The value of a good domain name – from SimulScribe to PhoneTag

Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by admin in Domain News | 2 Comments »

Many times while rushing to launch a new venture, entrepreneurs have undervalue the importance of a good domain name for their product or company. They may be starting a part-time project and they just want to get it off the ground. They choose the first domain name that comes to mind—often something crap—and they are stuck with it.

This is exactly what happened to SimulScribe, a handy voice-to-text service that turns voicemails into e-mail. When James Siminoff and Mark Dillon launched SimulScribe in 2003, both had other full-time ventures. SimulScribe was a side project that they codenamed “Simultaneous Voicemail Transcription,” that they cutely shortened to SimulScribe and promptly placed it on SimulScribe.com. Today, five years later, it is a full-time business that’s growing yet the domain name is holding back the startup. Siminoff admits:

The name SimulScribe totally sucks for our business. People have a real challenge remembering the name and they cannot spell it, which is a real problem considering that new customers need to type in our web address to sign up. When your company offers a consumer product that relies on viral marketing, a difficult name is a really bad thing. In fact, I’m constantly amazed at how well we have been able to do with such a shitty name.

Name recognition is so important when you are up against better-funded competitors like SpinVox (which could also use a better name, but has raised $200 million to SimulScribe’s $5.7 million). Siminoff has been on the lookout for a new name for two years, one with a domain that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.

Finally, a few months ago after a red-eye flight from LA to New York, after not returning many phone calls for days, a friend left a message saying he was tired of playing phone tag. Siminoff immediately called his chief marketing officer (at 6:30 in the morning) and told him to buy the domain. But PhoneTag.com was taken.

Four months and $30,000 later, he bought the domain, and today SimulScribe is changing its company name and domain name to PhoneTag.com. It is a much better name. SimulScribe was so off-putting somehow, but PhoneTag sounds fun.

Hm, so I wonder what Siminoff thought would cost an arm and a leg.

The lesson to be learned from this story is simple. Domainers should be looking for the SimulScribes of the world to pitch their domains to… but we all already know that.

For more on the story check out the Techcrunch story.