What the Founder’s Email Address Says About Your Startup
genuinevc.com
genuinevc.com
john.smith@startup.com <– The founding team is all from Microsoft and can’t shake it if they tried.
billg - Bill Gates
billgr - Bill Gross (made up)
billgi - Bill Gibbons (also made up)
Of course, 'jeff.johnson@' doesn't work for the 14 identical name case either!
Alternatively, one or more members of the founding team has a name that doesn't map easily to a name + initial for English speakers. I know that jsmith@foo.com has a first name starting with J and a surname of Smith, but who is balaswaminathan@startup.com? Is that a first name and a last name, a first initial and last name, or just a last name? And where is the demarcation between first and last names?
You can argue that it doesn't matter, but then why have a systematic email address at all?
40% of Vietnamese people have the surname Nguyễn, if you use the first initial + last name system then by the birthday paradox, there is a 50% chance of a first initial collision with 6.5 Nguyễns in your organisation. That means that if you have more than about 16 Vietnamese employees, you have a 50% chance of an email id collision. It's actually higher than that because Vietnamese-American first names are often English, so the distribution of first initials is not evenly distributed.