When I, admittedly anecdotally, poll people I've met who were practically born after the Internet started, almost none of them even type in .com and a few didn't even know what that was. I'm convinced this sentiment is going to become more common especially with so many squatters on .com domains it's almost impossible to have a good company domain name anymore without spending stupid money to get it. Yet you can get the same name with a different TLD for cheap and you show up at the top of search results.
I'd love to see more search engines or maybe even a decentralized search infrastructure to help facilitate this but that's pretty difficult.
I do not know to which extent I agree. I find it sad but likely that people may eventually stop paying attention to URLs altogether; the main counter-argument I would have would be phishing, because, no matter what, you'll still have to check that you are on the right website at some point. That said I do believe that if it may happen for the general public, it may not happen before a long time for more knowledgeable people (prospective funders, employees, partners, etc., as you mentioned).
PG talks from a perspective that does not apply to most companies in this world.
Again if you get a .com name that is great. But whether it's worth the effort of finding one it if you don't have it already is another discussion all together.
Whether or not you agree with pg, finding a decent .com is pretty cheap in terms of time and money when you have free domain name checking services that give you available .com variants of desired keywords. Even though I know this, I'm still always surprised when I see the 2-3 syllable .com domain names that I wanted, being available without auction or private seller inquiries.
I'm not sure I understand. Free name checking services do take into account what names are available to you and they give you variants of your desired keywords. Results are returned in seconds. It takes a few hours at most to go through a bunch of keywords.
Yes. In fact I did quite a bit of hiring at some of my previous companies and I never cared about email (why would I care about email? This isn't a signal, this is noise). Do people, at least in tech, really care about such things? At least in my deals I never found one. I'd imagine in stuffy jobs it might be something to look down upon but in tech? That seems silly considering how progressive our industry typically is.
Having been a founder for four years now, I have learned that the word "startup" usually scares potential customers. It is actually a good thing to seem more established than you are. However that doesn't mean you are disingenuous either. It is not black or white. You can look more established: .com domain, decent website, proper terms and privacy policy, no beta or "coming soon" wording on website, etc. However if someone asks directly how established you are, you are truthful.
What the potential customer wants to know is if they can trust you, and you won't be gone tomorrow. Therefore if you are truthful about the company's state, but seem like you are established then more people will look past the word "startup" since it will be obvious to them that you are serious and have some idea what you are doing.
In other words, you dont need to go around yelling at the top of your lungs that X is a startup. That strategy will most likely fail. But you certainly shouldn't deceive people either. There is a line.
True, but to whom. Most people don't know the difference between getDropbox.com and Dropbox.com.
In other words, let's say you're right, and owning the .com domain name is becoming less meaningful (an argument that PG already addressed, by the way). That doesn't mean that .com domains are becoming significantly less meaningful to people's perceptions. And perceptions matter, when going after customers, funders, employees, business partners, etc.
I wouldn't say that the perception that having the .com domain name is important is an incorrect one. Maybe you would disagree and say it is an incorrect perception. But even if you think the perception is incorrect, the perception is still part of the reality that the startup lives in.
This classic "perception IS reality" pattern is something that a lot of people miss.