I'd still go for the .com. There's just too much stuff biased towards the holy trinity (.com/.net/.org). If you're ok with a country .tld then they're an acceptable second tier to me. There's an entirely undeserved reputation boost to .com domains over pretty much every other TLD that non–technical people believe in (the same people who genuinely think the US Postal Service is telling them to go to www.usps-delivery-confirmation-change-app.xyz to pick up a lost package).
I think if necessary I'd build the thing under a throwaway name (much like how many movies are made by some variant on "Working Title Productions" and not "Batman vs Thor: The Ultimate Crossover"), keep an eye on the parked .com and try to suss out if it's actually acquirable or if the hoarder is delusional.
If you have a name you want use something like SnapNames to try to grab it if it expires (this only works if the domain isn't listed for sale on SnapNames or its affiliates). It can take some time.
Another technique is to look for stale domains (nothing resolves, not even MX records) and see if the registrant records point back to the domain (not as easy with widespread privacy masking) or point to some other dead domain. Assuming they expire before the end of time, when they expire the notices will bounce and the domain will expire.
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I'd still go for the .com. There's just too much stuff biased towards the holy trinity (.com/.net/.org). If you're ok with a country .tld then they're an acceptable second tier to me. There's an entirely undeserved reputation boost to .com domains over pretty much every other TLD that non–technical people believe in (the same people who genuinely think the US Postal Service is telling them to go to www.usps-delivery-confirmation-change-app.xyz to pick up a lost package).
I think if necessary I'd build the thing under a throwaway name (much like how many movies are made by some variant on "Working Title Productions" and not "Batman vs Thor: The Ultimate Crossover"), keep an eye on the parked .com and try to suss out if it's actually acquirable or if the hoarder is delusional.
If you have a name you want use something like SnapNames to try to grab it if it expires (this only works if the domain isn't listed for sale on SnapNames or its affiliates). It can take some time.
Another technique is to look for stale domains (nothing resolves, not even MX records) and see if the registrant records point back to the domain (not as easy with widespread privacy masking) or point to some other dead domain. Assuming they expire before the end of time, when they expire the notices will bounce and the domain will expire.