Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by larrys | Hacker News Reader

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com."

Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/

I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offer advice in this area? I'm seeing someone who is a few years out of college and doesn't really have the depth of experience in this area to write an article titled "How to name your domain name". Maybe "my experience with how I named my startup" would be more appropriate.

Add: Some of the things he says I agree with somewhat (stick to two syllables) and some I don't (see reply to tptacek below which hmm, by the way I can never remember how to spell lest you think naming doesn't matter) The problem with advice like this is that if you know nothing you won't know what is correct and what isn't.

I don't claim OnePage was a success by any means, in fact in many of my other articles I use OnePage as a reference to countless mistakes and learning which helped me with Buffer. One thing I would say, however, is that the reason OnePage didn't succeed was not because the domain wasn't onepage.com ;)

We have a long way to go with Buffer but I'm very happy with the growth so far: we're a top 4000 website (alexa) and with almost 300,000 users we see 130,000 shares per day via the platform and are fast approaching a $1M annual revenue run rate through our freemium model. We also have some top investors on board in our seed round we closed at the end of last year. We've done all this with the domain bufferapp.com.

I'm not an expert of anything, this is just how I would approach naming a new startup if I were to start something today. I agree your suggested title is perhaps more appropriate. That said, I did draw attention to a few other successful startups, and some of them have been running for a while now.

You are clearly attention whoring by choosing titles that are more likely to generate foot traffic than to accurately reflect the contents. This is disingenuous. You are, as GP said, in no position to offer authoritative advice, so you might try and respect your target audience and puff your cheeks less.

Most of those how-to guides lack meaningful data and/or studies and/or logic.

Just one example: "The domain name doesn’t matter"

How on earth can one come up with such a broad statement without studying the answer for... years?

Oh, he or she "learned it". Now, you can call me a believer!

Exactly. This applies, conservatively, to a good half of HowTo articles hitting HN's front page lately.

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