“Github for business people” bought a new domain name to make it easier for people to discover its service.
This is the second in a new Domain Name Wire series covering end users that buy domain names.
Nick Candito is founder of Progressly, a company on a mission to improve business processes. The company started with the domain name Progress.ly, a popular domain name extension for startups. It’s actually Libya’s country code domain name.
This past week, the company paid $8,750 to secure Progressly.com. I asked Candito about his company and why he bought the domain name.
DNW: Tell us a bit about Progressly.
Progressly is the first platform for sharing, discovering, and adopting proven processes for your business. We are on a mission to empower humankind to innovate faster, perform better, and solve bigger problems than ever before. Similar to the way GitHub and the open source movement have driven technical progress, our visual, integrated library of business playbooks allows people to find on-demand solutions for better results.
DNW: Why did you originally go with the domain name Progress.ly?
Our business is all about making progress. “Progress.ly” was available and spoke directly to the problem we solve for our customers.
DNW: You recently bought Progressly.com to go along with this. Why did you decide you needed the .com domain an addition to the .ly domain? Have you run into any problems with using Progress.ly?
Everything for us is customer-focused. We’re making it easier than ever to find solutions to business problems, but to do that, people need to find us first. A “.com” domain is still the most common way to navigate to a website, and we want to ensure that the people we help are finding our solution. That’s what it’s all about.
DNW: Do you plan to forward Progressly.com to Progress.ly or the other way around?
We will forward to progressly.com
DNW: How did you feel about the process of purchasing a domain name from another person? Was it a easy or difficult?
Purchasing a domain from another owner felt like a necessary evil. As a company that is incorporated under this name, the focus of domain ownership should be on enabling those building meaningful products to be discovered—not a real estate approach by those that own multiple domains.
“the focus of domain ownership should be on enabling those building meaningful products to be discovered—not a real estate approach by those that own multiple domains.”………………..hmmm…not sure he gets it, he sounds very bitter, as he acquires an important asset for his business. The irony, his business is, ” on a mission to improve business processes.”…..
Progressively would have been perfect.
Yet longer.
There’s always prgrs.ly 😛
‘A necessary evil?’ Really?
Progressly was a name coined by another person. It was their creative work product, their intellectual property, and as follows, their attendant domain registration. Candito and his team were simply too lazy, unresourceful, rushed, or uncreative to coin their own novel idea. Which is all fine and standard. The problem is that their entitlement precludes crediting or compensating the author of this name for his or her work without carping about it.
Marketing teams routinely blame domainers for their own failures to innovate. The english language is effectively infinite. Dot-com options are effectively infinite. Stop recuffing your pants all day and spend half a minute on linguistics, TM research, and the WHOIS.
Domain creators are like ‘that’ uncle at the barbecue. Nobody talks about them, but they’re always there. Because they brought the meat.
It’s up to you whether you publicly credit that professional for their work or not. An NDA is smart, so the founders or the marketing team look clever, that’s fine. But angling for pity like this is a wholly dated and embarrassing stance. The name creator’s work, often beginning a decade+ ago, is a de facto part of your enterprise’s effort. Any other posture just shows that you don’t know the variables. Your domain name wouldn’t be pining for you on a chaise longue until you’re ready, it would be in the dank bowels of Progressive Insurance’s IT morgue, etc., or in use in London or Melbourne. The creator has been shooing others off this text string mark option at their expense for many years. These are usually self-evident points.
Also, since you’re giving startups business advice, maybe file Progressly with the USPTO. 300 bucks. You could ask your mom for it and then blame her for smothering you.