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How to name your startup

joel.is

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Re: How to name your startup

#41

Post by paulsutter »

tptacek wrote: post #12

A recent article made the case against disregarding domain names: while Square used to be SQUAREUP.COM, and Facebook used to be GETDROPBOX.COM, neither is today; both have acquired the bare domain name corresponding to their name and use them exclusively. The issue here is then, once you make the decision to be "getFOO.COM", the better you do, the more expensive FOO.COM becomes. There is no guarantee the price for th…

That's the really obvious reason that everyone I know is afraid to start a company without getting the .com first.

But the OP makes a good point that it hasn't been as big a barrier as we have feared. Square, for example, is a superb name and I think they made the right decision to proceed with Squareup.com, even though I thought it was foolish at the time. Turns out they were right, and I was wrong.

Square is a damned good name. I wouldn't have had the cojones to proceed with the name, but they did, and good for them.

Re: How to name your startup

#42

Post by dools »

tptacek wrote: post #12

A recent article made the case against disregarding domain names: while Square used to be SQUAREUP.COM, and Facebook used to be GETDROPBOX.COM, neither is today; both have acquired the bare domain name corresponding to their name and use them exclusively. The issue here is then, once you make the decision to be "getFOO.COM", the better you do, the more expensive FOO.COM becomes. There is no guarantee the price for th…

I don't see the logic here at all. If I start an application and it's called "buffer" and I have no money and the domain buffer.com is being sold by some domain squatting pirate for $200,000 then obviously I can't buy it. The choice then is to find a name like squeebo.com or whatever that no-one has yet or go with a less popular TLD like .co (which seem to fill up just as fast as they're released).

However, if I go with bufferapp.com and get it for $8.95 or whatever the going rate for a domain is, then if/when my company blows up and becomes Buffer the unstoppable international juggernaut, how valuable is the domain buffer.com?

No-one's going to start a company called "buffer" any more. So the value is in direct type-in traffic and monetisation through AdSense revenue. No-one else is going to buy it - you've got a market of one buyer and one seller. If the buyer decides to take his ball and go home, you're shit out of luck and have to monetise the domain yourself.

What determines whether or not facebook.com will remain "intractibly expensive no matter how big you get" (ie. facebook.com now has more money than most countries) is whether or not the type-in traffic for the domain facebook.com can be monetised using ads for more than facebook.com is willing to pay for it.

I have no idea about the stats behind type-in traffic but a lot of stuff I've heard indicates that "mainstreamers" would tend to type "facebook" into Google more so than the address bar so I'd be very surprised if the value of the domain didn't peak pretty early versus what the owner could have done with the money had they sold for a million or so in the first few years that facebook started to blow up.

Overall, though, I'd say that the fact there is only one buyer for a domain once a company establishes itself, and the fact that the risk of choosing a shitty name to suit the shitty domains you can afford, or of spending a lot of money on an awesome domain before you've even been able to go to market (holler.com anyone?) are far greater than the risk of having to pay what is comparatively a pittance once your company is making money hand over fist and needs to "cross the chasm" in order to continue to grow.

Re: How to name your startup

#43

Post by polshaw »

panabee wrote: post #4

The most crucial point is to not obsess over names. Obsess over product, not name. Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping. Would you care if Google renamed itself to Moogle? Probably not. Google's search engine is the best, independent of name. To paraphra…

~>Amazon outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though Buy.com owns the perfect name for online shopping

I'm not sure i agree with this analysis.. amazon is a great name; i don't think sharing a name with something real is a disadvantage, there's pre-existing recognition (no need to spell it out, doesn't sound weird) but no real chance of confusion. By not being 100% generic (as buy.com is), it has a chance to build a brand. 'Generic'.com ironically makes it unprofessional, as they are handicapped in making a strong brand, imo. About.com is pretty much the only generic name that i could honestly attribute any benefit and success to- definitely not anything commerce related.

But i agree with the sentiment that if you get a name that is not awful, it will not hold you back.

Re: How to name your startup

#44

Post by mikestew »

kabdib wrote: post #27
paulsutter wrote: post #2

I would add: - Distinctive - Easy to spell - Easy to pronounce - Fairly unique on Google - Abstract is better than meaningful I love the suggestion that the domain name doesn't matter. A big mental shift for me, but the examples are compelling. Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. Easy to spell and pronounce are really important. If people aren't comfortable talking about y…

Easy to pronounce is pretty important. One startup I was at, I had to spell the name every time I mentioned it to someone new. "I work for Wayfarer Communications." "Wafer?" "No, /Way Fare Er/" "Wayfarfar?" "Double-ewe Aye Why Eff Aye Are Eee Are." "Oh . . . what does it mean?" Not a /bad/ name, but not optimal, either.

At least "wayfarer" is a word. I worked at "Adapx". Don't feel bad, everyone except the employees pronounced it wrong. The fact that the marketing company that charged them for it wasn't laughed out of the room amuses me. The decision makers had to have asked, "how do you pronounce it?" And they wrote a check anyway.

("Adapts" or maybe "adaps" is the intended pronunciation, I'm still not exactly sure and I worked there.)

Re: How to name your startup

#45

Post by timedoctor »

I think this forgets the MOST important point of the name. Easy to remember and easy for people to spread it virally. For example, facebook.com or even "thefacebook.com" is not too hard to remember.

