Financing for my fledgling business venture has been on my mind. I’m currently in the start-up “Valley of Death,” that part of the financing cycle where you’re investing in yourself and going negative. It’s hard work to pull that curve back into a parabola, but I’m passionate about my idea so I think it’s very possible.

I can ask around, but the liklihood of an angel investor is not good. I could head to Vegas, but I don’t like my odds there either. The surest way to get this off the ground seems to be through diligence, creativity, and a solid belief that taking this risk will lead to a reward in the end. I go to Rick Ross for inspiration….The venture capital will come to me if I do this right.

Since I began thinking about starting a company, I knew I had to have a great domain name. But I had no idea how difficult this process would be. Not only should your domain name also be your company name, but it should be short, memorable, and easy to tell people about without having to spell. It’s not simply a matter of coming up with a great name, but coming up with a great name that is available.

Domain names are essentially web real estate, and the market becomes more and more crowded each day. Most good names are taken and finding one that is available seems to involve considerable creativity. These are two strategies I’ve been using to come up with new domain names: combining Latin roots to create new words, or making a list of names I like and combining syllables from different words to create a new word (check out dot-o-mator).

I’ve been using GoDaddy to check availability, but a friend also sent me a link for Instant Domain Search, which is a better search tool, because you never have to use the back button. So far I’ve had a couple decent ideas, but nothing I’m too excited about. The process is consuming. I’ll get out of bed in the middle of the night to write down an idea and get up in the morning to find that it’s taken. I hope inspiration strikes me soon….I’m in domain name hell.