The unusual rise in short startup names and why you should avoid this practice

Also, definitely more than a slight boost (now given the 'finding the edge' bit is harder and harder as CHATGPT, AI, AGI, No-code, clone-able web flow pages etc. gets easier and easier).

Brand is the most overlooked thing.

'Personal branding' unfortunately (companies and people learning the hard way), is what most young/ key entrepreneurs and companies were/ are focusing on ATM which is 'kinda right, but not'.

The problem?

As you can see, that can go really wrong, really quickly (Kanye x Adidas) where as 'standalone branding' (like GymShark) can mean that even if the founder sucks (which BTW in GymShark's case it DOESN'T - he's cool AF lol), but the 'brand' can still be salvaged.

It's why companies like Monster (dotcom) are relaunching, why (even after everything that went wrong), Wells Fargo/ Lehmann Brothers and their 'brand assets' (not individual people but actual assets aka trademarks n IP) were 'of some value' (and by some I mean a lot) to many people.

Proof? No matter how badly stuff went down, people on LinkedIn still (maybe less now as everyone gets more aware and older and ethics conscious, which is good) had 'Ex-Wells Fargo, Lehmann Brothers' on their resume like it was an amazing thing. LOL

The power of brand. They can get away with a lot more. I don't recommend doing anything to 'get away' with worthy in the first place, but it gives you that 'moat' or privacy edge, while allowing you to leverage your personal brand as much alongside the 'main brand', (or as little) as you want depending on your situation.

Very easy to pivot, essentially - throw in a single word or less than 6-8 character .com, and this gets even easier since if a startup doesn't work out, some of these (generic ones like sex, loans, business dotcom, desktop, video dotcom) are so powerful, they could literally end up making a failing business on close, into a profitable one, solely due to the value of the domain name.

In a future where more companies are D2C/ Digital first and digital native, business loans naturally, will also be shifting towards 'these' businesses (obvious reasons since that's what people are starting).

The commercial assets, when a business will go for a loan, (in the eyes of the bank/ lender) will be 'what does X own IP wise? the only one that everyone can recognise, as trademarks may be worth a lot but again, could be disputed - etc. etc., but a .com domain name = makes fundraising, and lenders job much much much easier).

Hi @preetsg, how do you plan to make your domain portfolio browsable/searchable to entrepreneurs can figure out if one of your domains suits their use case?

Hey mate, thanks for asking this (almost forgot to mention!).

So when it comes to trademarks, you can't really trademark a word in 'everything'.

E.g. If someone was to put in a trademark (real life example being depix.ai, a company which does own the trademark for depix - a quick wipo [quick as in once you find the link haha, they have been changing it around but I'll find and post it here - just search 'wipo db trademark search' or something along the lines]

Depix lodged (and owns/ approved) trademark for certain classes and use cases.

So

1. Just because someone owns a trademark, doesn't necessarily mean they have the automatic right to every single product/ class/ service type or exclusive rights to use that name.

2. Many people don't know this but when it comes to 'words' (this is especially applicable for more local trademarks e.g. if you do a 'tm search' in Australia), they generally own the 'trademark' for 'that word IN THAT specific logo/ design style, not just the word blindly'. So it may show 'trademark approved for X name' but that doesn't mean they own that 'word on its own'. Many people however, not knowing this, just see 'depix - trademark issued, oh crap can't touch this now I guess'.

I mean I didn't even know about depix.ai, I simply bought depix.com on a GoDaddy auction and have many use cases for it. But to make this even more 'in my favour', once the company (they used a different account but I am 99% sure it was them given some research I had done, as it couldn't be someone else really) has reached out to me with the intention to buy it off of me, especially when I didn't even have it on for sale/ wasn't listing it nor had I reached out first to anyone (it was a purely inbound purchase/ price request), they have effectively admitted that they want something of mine that they acknowledge 'I have the rights to'.

