This is invaluable advice. You should start a web service with which people like me can submit all the crappy domain names we think about buying and you give us feedback. I'll let you think of the name for it though...
How to Name your Company
61–70 of 75 posts
Re: How to Name your Company
#62... All that and the best you could come up with was "Heyzap"?
I did not realize that the author was from the company named Heyzap. When they used it as an example of a good name, I scoffed and then hit the back button. That name is one of the worst out there. I don't know why in particular but it annoys the hell out of me every time I see it.
Re: How to Name your Company
#63slashdot?
Re: How to Name your Company
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Braintree is the name of a town in England... I think they came from there. I dont think there was a suggestion of brains on trees.
Braintree is named after the town in Massachusetts, because the founder liked John Adams: https://www.braintreepayments.com/blog/whats-in-a-name-custo...
Many of the towns in MA were named after towns/cities/counties in the UK (Essex in particular); Braintree, Chelmsford, Billerica[y], etc. Indeed the counties of MA are mainly UK town/city names in the UK. It's only 3 out of the 14 that aren't (Dukes, Franklin, Nantucket).
It always made me chuckle to see so many place names I recognised from home (UK) when I visited our office in Lowell, MA.
Re: How to Name your Company
#65Or, 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…
Another reason not to procrastinate on the name, logo, etc: Almost everyone starts more than one product/company. Most of these fail. I seem to remember that 30% of YC companies change their product during YC.
I can tell you from experience - the 5th time that I had to come up with a name/logo for a company, because I switched to a new idea, I already understood that this was not a productive use of time.
Re: How to Name your Company
#66Meh. These days it's so hard to find an available .com name that any bootstrapped startup is probably going to find its name by spending quality time at a domain registrar.
Re: How to Name your Company
#67Or, 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…
I don't mean to offend you but Matasano is probably one of the worse names I've encountered in the past few years. My thought process:
1) Sounds like Monsanto, do they do agriculture? Sounds boring.
2) Sounds Latin American, is that their origin / market they're focusing on? Sounds boring.
So I think there are a lot of names where you guys could've avoided those 2 problems. I still don't think of Matasano as a high-tech company. I think of a mexican farmer that's trying to sell me grain.
Re: How to Name your Company
#68Considering that you are naming a new company some of these points are not valid/applicable. Being memorable is not easy unless people can repeatedly bump on to you which requires that your keep it in the news/advertising or that people can find you through mental or google searches. If you choose an abstract name people are not likely to find you again through search. I believe it's important for the name or part of the name to contain something descriptive. Names like "apple" "stripe" "zynga" are completely random; it would be a bad idea to name your bookmarking app after a tree or a liquor. Now, 'paypal', that's a great name. In the end however, a name is just a name, and doesn't really matter that much.
Re: How to Name your Company
#69Or, 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…
Matasano sounds good to me. I want to start a business ay some point called something like Jorge's Taco Truck. The business will not be owned by Jorge, there will be no sale of tacos, and we won't have a truck. I bet the name would be just fine, perhaps even memorable.
Re: How to Name your Company
#70This just inspired me to throw out my startup's name and buy a new domain.
Really? If you don't mind my asking, what did you throw out and what did you switch to?