Rent.com was too expensive at $40,000.
Netflix co-founder Mark Randolph just published a memoir about the company titled That Will Never Work.
As with all startups, Randolph and his team had to come up with a name.
They started with a beta name—one that would work as a placeholder but that they all agreed would not be the final name. That name was Kibble, in part because Randolph already owned the domain name Kibble.com (he still owns it).
As it came time to launch, the team wrestled with which name to go with. Randolph writes:
Soon after we’d moved in the building, Christina and I had written two columns on the whiteboard. One was filled with words related to the internet. The other was filled with words related to movies. We’d decided that the best name for our company would combine two words: one related to movies, one related to the internet. The best name would combine both terms seamlessly, with a minimum of syllables and letters.
Picking a name is incredibly difficult. For one thing, you need something catchy, something that rolls off the tongue and is easy to remember. One- or two-syllable words are best…
…Too many syllables, too many letters, and you run the risk of people misspelling your website. Too few letters, and you risk them forgetting the name.
Some of the names they considered were TakeTwo, Luna, CinemaCenter and NowShowing.
Randolph really liked the name Rent.com, but he didn’t put in on the board for several reasons. One was that it would have cost $40,000 (yes, only $40,000 for Rent.com!) to buy the domain. If you think about it, it would have ended up being a horrible name. While the idea was that customers would rent DVDs, Netflix has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Rent.com wouldn’t make sense anymore.
Netflix might not be the perfect name, but they went with it. Randolph notes:
“It wasn’t perfect. It sounded a little porn-y. But it was the best we could do.”
Netflix & Chill 😉
Rent & Chill would never gotten that cultural impact.
Another interesting thing to note here is that when Netflix started, it both rented and sold DVDs.
Unfortunately I’m old enough to remember when they used to ship rented DVD’s per mail…
Netflix.com was the right pick here imo.
That said, he should have spend that $40k on rent.com as a side hustle. Probably worth $4m today.
True that. Lol
I have PCfilms.com and I’d love to something with it. Thoughts ???
Joint venture ?
We can create a open source platform where…….. Inbox me
Back when I worked for Sprint E|Solutions (remember them?), one of our customers was rentmydvd.com. they were an Asian family that would manually ship DVDs to their customers. They had burstable speed collocated Sprintlink connection and were busted for spamming and caused Sprint IPs to get blacklisted. While this wouldn’t usually be a problem, since the IP was shared amongst other collocated customers it caused misdirected anger to Sprint.
But after 2003, not sure what happened to their operation.
Nothing porny there. Great name
I find it interesting that when they registered Netflix.com that they also registered Netflicks.com and forwarded it to the main site. In 1999 no one even knew what a brandable name was but they chose it over the generic Netflicks.com
Rent.com for $40k was too much???
Rent.com domain name was and still is, better than Netflix.com!
It wouldn’t have aged well for the company. You also need to go back to 1997. Very, very different times. And if you’re trying to make your seed capital last, spending $40k on a domain would have given you pause.
I disagree, with everything you said.
How would the name rent.com work for a subscription streaming video company?
You’re still renting, because you don’t own the product or service that is being provided to you for a fee.
I doubt that’s the message they want to give.