What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#31

Post by knightinblue » