I launched this startup about 3 months ago under the name Domiy (original thread: http://bit.ly/O5PlKw). Since then I've been iterating on the idea, improving many aspects of the site. I've listened to a lot of your feedback and hopefully I've made things better. I actually used my own service to come up with the new name too.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the overall concept. I think it's make or break time for this idea, either you guys like it and think it would be useful for your own startup ventures, or you don't and I pack it in.
I totally agree. I've named quite a few small projects over the last couple of years and every name I've been happy with has come to my in an "A-HA" moment. Everything just clicked about the name, and it was available.
Any time I've settled for a name that I didn't really like (usually out of lazyness), I end up feeling like something is missing from the project. A little bit of the love I had for it is lost.
That's why I'm building http://domiy.com , a tool which helps teams of people brainstorm name ideas. I believe that the best names arise when a number of people are trying to come up with a name over an extended period of time. You have to give the "A-HA" moments time to occur.
> Andrew: What about this, is it an advantage that you have over a newer entrepreneur or one that is not as well known is, that if you would have called me up at 1:00 AM, I would have taken your call. I would have woken up and made myself a cup of coffee so that I could be fully aware and give you ever ounce of attention that I could, because we’re friends, but also because you have a reputation in this space, and I know that at some point I’m going to want to work with you, and so the guy who has that has the advantage over the no-name entrepreneur who’s building his first company who then has to talk to 50 people and just getting 50 conversations would take forever because no one knows him and no one has any reason to be there for him.
All this could be shortened to:
> You have been a tech entrepreneur for quite a few years now and you have a massively successful blog which is read by thousands of people. How much of an advantage is the fact that you already have a reputation and a following? How would a newer entrepreneur go about finding 50 people to have these conversations with?
There are many similar examples throughout the transcript.
Right now I'm looking to implement some of the improvements that have been suggested by the users I picked up in my initial Show HN post. I'll think about having another one after that to see what people think of the new features.
Hi, thanks for the suggestions regarding features.
I started working on the site only 4 weeks ago and I've had people using it for the past week (~200 sign ups). I'm adding features and improvements all the time.
The reason I'm asking my question about blogs now is not because I plan to try to show it to any bloggers right now. I'd just like to start building the relationships now so that I will have some sway when I'm ready to try and get coverage.
Ok thanks. This is good info regarding the size of the traffic to expect.
The reason I would like to get coverage from startup blogs is because my startup makes a tool for startup founders. I'm hoping that the people who read these blogs are my market demographic.
You're right. I'm sorry about that. Before I posted this, I didn't think I would have any users!
I can start working on that right now actually. I'm using a third-party authentication library so really all I need to do is add the views to edit users etc.
Your first idea is is a great suggestion actually. I'm not too clear on how exactly I would implement a sharing url while still keeping privacy levels high but I'll definitely look into it.
My assumption is that any monetisation will come from the small number of "power users" who create lots of searches and invite people into them. Therefore, the less friction there is for non-power users the better I guess.
Twitter, Facebook checking etc. is the next feature I will implement. I just wanted to release as early as possible to get some feedback.
I spent quite a while thinking of various ways that the UI would work without arriving at any concrete conclusions.
The drawback of presetting domains is that sometimes you want to make a suggestion which is tied to a particular domain. For example, a user might suggest "easi.ly". In that case, the tld is part of the name and would only apply for that specific suggestion.
I'm not a designer and I'm not sure how to retain flexibility of suggestion while gaining ease of use.
Haha. That's not really a bug (assuming we're talking about the same thing). I made it filter the list of suggestions as you type in the box to try and make it easier to see if a suggestion has already been made. I guess perhaps I should remove it since it seem to be confusing people?
I've been building this in my spare time over the past 3 weeks.
I had the idea after many experiences of having difficulty trying to find good startup names with various co-founders. I always thought a central place for us to log suggestions would help tremendously.
I finally decided to build it after attending my first Startup Weekend and experiencing the same problem again.
Github pages is another common cause of confusion here. I constantly see links to "github.com" which are really links to "randomgithubpage.github.com" with the rather important subdomain cut off.
I'm forever looking at random objects I come across and criticizing the way they are designed. I figure that there are a lot of engineering minded folk in the world who do the same.
Yesterday I had the idea to make a website where we could get together and come up with the perfect design for everyday objects such as chopping boards, keyboards etc.
It's nearly Christmas and my head hurts from working on my real startup so I will be working on this for the next few days. I've been coding for about 9 hours in total so far. I will update my progress in this thread, a bit like a real-time weekend project.
Let me know if you have any questions or other suggestions.
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