Y Combinator Co-founder Paul Graham: The so-called 'that.com' is just the only one you can think of so far
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham posted on October 4 that not obtaining 'that.com' is not a problem because it doesn't actually exist. The so-called 'that.com' is just the only one you can think of so far.
The post did not name any companies, domain names, or quotes. The judgment is solely about naming. He shifted the perception of domain names from scarce assets to results of an unfinished search. Not getting the first choice does not mean the category has been fully occupied.
.com remains a globally recognized commercial suffix, registered on a first-come, first-served basis. The same word can be occupied, while synonyms, misspellings, abbreviations, and added words can still be registered. He did not say that old domain names are worthless, only that the domain founders believe in often reflects a vocabulary that has yet to be fully explored.
This is not on the same level as financing or trademarks. Trademarks can block identical names on similar products, while domain registration does not prevent another string from being formed. The post did not discuss purchasing existing domain names, negotiating prices, or activating new top-level domains.
Graham has long written to early founders. This statement about naming being stuck is written as a thought process being stuck. He did not announce a new policy for Y Combinator, nor did he say that portfolio companies must change their names.
In market mechanics, the buyer is the founder still looking for a name, and the seller is the person who already holds the word domain. The event is driven by a naming suggestion, not an auction. Money can continue to flow towards short domain names or towards the registration fees of newly coined words. Beneficiaries are projects willing to change words, while those under pressure are companies that have pinned their progress on negotiating to buy a specific .com.
Source: Public information
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Graham co-founded Y Combinator in 2005, and early articles repeatedly noted that founders spend time on decisions unrelated to their companies. Domain name negotiations are one such example. The standard practice for incubators is to launch first and rename later, rather than to buy category words upfront. Dropbox, Stripe, and Airbnb did not directly register words from the dictionary.
This statement is not accompanied by investment. Resources are redirected to naming searches rather than domain brokerage. The motivation is that the price of a .com word is often higher than what can be justified by seed round funding, and users enter through app stores, links, and word-of-mouth, not by guessing domain names. Defining 'that.com' as an unfinished list allows founders to exit the negotiation with a single seller.
A similar situation occurs when category words in trademark registrations are occupied, prompting companies to use coined words instead. It is also similar to how short domain names were hoarded after 2000, while usage shifted to in-app searches. The industry position is not in the expansion of domain trading. Transactions still occur, but he shifts the decision-making power back to the founders' vocabulary from the holders.
Structurally, this is a transfer of pricing power. The reason a single string is expensive is that the buyer believes there are no alternatives. He states that alternatives are simply spellings that have yet to be thought of. The reason this happens is that registries allow for infinitely close new strings, while users remember the company, not the suffix. Once negotiations are defined as unfinished thoughts, the asking price from domain holders loses its uniqueness.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
The only choice is often just a result of searching too early
Strings can be infinitely close, but memory only retains the company
The seller's asking price is predicated on the buyer's belief that there are no alternatives