How We Bought easypost.com | Hacker News Reader

How We Bought easypost.com

easypost.com

107 pointsjstreebin34 comments

Hate to be a cynic but this article could've easily been titled 'how naming our startup "easypost" turned into a 15k mistake'.

I just can't imagine that the name easypost was 15k better than alternative names. I get that the company already had traction and it'd be cheaper to buy the domain than change the name of the company but I guess what I'm trying to say is domain name availability should probably be the number 1 criteria when picking a new startup name.

Easypost launched roughly 2 weeks before a competitor did. The competitor received 16 upvotes on HN. Easypost's Show HN had 157.

Perhaps if Jarrett had waited until he found that perfect .com name he wouldn't have launched first, and as a result would have had less initial exposure. Less initial exposure means less initial traction, and that might have lead to easypost not raising their first round, or raising on much worse terms, both of which could easily be worth more than $15k.

On top of that, finding an available .com isn't easy. You essentially end up using a non-english word, mashing several words together, or use something like geteasypost.com (which easypost owned prior to making this purchase).

Non-english words are harder to say and recall, and could ultimately affect word of mouth growth. Mashing words together puts you in a similar situation, and nearly every company who owned get<company>.com or try<company>.com ultimately ended up buying <company>.com if they were successful. Dropbox did it. Facebook did it. Easypost just opted to get theirs earlier in the company's lifetime.

Indeed, sometimes a good name is worth the cost.

We could have used difficultpost.com. We bought that one for $9.

> The competitor received 16 upvotes on HN. Easypost's Show HN had 157.

This is important how? Are these ~150 extra up votes really worth $100 each? Really worth 7.5% of your funding round. Yeah, yeah, yeah, visibility on HN is good but outside the HN bubble I think I'd rather have the 15k.

They could be worth it. If 1 in 10 of those voters directly becomes a customer (or mentions it to someone else who does), and the LTV of a customer is > $1k (which is very possible for a b2b relationship), then it is. And that doesn't factor in any customers (or investors) bought in by having greater visibility on the post (more votes = more time on front page = more people see it = probably a few more customers).

In fact I became a customer of EasyPost's soon after reading that HN post.

Brand development is a non-trivial matter, especially in startups. Getting your company's value prop out in two sentences is amazing, but they were able to succinctly describe it in TWO WORDS.

"easypostage" and "easypostapi" neglect the value of clean, concise naming conventions as a marketing advantage to what at the time ended up being a competitive market.

EasyPost was ahead of the curve in terms of acknowledging company representation. As an early pseudo-developer at Teespring, I felt very comfortable in their docs and deploying against their API. This was based on both their technical (seems consistent across YC co) and branding capacity.

Over a year and a half later, I'm not surprised by their success.

It's not easy when everything you can imagine is taken. All possible combinations of words that are in a dictionary are taken.

To clarify: I mean all possible 2-word combinations. Domain squatters are using dictionaries and just registering anything available.

Possibly the neatest succinct explanation of dealing with (buying from or selling to) corporations that I've read: "you're dealing with a bureaucracy, which means people are heavily inclined to say 'No', and it takes several 'Yes's for a deal to go through."

Enterprise Sales 101.

Reading this reminded me of some of the domain negotiations I've been involved in (on both sides) and just how cloak and dagger they are. I can't think of any similar transaction that involves so much mystery and shadowy manoeuvring.. it's almost comical.

What also intrigued me is how they got it for less than their initial offer (which was "$10K GBP" - one assumes this is meant to be £10K?) - $15K being less than 10K GBP (recently, though not today).

He meant 10k GBP. Their initial ask was 20k GBP and we bought it for half that, $15k at the time.

If the broker did such a good job, why not mention who you used? I can't think of why he'd want to stay anonymous.

I'm checking with them to see if they mind.

His name is Ritch and you can reach him at Ritch@Acquirable.com.

So a broker that actually helps you save money and get what you want. Thats a first. Imagine if real estate brokers where this helpful.

The broker/buyer conflict of interest in real estate is exactly what we're working on at Open Listings [1]. It's interesting to think about whether a flat-fee model like ours could work in domain brokering. It's kind of an interesting thought experiment to consider what kind of input you'd need for a program to do the buy-side negotiation.

[1]: https://www.openlistings.co

Edit: Not trying to undermine this domain broker's business at all! He's obviously doing an amazing job hustling for his clients and there's no better option if you really want a domain.

Looks like openlistings.com is for sale: http://openlistings.com/

;)

There's a great Reply All podcast episode that dives much deeper into domain selling: http://gimletmedia.com/episode/7-this-website-is-for-sale/.

What an ugly marketplace.

easypostage.com is $3k per https://www.godaddy.com/domains/searchresults.aspx?ci=83269. I could have saved you $12k!

easypostapi.com and geteasypost.com were $10 each. Something tells me you wouldn't have made the sale :D

So after the domain has been bought, the company can obviously see who bought it and find out your true identity. Is this a problem? (an inevitable one).

I would guess the main reason for hiding your identity would be so the sellers don't overcharge. After its sold, it doesn't matter.

Correct. Though it't often easy enough to figure it out if it's related to an existing company.

You want to avoid price inflation before the deal has been completed.

You'd be surprised how prevalent fake identities are in this business.

Years ago, I owned a lot of domains. Some very good ones, in fact.

I had someone approach me to buy the domain, claiming they were a tiny 2-person startup.

Some Googling and talking to friends who owned domain names revealed that they were actually representing Microsoft.

It's very common for even multi-billion dollar corporations to pretend to be broke students/entrepreneurs/non-profits to get cheap prices on domain names.

You should redirect from easypost.co to easypost.com.

Kudos to easypost for sharing this.

"$10K GBP"

Confusing

Agreed. £10,0000 would have been the correct way. Or 10,000 GBP.

It makes sense if they would like to throw the buyer off the scent and suggest it is a UK-centric service.

But a bit non-sequitur with the rest of the email - American English spelling and while Bill is quite common in the UK, Jarrett is an unusual name there.

They already knew we were American, we weren't hiding the fact.

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