Behind the Brand

PremiumBrands.com exists because a name is one of the first decisions a founder makes and one of the hardest to undo. The collection is a selected set of premium .com names, each shown with a starter site, concept images and a few possible directions, so a founder can picture a company on it before talking to anyone. AGO.com belongs there because a three-letter English word about time gives a founder an unusual amount of room, and because I can see more than one real business carrying it.

Lessons from Newswire.com

In 2007 I acquired a press release distribution business that was running on i-Newswire.com. In 2013 I secured iNewswire.com. Then I spent more than a year negotiating for Newswire.com, consulting SEO professionals before committing, and in February 2015 the business moved to the new name. Each of those steps was a decision to move the company onto a better name instead of waiting for a calmer moment.

The morning of the switch, a prospect told one of our sales agents, “Oh yeah, Newswire.com. I’ve heard of you guys.” That was impossible; the business had only just moved onto the name. The service was the same one it had been the day before. What had changed was the first thing a prospect met, and on that morning the name made the introduction before anyone on the team said a word.

Why I decide on names early

I bought PremiumBrands.com before I had a plan for it. Premium names matter to me, and waiting would probably have cost me the chance. By now it could belong to someone building on it, and a name in that position is most likely not for sale at all. Every name I buy, I buy as an end user, with one test: would I build on this? AGO.com passed it. The word fits a family-history product, a design resale shop and software that keeps a company’s decisions findable, and in each case it says something true about the work. The names I have not built on yet are the ones I am open to selling, and AGO.com is one of them.

The advice I hear most often is to launch on whatever name is free and upgrade once the business has made it. I understand why; plenty of companies have done well on ordinary names. What has changed is how easy building has become. With AI tools a small team can have a working product quickly, and so can the next team with the same idea, so the product is easier to reproduce than it was. A name people recognize is much harder to copy. Changing it later means reprinting packaging, moving every email address, replacing signs and asking customers to learn a new name. Starting on the right one skips all of that.

A head start, not the business

OnlineBusiness.com is the strategy and development studio I use to prepare these presentations, so a founder can see AGO.com working as a company name before deciding anything. A great name won’t save a bad business. The name is a head start, and the product, the service and the customer experience are still the founder’s to build.

If AGO.com is the name for what you are building, tell me what you would build on it; the page about the domain covers what the sale includes. It helps to say which of the three directions is closest, or to describe the one that isn’t on the site yet. If the name you really want is a different one, say so as well, because I help founders acquire names that aren’t in the collection. A premium .com is a trust shortcut.