Show HN: Trello for startup name searches. After-work project.

by pabloIMO • 14 years ago

26 17 14 years ago

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

I've been building this in my spare time over the past 3 weeks.

I had the idea after many experiences of having difficulty trying to find good startup names with various co-founders. I always thought a central place for us to log suggestions would help tremendously.

I finally decided to build it after attending my first Startup Weekend and experiencing the same problem again.

Hope you like it.

jbrowning• 14 years ago

So, how are you supposed to pronounce the name of your project?

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

Personally I pronounce it as if the 'y' didn't exist.

It's definitely an issue though. I didn't have this tool available when I came up with the name!

neiled• 14 years ago

I guess it's more confusing because your page title is domainer and your domain is domiy :)

Abomonog• 14 years ago

I've been building this in my spare time over the past 3 weeks.

I finally decided to build it after attending my first Startup Weekend and experiencing the same problem again.

Hope you like it.

alexduggleby2• 14 years ago

We are looking for names right now, so I'm looking forward to giving this a test run. (We are using trello at the moment for that purpose).

So here are my impressions/some suggestions:

- I don't mind registering an account myself, but I want my team to be able to contribute without creating an account. A "magic" sharing URL would be great (or maybe Google auth, since that's what we use on trello). We like trello because we can have almost everything in one tool.

- It would be helpful if the tool could check if the twitter account, facebook page and G+ page are also available.

- Since we are in the EU we like checking a bunch of other endings as well (.de, .at, .co.uk,...). I see your tool checks those as well, but it would save time if I can enter one name and it checks all my specified tlds.

- there's a bug somewhere that makes the whole list disappear for a couple of seconds and the re-appear again.

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback.

Your first idea is is a great suggestion actually. I'm not too clear on how exactly I would implement a sharing url while still keeping privacy levels high but I'll definitely look into it.

My assumption is that any monetisation will come from the small number of "power users" who create lots of searches and invite people into them. Therefore, the less friction there is for non-power users the better I guess.

Twitter, Facebook checking etc. is the next feature I will implement. I just wanted to release as early as possible to get some feedback.

I spent quite a while thinking of various ways that the UI would work without arriving at any concrete conclusions.

The drawback of presetting domains is that sometimes you want to make a suggestion which is tied to a particular domain. For example, a user might suggest "easi.ly". In that case, the tld is part of the name and would only apply for that specific suggestion.

I'm not a designer and I'm not sure how to retain flexibility of suggestion while gaining ease of use.

Haha. That's not really a bug (assuming we're talking about the same thing). I made it filter the list of suggestions as you type in the box to try and make it easier to see if a suggestion has already been made. I guess perhaps I should remove it since it seem to be confusing people?

Thanks for checking out the product.

alexduggleby2• 14 years ago

Privacy: I think a url with a long enough random identifier would be sufficient and is often used in web apps to share content.

Multiple TLDs: Since the tlds are quite short, I would keep the name on the left and include one column per tld (with the availability icon). If the user enters the name with the tld then only that column shows availability and the others have a "click here to check availability" symbol.

Maybe the app could learn what I like searching for automatically? E.g. you enter foo.com then foo.de, foo.ch, foo.at etc. Each time there is only one line 'foo' and four column (com, de, ch, at). The next time the user only enters a name it automatically checks them all.

Bug: You're right that is what I'm talking about and I didn't recognize I was filtering the list. Maybe simply adding "List filtered by 'xyz'" would clear that up.

cellshade• 14 years ago

Looks like there's no way to change your password once you've signed up. This is unfortunate, and there's also no verification to ensure that you typed the password that you thought you typed when signing you up.

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

You're right. I'm sorry about that. Before I posted this, I didn't think I would have any users!

I can start working on that right now actually. I'm using a third-party authentication library so really all I need to do is add the views to edit users etc.

I'll add a forgot-password link also.

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

Password resets should be working now. You can follow the link below to reset your password:

http://domiy.com/password_resets/new

brianmac2• 14 years ago

Great idea! I know we spent tons of time with a google doc back and forth checking domains.

pabloIMO9• 14 years ago

Thanks Brian.

Perhaps you would answer a quick customer discovery question for me. Do you think you would pay $5 per search on Domiy?

brianmac2• 14 years ago

Hi, I don't think I would, it's nice to have the URL lookup, but a tab in chrome with whois opened up is free while using trello or a google doc. Plus the market segment that would find this tool useful is quite small of start-ups. However, I would argue this would be great tool worth paying for enterprise wise, ad/design agencies have a nightmare trying to find a URL for projects, or new rebranding projects.

Show HN: Trello for startup name searches. After-work project.

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