No good domain name? You have to change your name.

No good domain name? You have to change your name.

Paul Graham is the founder of business incubator Y Combinator, the author of "Hackers and painters", "on Lisp" and other books.

Translator: Wang Wei Zhe, He Jiamong

In the United States, if you have a start-up company called X, but you don't have an M domain name, you might have to change the name of the company.

The reason for doing this is not to worry that users will not find you-especially for companies with mobile apps, where domain names are less important to acquiring users. But the problem with not having the right m domain is that it exposes your weaknesses. Unless you have a big company, reputation, or the use of non-inflow of domain names, will make people feel that the company is not in the inflow. Domain name is a powerful embodiment (like stripe), although it is not related to the company good.

Even good founders would deny the idea. Because they face two major obstacles: identity and lack of imagination.

The founders would think, "X represents us, there is no more appropriate name – Neither of these views is right."

For the previous resistance, you can take a step back and think: if the company called another name, you would think that name represents itself. If you replace the current name, you will also resist.

The current name is not so important, you think you are attached to the name, in fact, the name attached to you. (Sometimes, the founders know that there is no. com domain name is a problem, but expect to be able to buy directly later, although it is not clear whether there is a sell. Don't expect a domain name to be sold unless the other party has already told you asking. ）

The way to balance the second kind of resistance is that you have to admit that you don't have a name, so you can't find a good one. Having a good name and being an excellent entrepreneur requires two distinct abilities. You can be an outstanding entrepreneur, but you're not as good at naming your company.

Once you admit it, you don't think there's no other right name. There are a lot of potential, good names for the company, but you can't imagine.

How can I find a good name? One answer is to solve all the problems you're not good at--find someone who's good at it. But there is another way to name the company--all the words or phrases that are not obviously too bad--are almost always good choices. In this way, you have a lot of domain names to choose from, some very cheap, not even occupied. Make a list of the domain names and try to buy some. This is exactly what stripe is doing.

The reason I say "name" is a unique skill that has nothing to do with the other skills of creating a startup, because I happen to have it. When I was working with YC, I spent a lot of time talking to startups. I often help them find a new name, with a 80% chance to find at least one good name in 20 minutes.

But now, I need to focus on more important issues, such as corporate business. I will still tell them when I need to rename them, but I know that the impact of resistance on them will not be heeded by most people.

Of course, there is always a case where a startup does not belong to its own domain name but still succeeds. Some start-ups can still succeed if they make mistakes. But there is no reason to make a mistake on a domain name-because if you admit it, it will take a few days to solve.

The companies with the highest valuations in Yc,top 20 all have their own COM domain names, and 94% of the top 50 lists have their own COM domain names. The next batch, this number is only 66%--this means that the remaining 34% of companies will pay for their mistakes.

No good domain name? You have to change your name.