Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Right now, this very minute, is the #1 priority for you, you as a founder, building the product or building the company?

If the priority is building the product, then changing the name is entirely a distraction. Get back to work. The critical part of a name change, acquiring the resource is done. All the bureaucracy can be JIT'd until it matters. If the priority is building the company, delegate or outsource the grunt work when the name is having an impact on growth. Right now, fry bigger fish.

Changing the name is always easier than the real work that matters.

Good luck.

Thanks for the advice. What you say makes sense and I believe you are right on this. I'm going to leave it for now. Once the more important things out of the way I can reconsider changing then.

I don't know why this is the top comment but:

http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html

The "top remark" in Graham's remarks:

  If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com,
  you should probably change your name.

That's not the case here. The advice on changing names is narrow. The easy part of a future name change, picking a new name has been done. The hard part, getting the domain is also done. The bad part, opportunity cost, can be avoided until the company is big enough that there are staff to handle the name change as a normal part of their collateral duties. The description of "playing house" in Before the Startup [1] is sort of implied in the question.

As they say, " All happy companies are happy in their own way." The details matter both in Graham's essays and in the applicability of any action for any particular startup.

[1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com