Show HN: Namethrive has brandable domains for startups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Namethrive has brandable domains for startups

5 pointspbj7 comments

Hi HN - We're a small team of domainers that made Namethrive to help startups launch with killer names for less than the cost of a Macbook Pro.

Our goal is to help entrepreneurs stop wasting time when it comes to picking out a name for their projects. So many startups and side projects that we see on HN (among other places) end up launching with poor names or obscure foreign TLDs, and we want to change that.

We're hoping to significantly expand our selection in the coming weeks and may also be doing some domain giveaways on twitter soon, so stay tuned if you're interested.

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Those are some pretty darn good names. Do you guys actually own these or are you an exchange service for the real owners?

I definitely see the benefit in offering straight-up, no-nonsense domains for a reasonable price, although I do think there's a chance that the owners will not get as much as they could have if the names were auctioned. Have you thought about a "Buy it now" type feature in addition to an open bidding/auction price? Seems like it would provide a chance for the owners to get more money out of the sale if the demand for a name is particularly high.

Yeah, we own em all. I've thought about the auction route but I'm exclusively a frontend kind of guy and nobody else is very technical, so I'm not sure how I'd be able to implement it. We just ended up going with Shopify since we thought it offered the easiest plug and play solution for us. Plus we're entered in their massive build a business contest. I definitely agree that some of the names could fetch a higher value if they were auction based, but honestly we're just happy to help other entrepreneurs by offering an alternative to CellPhones4U.ly type domains.

(I know nothing about namethrive specifically)

The auction model is pretty much the standard for the domaining industry, especially when the auction site is selling their own inventory.

The reason the auction model is standard in the domain industry is because of how easy it is to game with shill bidding, so be wary. The culture around the domainer industry is very different (in the same way that silicon valley startup culture is very different) and encourages and applauds "creative" monetization techniques.

This is an industry that openly advertises domain hijacking services at conferences (sorry, "domain recovery").

I'm happy they are going with straight up fixed price sales, It's hard to trust an auction site from people who self identify as "domainers".

Clicky -> http://namethrive.com

Would you be willing to let people sell domains on consignment?

Yeah, absolutely. I'm hoping to have a signup for that added to the site within the coming week or so.

A search function or tag system would be good

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