And "Wh would people come back?"
"Why would people come back?" is usually correlated with recruiting awesome co-founders, talented employees, great mentors, influencers to talk it up, and top tier investors. Then, the company has the time and resources to discover the best answer to that question.
Maybe once in a decade there's something like Facebook, which just explodes out of the gate instantly (and just buys the better .com later). But I wouldn't want to bet my company on that... especially when I can just spend an hour and brainstorm a .com to address the problem. Anything less is a failure of creativity.
I remember writing about it four years ago: http://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2011/03/phase-1-successful/
Depending on your business, you may be doing offline marketting. Flyers, cards, etc... you really don't want people to have to type in things like http://www.foo-bar-baz-biz.com/pub/8588277760 to get what you want them to see... http://goto.biz.io/ (with a form taking the number) is much better UX.
It always made me laugh when I'd see a URL more than about 15 characters beyond the http:// because people just aren't likely to do that. I'd say, if your primary url for an offline marketing drive will be more than 12-15 characters (not including prot), find a shorter name.
I also have the skill of naming companies and there are a lot of good names still left our there, even on .com. And I think a name should be 8 characters or less. If anyone needs help just send me a message. :)
I've learned, like you alluded to, nearly everyone associates the internet with .com. Will we ever get past that point? I don't know. As some other comments mention, .co is not the new .com, but .co.com is.
Made me chuckle.
I gave up. Nobody understood it. They would try to add .com at the end. Every time.
http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-The-Battle-Your-Mind/dp/00...
One of the interesting ideas the author postulates is, to put it in CS terms, that people's minds work like a dictionary. Each key associates with one and only one value. And, in this case, the key is a concept, need, category, etc.
If you ask someone in the US to name a plumber they'll probably answer "RotoRooter" without hesitation. Fast food? "McDonalds". Rental car? "Enterprise". Fast car? "Corvette".
The values side of the relationship isn't necessarily uniform across a population but some keys have more uniformity than others (Fast Food).
Once a person makes that key:value association it is really, really hard to break it, if not impossible. Politics tends to work that way too.
In the case of the web, the vast majority of people make the following key:value pair association:
"internet":".com"
And that's the end of the story.
Who is "attached" to what here? Why should I be attached to having a .com domain name? On the other hand, why should I be attached to the name I gave my business? If neither is critical to the success of the business, which is better? Sticking with a name that doesn't matter even though I can't have the .com domain? Or what if I could have both, but decided not to. It seems frivolous to say you must have .com domain, but also seems frivolous to say I need to stick with the name of my company.
Also if a .com is available probably means you'll be able to get more marketing accomplished by name recognition alone. When you talk about a company you don't say "I heard about this new company Company.com". Generally when I hear people talk about a company they refer to it as the name of the company not by the domain name. So what's the first thing people think when they want to learn more? "Companyname.com". Ok they probably Google it too, but even that small amount of additional hassle you put a user through trying to find your company is probably statistically significant.
Changing your name certainly isn't the most important thing you could be doing, and I wouldn't buy that domains matter a ton.
However, the earlier you are in a startup's life, the lower your existing brand value. You can so easily change your name and move on. So much of the VC money you are going to get is going to drive up brand value, whether you like it or not. Is there anything else you could do at your startup at that time that would take such little effort to change then and be so much more costly to change later?
Maybe there are some things that are less effort to change now and would be so much more costly to change later. You should do those things first. If you've got a long list though, either change is way too expensive and you are doomed, or you've already got a lot more invested in your name than the pg's target audience.
Someone asked a dumb question and got called out for it.
I've seen people ask questions to try to get recognition in groups, and when they don't get it, they childishly leave the meeting.
This was a moment where I gained a lot of respect for Dave McClure: https://youtu.be/25TxrhsXFvs?t=46m14s
I've had 4 different choir directors through my life. The best was a man in high school that would get angry, throw his baton down, and walk out (of band). Never saw him do that in choir but I heard about it. He demanded that we were focused. In the select choir, all members were required to perform solos. I wasn't ready for mine, but he still forced me to do it (he refused to continue class until I sang). He was, beyond comparison, a better director than the others and the choir showed it.
Going back to Paul Graham, even if he didn't handle that as well as you think he should have, his overall personality certainly makes up for it. Anyway, it's good to see that he'll be honest and you can trust him to do that.
What are the chances the questioner (had they really thought it through ahead of time) didn't already know he didn't know the answer to that question?
And he is quick with the banhammer for those who disagree, which I think is unfortunate.