Mint.com Founder Aaron Patzer was interviewed via cNet.net . This is a great article and one basic theme that many domain investors preach day in and day out to businesses and start-ups! A domain name is much more than a name! Mint.com actually started out as MyMint.com and was purchased for $3,000 USD by Mr Patzer but it wasn’t until later and some VC money came in, was he able to go after the big daddy domain name Mint.com!

You can read the full article with the interview of Mint.com’s Found Aaron Patzer talking about branding and not picking a name (domain name) just because it is available.

Near the end of the article, Aaron talks about how the old owner of the domain name (mint.com) didn’t want to sell and the steps they took to change his mind. The key to Aaron with using a name that stood out and easily allowed people to Remember!

"Choose something with meaning, even if it’s expensive and difficult to acquire, rather based on domain name availability, because otherwise, you’re going to kill word-of-mouth," he told CNET

Aaron went on and explained a little bit more as to why it was important to have an easy to remember domain name:

"About a year before Mint’s sale, Patzer had taken the stage at the WebbyConnect conference and displayed a slide of Mint’s name and logo alongside those of its competitors, an array of start-ups with names like Wesabe and Geezeo. Mint’s product had an instant edge because of how its name branded it–a simple, easy-to-spell dictionary word, alluding to both the manufacturing of money and that fresh, clean taste. (The fact that it was a well-executed product couldn’t have hurt, either.)"

Mint.com (and site) sold recently for $170 Million Dollars to Intuit.

Read the full interview with Aaron Patzer on cNet.com here. This is a great example of the power of domain names. They often lead into very powerful brands by simply using a generic dictionary word that million already know and will be easily remembered and add .com to it. The days of starting companies with the web 2.0 examples of Wesabe and Geezeo are over and it just shows as TheFacebook.com is now Facebook.com, TheFoursquare.com is now Foursquare.com (read more about Foursquare purchase on DotWeekly.com) and MyMint.com is now Mint.com, that it pays in many different ways to own the perfect domain! The earlier you do that, the likely cheaper (to purchase) and the better chance you have at obtaining the domain and sticking out from the crowd.