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How to name your startup

joel.is

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Re: How to name your startup

#51

Post by eps »

larrys wrote: post #34

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offe…

Exactly. This applies, conservatively, to a good half of HowTo articles hitting HN's front page lately.

Re: How to name your startup

#52

Post by conversionrater »

Naming a startup is something that I feel is both overrated and underrated. How can it be both?

It's overrated because there are a great deal of example of companies with names that were meaningless, hard to spell, nonsense, spelled incorrectly, or had some other problem but due to a great product or other factors the company still ends up being very successful.

It's also underrated because there are also tons of examples of startups that used their name to be memorable, add to their brand identity, explain their service, or provided some other major benefit that's so valuable it's hard to measure.

The original post here is good, but I'd advise startups to take naming very seriously, try and match your name with a .com domain if possible, but that it's also not going to break you.

A great name and a bad product will fail. A great product and a bad name will still win.

Re: How to name your startup

#53

Post by gamzer »

larrys wrote: post #34

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offe…

Most of those how-to guides lack meaningful data and/or studies and/or logic.

Just one example: "The domain name doesn’t matter"

How on earth can one come up with such a broad statement without studying the answer for... years?

Oh, he or she "learned it". Now, you can call me a believer!

Re: How to name your startup

#54

Post by diminish »

dools wrote: post #42
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 w…

it is not a one buyer really. a competitor would also be interested in your domain name.

Re: How to name your startup

#55

Post by joelg87 »

larrys wrote: post #34

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offe…

I don't claim OnePage was a success by any means, in fact in many of my other articles I use OnePage as a reference to countless mistakes and learning which helped me with Buffer. One thing I would say, however, is that the reason OnePage didn't succeed was not because the domain wasn't onepage.com ;)

We have a long way to go with Buffer but I'm very happy with the growth so far: we're a top 4000 website (alexa) and with almost 300,000 users we see 130,000 shares per day via the platform and are fast approaching a $1M annual revenue run rate through our freemium model. We also have some top investors on board in our seed round we closed at the end of last year. We've done all this with the domain bufferapp.com.

I'm not an expert of anything, this is just how I would approach naming a new startup if I were to start something today. I agree your suggested title is perhaps more appropriate. That said, I did draw attention to a few other successful startups, and some of them have been running for a while now.

Re: How to name your startup

#56

Post by dools »

diminish wrote: post #54
dools wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

it is not a one buyer really. a competitor would also be interested in your domain name.

It may be the case that in some weird domain squatting affiliate marketing universe, someone would be able to make money from basecamp.com if 37 signals still ran things on basecamphq.com, but are you honestly saying that if they weren't, then Atlassian would seriously be interested in buying basecamp.com for some nefarious purpose? That they'd have been able to somehow prevent basecamp from becoming the dominant player it has by redirecting basecamp.com to the Jira homepage so that people would try and find basecamp.com then just think "fuck it, well I'm here now, I'll just use this".

I don't buy it ... do you have any actual examples of this having happened?

Re: How to name your startup

#57

Post by abcd_f »

joelg87 wrote: post #55
larrys wrote: post #34

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offe…

I don't claim OnePage was a success by any means, in fact in many of my other articles I use OnePage as a reference to countless mistakes and learning which helped me with Buffer. One thing I would say, however, is that the reason OnePage didn't succeed was not because the domain wasn't onepage.com ;) We have a long way to go with Buffer but I'm very happy with the growth so far: we're a top 4000 website (alexa) and…

You are clearly attention whoring by choosing titles that are more likely to generate foot traffic than to accurately reflect the contents. This is disingenuous. You are, as GP said, in no position to offer authoritative advice, so you might try and respect your target audience and puff your cheeks less.

Re: How to name your startup

#58

Post by larrys »

philwelch wrote: post #39
larrys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seem to be arguing against a comment I didn't even write.

I'm taking issue with the use of the word "squatters" in the way you used it.

Re: How to name your startup

#59

Post by larrys »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #50
larrys wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

"Yeah I don't understand what you're arguing against either."

I'm arguing against the use of the word squatting to describe people who buy domain names with the intent of reselling who are not infringing on obvious and famous trademarks.

Squatting is identified commonly as:

"Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land and/or a building - usually residential - that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting

Specifically if we replace the real estate with the domain name we can see that the person who has acquired the domain name that they wish to sell does "own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use".

Certain words and expressions have negative connotations and "squatting" is certainly one of them. They are used incorrectly many times by writers to get people's emotions up and band them together against something the writer is trying to achieve.

Re: How to name your startup

#60

Post by philwelch »

larrys wrote: post #58
philwelch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be arguing against a comment I didn't even write.

I'm taking issue with the use of the word "squatters" in the way you used it.

It's the commonly used term for the business model. Sorry if you find it offensive, but you've done a masterful job of missing the damned point.
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