This is very common and very (unfortunately) common. Big companies will try and make an offer, and if the owner doesn't want to sell it OR the offer (in the buyers eyes) is 'unfair' - they will quite commonly put in a UDRP (datasite.com tried to do this with me, for datasite.com.au - you can look up datasite vs Preet Singh lol).

Not only is this unethical, but it's not 'highlighted' enough nor talked about since a lot of the companies that do it, control media (google, Microsoft, etc.). Keep a tab on UDRP.com and RDNH.com (RDNH - reverse domain name hijacking).

3. Furthermore, another interesting and more recent example (this commonly applies to things which are short, one word or short acronyms etc.).

EVEN if they do have the word AND the 'logo' AND the 'dotcom' AND are in a similar business/ use case as you AND launched already, it will come down to logic, reasoning, public interest and good faith etc. Crypto dotcom is a good example here.

E.g. Crypto(dotcom) tried to sue/ put in a complaint I think crypto.io over something like this. This is a clear situation where it's almost guaranteed that 'crypto' dot something will be a crypto related startup (it's like trying to block anyone who bought money dot something - just because you own money dot com - it's not right nor fair).

Why?

a) giving a company the monopoly and sole right to crypto would be ridiculous (worldwide, too!) - you're basically saying that because someone is born earlier, not only do they have a potential head start as they bought the .com earlier, but they now also have a monopoly over the dictionary/ English word that is used by so many people? Doesn't make sense

The exception here (and rightfully so), would be a made up word like 'Telstra' (which is an Australian phone company). It would be pretty 50/50 depending on which country you were in, what the startup as based around and what your potential future/ current/ intended offerings would be. But keep in mind, this is because Telstra is NOT a dictionary term, is a very very long term established brand and 'some good faith and logical' discovery in a court case in most cases, would highlight some intention (especially if the owner of say Telstra.io just had heaps of 'CPC ads' and they all went to Telstra phone plan deals on Telstra.com' - this is clear breach of using someone's trademark for unauthorised association and in bad faith [to make money off their name or mislead].

Even then, a random Indian startup could call themselves Telstra.in and launch something completely different to Telstra (especially if Telstra is focused on a specific - which they are - demographic, like Australia).

However since 'crypto' is a dictionary term AND realistically only really able to suit a few types of startups, crypto should not and would not be able to be trademarked 'as a word solely' by crypto dotcom.

This is fair, this is fine and at the end of the day the advantage isn't the 'trademark of crypto' but the 'trademark of the brand value combined and thanks to ownership of the .com' version of crypto [crypto.com]. This is why many many .com companies (they all know this, like hotels and booking etc.) use the dotcom IN their actual name/ logo. It's called hotels.com' not just hotels. Because THEN 'it becomes hotels.com' as a recognisable trademark and you can slowly start to see how (over 20-30 year) this has lead to a huge concentration in power/ reliability and recognition for the 'dotcoms'.

4. What's interesting is though, people assume all words and 'little potential hidden gems' like dictionary terms must all have been taken, but here's some interesting info that may be of use especially if you're a multi-lingual founder.

Many people think 'oh they must have all been taken then?' but they don't realise that the dictionary/ companies are constantly adding words every year from multiple backgrounds.

A great example of this is Shaadi.com (they have run that business as a matrimony service). However, they could not possibly own the word 'shaadi' (and they have tested this, and lost - which is what I was waiting for. As I'd rather not deal with the headache in case the courts were unfair or I was interpreting things wrongfully).

Shadi.com and SecondShaadi.com etc. were given a trademark infringement notice (you can find the cases somewhere) and Shaadi.com argued 'they have built their brand'. Judge/ panel argued exactly what I mentioned above: Shaadi (the word for wedding in India) is not just there to be used by 1 person as a monopoly. That's ridiculous.

