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How to Name your Company

judegomila.com

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Re: How to Name your Company

#11

Post by judegomila »

tptacek wrote: post #9

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems…

You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.

Re: How to Name your Company

#12

Post by judegomila »

dreeves wrote: post #10

Great points! But just to list more counterexamples, from another Hacker News thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3181272 I'm pretty pleased with my own similar essay on this topic, which I called "Nominology": http://messymatters.com/nominology

Useful.

Re: How to Name your Company

#15

Post by domainregistry »

judegomila wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #9

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems…

You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.

"You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day."

One of the things I always suggest to people is running name choices by potential customers when appropriate. As such you simply wouldn't be able to do this in one day. Even if you just wanted to check and see how well people hear the name when you say it and can easily spell it that is going to take some time. The amount of care you take in this area of course is related to what the name is being used for of course.

Re: How to Name your Company

#16

Post by panabee »

tptacek wrote: post #9

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems…

Agree wholeheartedly.

Terrible names (e.g., Mad Cow for steak company) can sink companies, but companies by and large succeed because of their product, not their name. Amazon outshines everyone 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 paraphrase billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, brands are nothing more than proxies. Meaning, great names cannot hide poor products -- especially in the information age.

There are many examples of ordinary names representing extraordinary businesses. Apple. Four Seasons. Amazon. These names evoke excellence because the underlying services are excellent. Strong brands today will fade tomorrow once quality suffers. Think GM, Dell, and Sears. These were once among the most respected brands in America.

Build something people value, and value will flow to the name.

Re: How to Name your Company

#18

Post by domainregistry »

judegomila wrote: post #11
tptacek wrote: post #9

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems…

You should be able to pull off a great name in 1 day. Heroku is a great name: abstracted, unique, interesting and developer related. Ebay is also a great name.

Ebay had the advantage of a tremendous amount of free publicity because of when it started. While it's no longer relevant whether it's a good name or not that is certainly worth mentioning.

Heroku is an interesting name and has trademark and brand potential certainly because it's a made up word. The problem is it can be confused spelling wise. You could do hiroku or hirowku or herokoo just to name a few. It's usually a good idea if possible to steer clear of names like this lest you want your email, or some web visitors to end up in the wrong place.

A great name depends on the circumstances. Things have worked for heroku obviously given who they are selling to. It might have been a good name for a car model as well. But I wouldn't say a heroku like name is the right choice in all situations.

Re: How to Name your Company

#19

Post by tg3 »

hellosmithy wrote: post #13

What? Airbnb are re-branding to Air? That's a terrible idea.

I was also under the impression that BankSimple rebranded to Simple due to regulatory issues (I think certain states have rules about the type of company that can have the word "Bank" in the name).

Re: How to Name your Company

#20

Post by hnriot »

panabee wrote: post #16
tptacek wrote: post #9

Or, just name your company quickly and move on. We lost a couple weeks early on to naming Matasano, and after some false starts, eventually gave up and thumbed through a list of exotic plants. By the time the book of plants had been opened, the naming premise had been accepted: we were done trying to find a semantically "fitting" name for the company. We just picked a plant with a cool name. We ran into two "problems…

Agree wholeheartedly. Terrible names (e.g., Mad Cow for steak company) can sink companies, but companies by and large succeed because of their product, not their name. Amazon outshines everyone 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 paraphr…

Aren't GM, Dell and Sears still respected brands? The BigCorp I work for issues Dell laptops to everyone, I thought GM had regained it footing in the auto world and Sears is still the go-to place for a new dishwasher?
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