> The competitor received 16 upvotes on HN. Easypost's Show HN had 157.
This is important how? Are these ~150 extra up votes really worth $100 each? Really worth 7.5% of your funding round. Yeah, yeah, yeah, visibility on HN is good but outside the HN bubble I think I'd rather have the 15k.
They could be worth it. If 1 in 10 of those voters directly becomes a customer (or mentions it to someone else who does), and the LTV of a customer is > $1k (which is very possible for a b2b relationship), then it is. And that doesn't factor in any customers (or investors) bought in by having greater visibility on the post (more votes = more time on front page = more people see it = probably a few more customers).
In fact I became a customer of EasyPost's soon after reading that HN post.
Indeed, sometimes a good name is worth the cost.
Perhaps if Jarrett had waited until he found that perfect .com name he wouldn't have launched first, and as a result would have had less initial exposure. Less initial exposure means less initial traction, and that might have lead to easypost not raising their first round, or raising on much worse terms, both of which could easily be worth more than $15k.
On top of that, finding an available .com isn't easy. You essentially end up using a non-english word, mashing several words together, or use something like geteasypost.com (which easypost owned prior to making this purchase).
Non-english words are harder to say and recall, and could ultimately affect word of mouth growth. Mashing words together puts you in a similar situation, and nearly every company who owned get<company>.com or try<company>.com ultimately ended up buying <company>.com if they were successful. Dropbox did it. Facebook did it. Easypost just opted to get theirs earlier in the company's lifetime.