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One of my old school friends is a domain broker, and he gets annoyed by .io domains as well. He said he would have a second car if it wasn't for alternative TLDs. For his birthday, I bought him a few programming books. To his credit, he read them, and now enjoys programming as a hobby. Given some time, he'll probably end up half decent.

That makes me really happy. I hope the new wave of gTLDs further devastates domain squatters/brokers.

Challenge accepted.

domainregistry.com - not cheap ($30/year), no .io (.com .net .org and .info only), run by a guy name Larry.

Is your startup really so pathetic that $30/yr is relevant?

I probably shouldn't feed the trolls, but I never said anything to that effect. $30/year is not "cheap" compared to budget registrars which usually charge $10/year.

I launched JobBoard.io any so far haven't encountered too many issues with "normals" being confused. Some ask what it stands for, but that's about the extent of it.

I felt it was a better option than buying super-awesome-hyphenated-job-board-software.com

>My strong advice is to stay away from anything but .com for your startup.

If you make it big enough to have to buy the .com from the current owner, then you are probably going to be able to buy it. When I discovered that new domains cost about 2 packs of cigarettes, I became a compulsive domain buyer. If the .com for my crazy idea isn't available, then I try .co, then basically whatever I can find. I use a combination of http://domai.nr and https://iwantmyname.com/ to see weird combinations. I think you would be hard pressed to find a startup can attribute its failure to the fact that it had a fancy TLD.

Odd tlds that hit it big: del.icio.us, bit.ly

Odd tlds that I visit often: github.io, any.do, 500.co, domai.nr

I think in a world where non-technical people use google as their address bar, we should fee free to use exotic TLDs. Not to mention with the upcoming release of new TLDs .com is about to be as important / common as www.

"If you make it big enough to have to buy the .com from the current owner, then you are probably going to be able to buy it. "

Let me address that specifically. First, you get people who are unreasonable and perhaps would think that because you are valued at a billion you will pay them 500 million or something stupid like that. They are wrong but their irrationality is not going to make it easy for you to get the domain when you want it.

I have a case right now where a startup is willing to pay, say, $100,000 for a domain. But the domain (not being used) is owned by a company in Europe. And they aren't interested in selling at any price near that. And the domain is not worth $100,000.

Second, your thoughts assume either "make it or don't".

There is an in between state. Where you appear successful and profitable but you don't have unlimited google resources. And actually I think it's quite obvious that there are a few companies that fall into this category. Since of course most people are not going to be "big enough" to buy what they want "at any price".

I agree that squatters can be unreasonable or downright insane. I think that my main argument is that owning a ".com" neither helps nor hinders a startup and its quest for eyes. I could never remember how to spell del.icio.us, but it didn't matter, I bookmarked it. If I was on another computer, I googled it.

>I agree that squatters can be unreasonable or downright insane.

There use to be a company called songbirdnest.com that made something that could be described as an open-source version of iTunes(but they preferred it wasn't thought of that way). The person who owns songbird.com refused to sell. Apparently a very hansom offer was made too...

http://songbird.com/ site looks the same as it did back in 2008. Considering that the site doesn't look like anything that's generating revenue, I don't understand why that person refused to sell...

> Considering that the site doesn't look like anything that's generating revenue, I don't understand why that person refused to sell...

Maybe because unlike you, he's not an unquestioning whore to the almighty dollar. (I expected a small bird-feeder business before I clicked, but the point remains.)

>username223 33 minutes ago | link

Maybe because unlike you, he's not an unquestioning whore to the almighty dollar. (I expected a small bird-feeder business before I clicked, but the point remains.)

Ouch. You've hurt my feelings. Just like to add that if he said something about sentimental value or some such, I'd understand. Otherwise, why refuse just for the sake of refusing? But, seeing as you're already on insult-mode, probably nothing good will come of this discussion.

Lets not forget last.fm.

>> [2] We aren't cheap. Could you explain why you aren't cheap? (as in, what would justify a higher cost compared to someone like Namecheap?)

Not the market we choose to be in. Selling cheaply requires more customer service as you generate volume. Just because you can sell something cheaply doesn't mean you want to sell it cheaply. It's just a different business model. Nothing wrong with the other business model but not what we do. (Same as Rackspace doesn't compete really with Digital Ocean).

So you're also not really a competitor to Namecheap, despite your declaration to the contrary.

You're actually in the business of selling <$10 parcels of cyberland to whatever sucker will pay $30 for them.

Better to pay a lot for a domain name when you can than when you cannot.

What I sometimes suggest to people is to get an option on a name before they become so successful that the prices increases. So you hedge. That way they pay an amount of money to be able to buy the domain later at a reasonable price from the owner. Other variations of this are renting the domain and likewise which has it's advantages and disadvantages.

What is that amount? All depends on the domain, the owner of the domain and a host of other factors.

Am I the only one that thought that [2] from above was a clever reference to being "name.com" until I realised that name sell .io domains? So much for me being all clever haha.

Probably NetworkSolutions...

Nope.

I'd guess MarkMonitor and/or something equivalent.

Might be true in the US but for the rest of the world, local tld's are fine. Amazon.co.uk, bbc.co.uk, etc.

Agree that in certain cases that is fine. But most people reading HN (I'm guessing) are doing a product or service where having a country specific TLD would limit their market.

> Whatever .com you can buy now will be much more expensive once the .com owner sees you have funding and a business model and a website.

This is why I buy the .com and .net along with something like an .io all at the same time.