discuss If the business is good, does domain matter?

[abstractdomainer]

I just happened to visit the website of Andreessen Horowitz. They are one of the prominent venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and if you look at their portfolio of investments and EXITS, your mind will be blown, and I have no doubts about that.

While I had heard about them, I never looked at their portfolio of investments, exits or fund size ever. Today, when checking their website, which by the way, uses the domain name a16z.com (and I'll explain you the logic in sometime), I saw that they have $12 Billion in fund under management with investments in startups like Zenefits, Slack, Facebook etc.

Now coming to their domain name which is a16z.com, I'll tell you the logic behind it (and if you have to explain what the domain name is about, it is not quite good a name - doesn't pass the radio test too).
The domain name starts with 'a' from Andreessen and ends with 'z' from Horowitz and has 16 other letters in between them.
Hence the name, a16z.com

Having said that, it makes me come to this question, which is the point of discussion here:

If your business is good, does the domain name even matter?
Also, what could be a good domain name option for them, given the reputation?

 

[garptrader]

Business success depends on many factors. A short, memorable domain name can help to promote a business' products and services. A poorly chosen domain name can hurt a business via lost sales, misdirected emails to customers, vendors, potential customers finding a competing business instead of yours, having to spend many thousands of dollars on advertising to compensate for a poor name choice, etc. But just like a restaurant can still fail with a good location, a six-figure domain is no guarantee of a business succeeding.

The issue we face as an industry is that too many marketeers and business people do not think that the domain matters at all and do not realize its impact on their business.

 

[handpicked]

I think the success lies in the name 'Andreessen Horowitz', that is an industry iconic name, and the brand that they have made out of it. Their brand also repesents the quantum of work they have done over the years to earn iconc status to that person's name. The domain name is just a stylish pointer to their establish and reputed brand that has seen billions in transaction.

 

[pb]

iconc status to that person's name

Those are two surnames.

 

[pteracuda]

@abstractdomainer I would have to say it wouldn't matter as long as the company plans to keep using the .com name to brand their website.

I would suggest something more memorable. I just picked up a short .com 0cap.com which I think would fit good in financing or investing, but the company could hate my idea of a name too.... depends on what the company wants, but more realistically what will drive more customers.... usually short and memorable doesn't hurt.

 

[TheBuyerz]

Memorable domain name is important if your users need to have a constant access to your website ... especially if the people targetted are from different categories (illiterate, Student, Old, Young etc.), the best example for that: fb.com (facebook), if it was hard to be remembered I don't think he will have all this success.

If it's not a .COM also it will be a big problem ... people have habit to write the name followed by CTRL + ENTER, or simply adding .COM unconsciously.

There is niches that don't need to get a memorable domain name to have success ... especially mobile apps that don't require a website to work, also local business, and old institute/businesses that already made a name over time.

Another exception: fiverr.com ... they got this domain name even before they acquire fiver.com, but even with that the domain name remain easy to remember and used by peoples that have already an experience on a different domains area on the web, and Google helped well for SEO and redirect users to this one since the other domain was not developed.

But as final word, there is no better than a remomable domain name.

 

[abstractdomainer]

If the company wants to reach consumers, yes the domain name absolutely matters.

Exactly! But what if they build a brand so strong that the value of name cease to exist for them!

If their domain was uqxyouyyqxyzdp.buzz it would not matter. When your business is giving people money in exchange for some paper that might or might not be worth anything one day, your business is in such demand that people look you up and if people needed to manually type a 80 character domain it still would not impact their business.

Its the reason why the pawn shop can have a run down messy store with a sloppy 5 dollar sign and it will do great, but the local store trying to sell clothing etc. has to look amazing.

I disagree! There is competition in the Venture Capital space as well. If you don't give them the money, someone else will! And then, they will have the paper which will have the value!

@abstractdomainer I would have to say it wouldn't matter as long as the company plans to keep using the .com name to brand their website.

I would suggest something more memorable. I just picked up a short .com 0cap.com which I think would fit good in financing or investing, but the company could hate my idea of a name too.... depends on what the company wants, but more realistically what will drive more customers.... usually short and memorable doesn't hurt.

Absolutely! I mean with such a big brand name, having something like AZ totally makes sense to me!

 

[jayrat14]

To be Honest If Business is Good, it is ideal to have good domain too. For example amazon

 

[7363824]

I'd say yes. My electric company for example does not own their exact match .com instead you have to prefix it with my (you can also suffix it with utilities and it'll redirect you). Probably took me almost a year to remember what it was they prefixed their domain with without having to Google it. Even a simple prefix like my adds a surprising amount of mental overhead.

 

[EGENIUS1]

Are they really that big?

a16z.com is a terrible name.

Samer

Definitely not Marketing guys.