I’ve talked to 100+ founders about .com naming - 80% make the same expensive mistake

Hey everyone - I'm Ibrahim, founder of Domims.

For the last 2 years I’ve been curating short brandable .coms (mostly 5L-6L from 2014) and reaching out to trademark owners / founders.

Pattern I keep seeing:

1. Founder builds MVP on .io / .co

2. Gets traction

3. Then tries to buy the .com - owner wants $30K-$50K (like the $345K Launchlist.com story in the poll below)

4. Ends up rebranding - losing SEO + trust

From my chats with folks like Fox Blocks (trade-mark owner) and 50+ indie hackers here, buying the exact-match .com at $2k-$4k before launch is cheaper than rebranding later.

Curious - for those who launched recently:

Did you buy the .com first or after? And did the price change after you got traction?

Happy to share what I learned about pricing / Escrow / trademark check if useful - no pitch, just learnings.

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Domims.com