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Before naming your startup, read this.

thenextweb.com

31–40 of 68 posts

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#31
My startup is called Top Hat Monocle. We do education software (mainly for universities, for now.)

I can tell you that our weird name has had exactly zero impact on our success to date. If anything the weirdness has had the side benefit of making our name more memorable than the myriad of startups with generic but more literal names.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pronounce "xort"? This is a serious question, I'm not an native English speaker and there are many pronunciations of X in English (Like "h" as in "LaTeX", like "ks" as in "extreme", like "z" as in "Xavier", maybe there are more...)

I think it's either "Zort" like Xavier, or "Exort", where you pronounce the X as a letter.

I've heard Xavier pronounced like Zavier and X-avier with about equal frequency. Also Havier somewhat less often.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#33

I felt a little conned when, a few thousand words on how I should not settle on a name and pay up for a good domain, I discovered that the author runs a domain portfolio website. If that would have been mentioned up front, I would have taken the above-mentioned advice with more of a grain of salt.

First line of the article: "I’ve learned a lot from the development of NameLayer, and I’m ready to divulge every trick in my arsenal." Pretty upfront.

Ah, I am just stupid for not recognising that as a full disclosure (I did not know NameLayer before).

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#34
post #26

When I tried to tell my browser to scroll slightly to the right by pressing my right arrow key, the site hijacked the keypress and took me to an unrelated page. Wtf? FAIL. Edit: AND it keeps reloading itself every couple minutes. Who designs this?

This is why I use NoScript.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#35
One thing I didn't see mentioned was searchability - it's so much easier to gauge sentiment and help folks out if you can pick your name out of the crowd. Useful for Twitter/Facebook/G+ searches, Web searches, and not getting overwhelmed with irrelevant Google News Alerts.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#36
post #11

Some contradictions: MarketHear.com: bad because it fails the "bar exam" CardPool.com: how does this pass the "bar exam" again? Xort.com: bad - you settled on some domain because it's short and easy to pronounce Etsy.com: good because it's short

How do you pronounce "xort"? This is a serious question, I'm not an native English speaker and there are many pronunciations of X in English (Like "h" as in "LaTeX", like "ks" as in "extreme", like "z" as in "Xavier", maybe there are more...)

I'd imagine it sounds like the english word exhort.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#38
"We price our domains at 25% of their market value."

Don't we all sell liquid commodities at 25% of market value? You know, because we like our customers and we don't like money? Can you feel the credibility chasm expand with that statement?

Much of this article is a reasonable point of view, but statements like this are a sure way to put my purchase clicker on the defensive.

Re: Before naming your startup, read this.

#39
post #38

"We price our domains at 25% of their market value." Don't we all sell liquid commodities at 25% of market value? You know, because we like our customers and we don't like money? Can you feel the credibility chasm expand with that statement? Much of this article is a reasonable point of view, but statements like this are a sure way to put my purchase clicker on the defensive.

I actually fully agree. I originally chose that copy to reflect how good our prices are relative to the "old guard" domain markets, but it's too unsubstantiated of a claim. I've replaced this copy with something better. Thanks for the constructive criticism.
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