[pitdesi]

Count me in the group that finds $250 to be a steal for this sort of thing. Your mission page is spot on.

The amount of time/headache it takes to brand a startup should not be underestimated. I think that the logos are fine to get started quickly but probably would all need to be changed in the long run, but no big deal, you've provided a decent enough starting point where it doesn't look shitty atleast and can allow someone to build their product while still having a decent looking thing on their site.

We spent several WEEKS of all hands on deck and lots of $$$ (Well over $10k for the domain name, banners, stationery etc) as a company rebranding from Transparent Financial Services (http://transfs.com) to FeeFighters (http://feefighters.com). Had we started with something better than transfs from the beginning we wouldn't have had the problem (btw, it's still a pain in the ass because google apps doesn't let you change your name, so we still only have a duct tape solution where our google apps are still @transfs and I occasionally still send an email from @transfs - embarassing!). Plus, we lost all the google juice we'd built up over that time (which was considerable - TransFS was a PageRank 5 site and FeeFighters had none).

At that point (post-funding), our time and pagerank were a lot more important than the money.

More on our rebrand that might be useful to people (you now have to pay to see the video but can download the audio and read transcript for free): http://mixergy.com/sean-harper-feefighters-intervie/

[gacba]

Agreed. The time and money you can waste doing domain search and logo design far exceeds the $250 price they're charging. Having done this a number of times myself, $250 is a major bargain for something that is vetted and pretty much ready-to-promote.

Looking through the brands, nothing really fits any of my current projects but I would definitely consider coming back to check again and again.

[handelaar]

I'm all over your point but strictly only in theory.

These logos are for the most part gobsmackingly awful. I'm genuinely surprised that there's no Comic Sans among them. Robogenerating words with free fonts you dug up on some website is not the same thing as a 'Design Service'.

http://stylate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/burntfood_smal...

http://stylate.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/usante_small.p...

REALLY? Those are worth more than a cold cup of coffee?

I thought it sounded like a great idea from the link title, and I'd have no issue with the price if there was any actual value in the value-add.

[rhplus]

That's exactly the problem with this service: nothing really fits any of your current projects. If none of them fit now, what are the chances they'll have something that fits in a week? A month?

Looking at the list of domains on offer, half of them are 'empty vessel' nonsense words which could quite easily be generated with the same amount of personal effort using something like Wordoid[1]. The other half are nothing more than Monkey Tennis[2], i.e. word pairings thrown out there in the hope that someone else will build a product around it[3].

[1] http://www.wordoid.com/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_tennis [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS1le_8ZhOU&t=1m30s

[tptacek]

Plenty of excruciatingly successful companies have run start to finish with dumber, emptier names than you'll find here. I'm surprised "TransVerify", for instance, is even available.

If you think you're going to get less than $250 worth of value from this site, don't use it. But count me in with the people saying that that a lot of these are steals. Just in terms of opportunity costs saved in spending weeks bouncing names around, this seems like a major value.

[misterbwong]

I'm with tptacek on this one. This is provides tremendous value to those that need it.

It's the classic out of the box software vs custom development argument we see every day in companies around the world. Some people will yell "BUT IT'S NOT EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED" but the bottom line is that it provides value to those that don't need a "perfect" branding fit.

[cpeterso]

> I'm surprised "TransVerify", for instance, is even available.

But it's not: Stylate owns it. ;)

[tptacek]

"Can buy right now for $250" means available as far as I'm concerned, but as I nerd, I understand that the semantics may matter a lot to other nerds.

[nickzoic]

Absolutely. You know what else would be nice? Color palettes, maybe even a "starter" CSS file to point you in the right direction to have the style of the site match the logo and name. Fiddling with that stuff can soak up an inordinate amount of time in the first days ...

[tlack]

Small point: I believe Google Webmaster Tools has a tool for when you change your sites' names, which might have come in handy to transfer your PR5 to the new domain. Did you try this feature?

[stylate]

That was a great interview BTW. One of the better videos on Mixergy!