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In my experience, this matters a lot less than people think.
Companies that didn’t own the .com for their name for quite some time after they launched include Dropbox, Grasshopper, Buffer, Basecamp and Bitly.
The litmus test used to be that someone should be able to remember your URL when they hear it so that they can remember it and visit your site later. But for many markets now, URL’s are shared less and less through actual conversations and more and more via email, social media, SMS and other channels where there’s nothing to remember.
So being a .co or a .net (or appending an HQ at the end of your URL) isn’t nearly as much of a handicap as it once was.
If you have a name that works fine with a URL that isn’t too clunky, I’d forget about renaming and focus on building a sticky, shareable product, and then buying the .com when you can afford it.