This outcome was 1 of 2 things I was waiting for. The second thing I was waiting for was Shaadi to be added to the 'official dictionary'. Once that was done (I think 2020 or 2021 or so), the first thing I did was (again, the edge here is being multilingual and understanding trademark/ brand value basics) buy Shaadis.com (alongside Shaadibook and others like CelebrantSearch, which I will redirect all to Shaadis.com). This was like buying 'weddings.com' if someone else owned 'wedding.com'. Of course, you'd rather own both (like hotels n hotel .com) but if you can't, and one is clearly focused on a specific 'one' service (like shaadi.com is), it makes complete sense to consider the plural 'shaadis' for something like 'knot' (dotcom). A wedding planning, invites, guest book, venue finder, livestreaming, messenger app.

The amazing thing was, by knowing what to look for (the 2 things being the shaadi vs shadi trademark dispute outcome, and the dictionary 'adding' shaadi as a word), I ended up grabbing Shaadis.com for like $2-3,000 or something ridiculously cheap (keep in mind, the word shaadis is applicable to like 1/4 to 1/5 people in the world given the population of Indians/ ethnics who use that word).

I did the same thing with livestreamed.com (literally lol - and have had an offer over $1m+ for livestreamed.com - only bought it for $1200 or something because again, most people were probably reluctant, and the website I bought e.g. Shaadis off, had picked it up using English trained software so it didn't realise the value of the word 'shaadi' (even the for sale page had it listed as 'ShaaDis' which kind of reinforces that 'lack of understanding by AI/ keyword program' - huge advantage like I said, if you're human and multilingual).

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5. In the case of the 'radio test' for depix, sure it definitely doesn't pass a perfect test when you look at ALL criteria, but I got it at an auction for a decent price.

And it is very brand-able, due to the:

• syllables (2)
• character length (6)
• tld (com),
• Other tlds: The number of 'other' tlds it's taken in (hint: use dmns.app - if a word is taken in multiple tlds, this is a GREAT sign that you're not the only one that thinks this is a good domain name, and not the only one that needs it - and this makes potential reselling easier IF the project fails, or you decide not to pursue it. I searched depix, and it was taken in 8-12 other TLDS, so thought paying $2k or whatever I did at auction for it, was a steal.
• Other use cases: depixelate (if someone owned depixelate.com - not sure if they do, but this means every time someone used or heard or typed that word in, chances are this would bring in flow over/ traffic leakage to depix, possibly to the point where the owner of depixelate [or similar] may just want to buy it for a nice chunky $ and that would let you focus on other projects.
• the way it looks: It looks cool too, the 'x' makes it cool, and honestly 'depics' or 'depicts' are not as nice as 'depix' so, out of the 3 this is the best one 'even though technically the radio test' would convert (text to voice) this to 'depicts', once you have depix seen/ memorised, I doubt you'd not remember it. Pretty short, powerful word.
• depix is easily an acronym more than a 'two word' or something play

e.g.
decentralised property investments exchange
decent pictures
depixelate
depict (e.g. an AR or VR overlay app potentially)
digital earnings and private investments exchange (probably not this LOL)
decentralised pictures exchange (stock image sales)

or just purely a DEPIX (all 6 letters as acronym):

Digital, Entrepreneurs, Products & Investments E(x)change
Domains, Equities, Properties and & Investments Exchange

This would not in any way shape or form, be infringing depix.ai, and EVEN if we had 'some' overlap in features, given super apps and 'consolidations' these days, every startup or tech or Saas is bound to have some overlap. The playing field has changed. Therefore, the only other thing the judge/ panel (if a complaint was issued) could look for is:

• how many people actually KNOW or 'say' depix.ai' or use it? How powerful and 'aware' are people of the trademark? Unlike hotels or Telstra or similar, depix.ai, being a relatively new company/ startup = may OWN the trademark for a certain class even, but it probably wouldn't be enforceable even if we had the (almost) exact same idea, as long as there was no intentional copying/ bad faith attempt to mislead customers via malicious intent.

No problem. That's probably a good point on your part as well.

Thanks!