We’re doing a rebrand here at Inveni because people struggle to remember Inveni and misspell it if they do. Our goal is to find a memorable, easy to spell, short, brandable .com, but it is almost impossible in the current market. Pretty much all reasonable domains are squatted by someone hoping to strike it rich. Several owners of .com’s of made up words have told me they won’t even consider offers below 6 figures. 6 figures is a ton of money to a startup and many startups just end up with a ridiculous name for the sake of getting a .com. A startup is much better off spending that money on hiring another developer or designer. An awesome .com doesn’t do much if it’s attached to a crappy product anyway.
ICANN has recently approved many new top level domain suffixes and this increase in supply is bound to change the market. In time I expect startups will move away from .com’s and the silly names. Many startups have already started to go for domain hacks (Del.icio.us, Instagr.am), .fm (turntable.fm, last.fm), .tv (Matcha.tv, i.tv), .me (About.me, Kiip.me), and .ly (bit.ly). In the next generation of startups different suffixes will become common and the prices of .com’s will drop dramatically as they inevitably lose their prestige.