I have a systematic way to evaluate this by actually telling over 100-200 people via an audio or video the domain name and then asking them later to remember and write down the name. You will be shocked at how difficult it is for people to remember most names and also at how easily they misspell.

I also totally disagree that the .com name does not matter. It matters a huge amount for referral dynamics, for the brand. The companies listed in the article were mostly forced to buy the .com name at great expense. If it didn't matter they wouldn't have bothered.

In these cases listed in the article the companies succeeded DESPITE the handicap of not having a great .com domain.

It's better to start with a cheap domain to save costs if you don't have the money, but if you can get a memorable .com domain then great.

Whatever you do don't get a .co domain. These are proven by overstock to be total duds (they tried to launch o.co and after a huge and expensive launch they realised that a large percentage of people will remember it as .com and they lost all that type in traffic). A .net .me .biz is much better than a .co

Re: How to name your startup

#46

Post by danneu »

Interesting tidbit about my ebook products, piracy, and naming:

I sell a few ebooks. Let's say they're all about growing plums in your personal garden.

Two of them are brandable, unique-on-Google names. Like "Plum Thumb" or "Plumateer". The other is a generic name. Like "The Plum Guide". plumthumb.com, plumateer.com, and theplumguide.com. All my ebooks are $12.99. I imagine the piracy rate increases substantially once you Photoshopize the price.

My plumthumb and plumateer products are super-easy to pirate. Googling "plum thumb rar" or "plumateer ebook" brings back a whole page of ebook warez links. On the other hand, Googling "plum guide [rar|ebook]" brings back pages of unrelated plum links that aren't my product. The name is just too generic. (Note: theplumguide.com is the first google result for "plum guide").

My "plum guide" ebook serves a broader niche than the other two ebooks thus is more heavily trafficked and has more sales volume. Most of my sales volume comes from PPC->sales-letter funnels. Using free link-back tools, plum guide has a proportional word-of-mouth backlinks to sales ratio.

I don't know how useful this information is. Does forcing someone to use google-fu or fish through Google results to pirate an ebook increases sales? Does a little obscurity-through-genericness provide any benefit when your sales are driven through Adwords anyways? Who knows.

If general behavior is "can't pirate it? then forget it" instead of the wishful-thinking "can't pirate it? fine, here's my credit card", then isn't it better to get pirated? Audience begets more audience and there will always be shrink.

It's fun to think about.

I hope I didn't obscure what I was trying to say with the arbitrary plum examples.

Re: How to name your startup

#47

Post by Schadeaux1 »

How do you like Schadeaux Technologies (pronounced shadow) for a business that creates censorship evasion hardware? I always thought it would be cool because "schad" was a German prefix and -eaux was a French suffix, but I then I learned that "schad" means harmful in German and -eaux forms plural diminutive male nouns, usually an animal, so it would really mean "a little harmful," but that can't be right because -eaux is only for nouns. Perhaps it would mean "a little harmful animal." :D

Re: How to name your startup

#48

Post by andrewflnr »

Schadeaux1 wrote: post #47

How do you like Schadeaux Technologies (pronounced shadow) for a business that creates censorship evasion hardware? I always thought it would be cool because "schad" was a German prefix and -eaux was a French suffix, but I then I learned that "schad" means harmful in German and -eaux forms plural diminutive male nouns, usually an animal, so it would really mean "a little harmful," but that can't be right because -eau…

Your logo should be just the shadow of some small, invasive, but endearing or sympathetic animal, to get the oppressed-and-underground-but-not-defeated overtone. I want to say a mouse or rat, or a mole, but none of those are quite right. You might get some kind of insect to work, like a wasp, depending on what kind of vibe you're looking for.

Re: How to name your startup

#49

Post by sopooneo »

timedoctor wrote: post #45

I think this forgets the MOST important point of the name. Easy to remember and easy for people to spread it virally. For example, facebook.com or even "thefacebook.com" is not too hard to remember. I have a systematic way to evaluate this by actually telling over 100-200 people via an audio or video the domain name and then asking them later to remember and write down the name. You will be shocked at how difficult i…

I agree. I ran a company with a name similar to ChicagoSpanishTutor and literally four out of five people remembered it incorrectly. No use fighting, just find a better name or make some change on your part that makes it easier to remember.

Re: How to name your startup

#50

Post by dinkumthinkum »

larrys wrote: post #36
philwelch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're a kid in a dorm room (even a Harvard dorm room), the cost of "facebook.com", low as it might have been at the time, is already intractable. When you're a funded Silicon Valley startup, the cost of "facebook.com" is higher in absolute terms, but relative to your buying power is more affordable. Having such a successful startup that domain squatters will charge more for your domain is a good problem to have…

Domain "squatters" buy domain names and keep them to sell. As long as they aren't infringing on a trademark it is a legitimate and legal business. While I don't really even like the word speculation that would more accurately describe what is going on. People might not like it or get frustrated that they can't buy the domain at the price they would like. That's simply entitlement. And they also assume that if the "sq…

Yeah I don't understand what you're arguing against either. The fact that you think domain squatting is a great, legitimate business is sort of irrelevant. Maybe you don't like the term "squatting" because you keep putting it in quotes, well even it is the best business in the whole wide world, it's still squatting. You don't like the word "speculation." You seem to not like to call things what they are ... Anyway, the parent did not make a case for why they're bad guys. Get over it. :)
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