Paul Graham. Change your name

Your attention is the latest publication in the blog of Paul Graham .



If you have an American startup named X , and you don’t have rights to the x.com domain, you probably should change the name.



The reason is not so much that people will not be able to find you. For companies with mobile applications, especially those eligible for the corresponding domain name is not as important as how it will be used to obtain users. The problem with the absence of the domain of the same name is that its absence shows your weakness. If you are not so great that your reputation is ahead of you, the secondary domain assumes that you are a secondary company. At the same time, the presence of the x.com domain signals your strength, even if the domain has nothing to do with what you are doing.

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Even good founders can deny this fact, but this denial stands on two powerful fundamental reasons: identity and lack of imagination.



The first says that X directly describes the idea of ​​the founders, and the second that there is no other suitable name. Both the first and second statements are incorrect.



For starters, you can fix the first cause of this problem. Imagine that you would call your company something else. If so, of course, you would just as well add the desired domain to this name. The idea of ​​switching the current name is pretty repulsive.



Essentially, there is nothing great in the current title. Almost all of your affection for him comes from your relationship to him. The name is dear to you because it has become part of your identity, and sometimes this fact is simply discounted under certain plausible ideas, regardless of inner qualities.



To neutralize the second reason for denial, your inability to come up with other potential names, you need to recognize that you have a bad name with naming . The naming skill is a completely separate ability. You can be a cool startups, but completely hopeless in the invention of the name of your company.



Once you acknowledge this, you stop believing in the impossibility of changing the name. There are many potentially better names, you just can't think of them.



How to find them? The simplest answer to solving problems in which you are not strong is to involve someone else in the process. But with the names of companies is another approach. It turns out almost any word or phrase that is not obviously bad is good enough for that, and the number of such domains is so large that you can find many cheap enough or unused domains. So make a list and try to buy a few.



The reason for my knowledge that creating startups and their names orthogonal skills is that in the names I myself am not strong. Previously, when I created Y Combinator and spent a lot of time with startups, I often helped them find new names.



Now, when I am in the office, I focus on more important issues, such as the core business of a company. I advise them when they should change their name, but I know that sometimes my advice is not enough. It happens that startups are aware of the problem of the lack of a domain of the same name, but, mistaken, they believe that they will be able to acquire it later, without any justification. Do not believe that the domain is being sold until the owner informs you of the desired price.



Of course, there are examples of startups that have succeeded without having a domain of the same name. There are startups that have achieved success, even in spite of various errors, but the error with the name is less excusable than most others. It can be corrected within a few days if you are disciplined enough to acknowledge the problem.



100% of the companies of the top twenty Y Combinator have domains of the same name. 94% out of fifty too. And only 66% of the total number of companies in the Y Combinator package own a domain of the same name in the .com zone. Anyway, it’s worth taking a lesson from the experience of most of the best.