Jason Calacanis on how to name your startup (and land the perfect domain) | Hacker News Reader

Jason Calacanis on how to name your startup (and land the perfect domain)

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16 pointsduck13 comments

X is lame but Y is great because I did it. Jason seems to feel the need to constantly compliment himself and plug at least one of his domains/projects in every section, very annoying.

I can't say I learned much from this e-mail either, basically he's saying that good domain names are short and expensive but if you have a lot of money that's not a problem.

I think the 22k people who subscribe to the newsletter might disagree.

Just because I'm highly successful and I share the techniques I used to get there doesn't mean I'm trying to compliment myself... I'm trying to show folks how it is done so they can do better themselves.

I don't get paid for doing these emails... I do them because I love helping other entrepreneurs.

We know you're successful, we can see that and you don't really need to reiterate it. I do appreciate the tips you share but I'd enjoy them a lot more if I didn't feel you were advertising yourself.

I understand why you do it though, you're a salesperson and you are your own brand. Sharing tips gets you exposure. I'm sure it benefits a lot of people but mostly you (which is fine). I don't dislike you Jason, it's just an observation. I generally shy away when I feel I'm being sold something.

Link above is broken:http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/3/how-to-name-your-startup-and...

Product first, rebrand later. A great name can only get you so far.

Though if you have cash to burn, his method doesn't seem so off. Then again "five to ten dimes" could also get you (a) another employee or two (b) decent marketing (c) cover your overhead costs (d) rent and living expenses for a while (e) some mix of (a)-(d).

this'd be the guy who runs a site with a name I can't pronounce and need to use google to figure out how to spell it because it's so unmemorable (as in, it's not a real word so the spelling could be anything - is it malahoo, malaho marlywho mlahoo mlaho? buggered if I know [or care])

Mahalo is a real word, just not an English one.

fair enough, I guess what I mean is it's a word outside my vocabulary. It has no meaning to me, it's just a collection of letters and as such difficult to recall.

For those who don't know, it's a Hawaiian expression of thanks

I work in mobile marketing where a lot of customers ask if the keyword they choose matters. The short answer is that it does not matter. Make it easy to understand and hard to mess up. http://mikesabat.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/do-keywords-matter...

Obviously you have to give some thought to the name of the business and domain, but if the product and concept are great the business can handle a bad name for a while. I don't think the opposite is true.

Over all the advice seems well thought out. However, I wonder how many bootstrapped startups spend more than 1K on a domain name. I realize that's not much for many, but for a student it's rather large.

Yeah - I think the advice is great if you happen to have a few tens of thousands of dollars, though at that point it isn't especially profound. For a startup with little to no capital, 5-10k is a lot of money.

Certainly I wish that I had some better names available to me for some projects of mine, but if I were to focus on the project first, I think the rest would follow. I look forward to the day when I can be incredibly frustrated at having to overpay to buy a better domain name - once I've already had some minimal success.

The proper link is: http://launch.is/blog/2010/12/3/how-to-name-your-startup-and...

thanks for posting.

How to name your startup: be a regular guest on a well-to-do podcast that, while not being able to trademark its own name, has established quite a reputation. Create a friendly relationship with the host, put forth bad impressions when it's time to tip the hat and make everyone think you care. Then, on your spare time, create a podcast network with the very same name but to a word and claim you offered the domain to the guy you supposedly respected, since, well, it's not like he can claim to own that specific sequence of words, right? Success will then follow.

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