Our trashy domain killed our reach – don't make the same mistake

Hi HN,

We've built a edtech platform to help students consume study material more efficiently, by leveraging AI to create and review (human-like) quizzes, flashcards, summaries and a chat room where you can talk to the uploaded documents.

Initially we were gaslighted by the r/domains to always use the .com domain even if it doesn't sound very catchy, so we went with myathenaai.com (athena.com is $2mil).

After the change to athena.study, daily unique visitors sky-rocketed up by 500%, conversion rate from visitors to registered users went up by 5%. We got lots of feedback that our first domain sounded scammy, even though it's a .com one.

TLDR: trash domain = -90% of your product value (at least in our case / B2C / no-marketing)