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Ask HN: Buy domain name now or later?
I'm wondering what your perspective is on whether to purchase a domain name for your startup now or later. The domain name we want is selling for 15k USD. Our team is in the idea formation stage and would launch a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) within 1-2 months after securing the domain name. The other option is to use $10 domain name and just launch the MVP to see if it gains traction or not. If it does, then purchase the domain name but it may sell for more than 15k later. What should we do?
- Skywing 16y agoBe realistic about it. This project doesn't sound funded, so odds are you can't quite shell out $15,000 on a hunch that your site might take off. Perhaps come up with an even leaner MVP and release it sooner and under a similar, cheaper .com. This way you can gauge interest a little bit before you make the big domain name purchase. I say this because, if you're like me, I buy up domain names all the time and most of them end up going unused. Some of them I never even configure once. Would be a shame to spend $15,000 and have it do nothing.
- byoung2 16y agouse $10 domain name and just launch the MVP to see if it gains traction or not If you gain traction using the $10 domain name, you don't need the $15k one. DropBox seemed to do just fine with getdropbox.com, and I'd bet the would have done fine if they had never gotten dropbox.com.
- nmw 16y agoThe initial cost of buying a domain name is normally high, but it is far more effective than advertising via other sites (e.g. google adwords). If you are not very well versed in how people actually search for information, you would probably lose a lot of money either way... but in the advertising model you would lose less initially. Over the long run (say half a year or longer) the domain name route would probably be the cheaper route -- if you pick the right one.