Who do you think the Democratic nominee will be? Clinton again?

Fair enough. I guess the expense could be justifiable if a good domain name really helps. I'm just wondering about quantifying the risks/costs.

If it fails, you can resell it, but how often do domain names increase vs. decrease in value?

Also, how often do you end up not using an expensive domain name, or find out it was a dud?

Your ideas have to come from somewhere, but I think it's risky too. That's why I suggested buying a cheaper domain to vet the idea before buying an expensive one (if at all).

But what if, instead of buying the domain name, you... didn't buy it? What if, instead of dropping $5K on an exact match, you spent $10 on a B+ domain name, where you can set up a landing page to see if there's interest in the business idea you've generated?

That way, if you are getting signups, or even actual customers, then you try to get a better domain name; but if not, you're not out $5K.

Or am I missing something? I guess you can still sell the domain if you don't end up doing something with it, but what if it declines in value?

edit: punctuation

* A patch that introduces new features to a Public Contract SHOULD do so using new names.

Another older one: (somewhat NSFW horror stuff): http://deathandhell.com/

TBH my current rabbit holes are YouTube and repeatedly clicking "random" on http://www.smbc-comics.com/ .

edit: Another couple old haunts:

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/

https://qntm.org/

F|R: I read that when you call Y Combinator winners, the founders have only five minutes to accept. ("If people turn us down," he says, "as far as we're concerned they've failed an IQ test.") Have startups turned you down? Are there any that have turned Y Combinator down and still gone on to succeed with a liquidity event?

Graham: You're confusing two separate things. The reason people are supposed to decide quickly whether or not to accept is that they already know everything except the percent we'll ask for. They've already seen the deal terms, and they already know as much as they're going to know about YC before actually working with us. So they should already know when we call what percentage they'd be ok with. Since all they have to do is subtract one integer from another, five minutes should be enough.

The "IQ test" quote refers not to how fast they have to decide, but the amount of equity we usually ask for. In the median case it's 6%. If we take 6%, we have to improve a startup's outcome by 6.4% for them to end up net ahead. That's a ridiculously low bar. So the IQ test is whether they grasp that.

There was one startup that turned us down because they received an acquisition offer during the weekend when we did interviews. It was a pretty good offer. I'd have taken it in their position, and they did. But other than that I don't know of anyone who turned us down and went on to succeed. There have only been about three others who turned us down.