Altgate

Picking A Domain Name

Anyone who has recently gone through the process of naming a company surely knows the pain involved in picking a domain (and thus, picking the company name).  The dot-com domain has been picked over for 22 years (the first purchase was Sympolics.com back in March 1985) and thanks to real businesses and domain squaters, there are few viable names left unregistered.  What's more, the domain squaters are greedier than ever (lowest ask I've seen was $30K). But the show must go on, and recently I've been going through a naming processes for my new company.  While we came up with some decent names, we just couldn't get the "natural" domain to go with it.  As a result, we've been looking at non-dot-com domains (like .US, .IS, etc.).  Personally I like these domains, but people I talk to are split about 50/50 as "love it" or "hate it" with the former describing it as avante garde and the latter as cumbersome and hard to remember.

What do you think?  You can cast your vote on the left and leave a comment below with your rationale.

Interestingly, I've found that registering non-dot-com, non-US domains is expensive and tough. For example, .IS (Iceland) costs $400 per year and .GE (former Soviet republic of Georgia) requires the domain be registered by a Georgian resident. I think it is a simple matter of time before businesses begin adopting non-dot-com domains en masse. There are a fixed number of dot-com domains and the need for more domains grows continuously. There's probably money to be made in buying up non-dot-coms even though I'm sure squatters have already figured that out...

Strategies for Two-Sided Markets

It seems almost every business I come across these days, particularly those of the Web 2.0 ilk, are essentially two sided markets.  Audience and advertisers, job seekers and hiring companies, dating sites, you name it.  My last company, Pivot, was literally a two-sided market (as in financial market).  When we started out, back in 2003/2004, there really was no roadmap for launching a business like that which is why I was thrilled when HBR published a paper on "strategies for two-sided markets" by Prof. Tom Eisenmann et al.  It's a couple of years old, but a must read for anyone starting a two-sided market business.

There are a lot of good points in the paper, but the main one is that every market has a side that is more valuable and it is important to get the pricing right (which often involves one side of the market subsidizing the more valuable side).  For example, it's free to join Monster as an employee but companies pay to post jobs (although TheLadders discovered that $100K+ employees are more valuable than companies).  It seems obvious...every mall charges rent to retailers but who ever heard of a mall that charged entrance fees?  But you would be surprised how many companies get this wrong.

Enough Already!

I have to believe some VCs are buying these t-shirts from vcwear if for no other reason than I keep getting emails about it.  Here's the beauty of it though...the shirts sell for $100!

I think a lot of entrepreneurs are secretly chuckling to themselves. 

Here's a tip.  You can go here and make a t-shirt with any phrase on it you want and it cost $20 (including $5 shipping)!

LOL.

Naming Your Company

I came across this how-to today.  Most startups go through several name changes, however if you followed this advice, that's a lot less likely.  It's basically a five step process:

1. Set up constraints
2. Schedule enough time
3. Do "structured brainstorming"
4. Be patient
5. Test the name before finalizing

Read the full post, it's worth it.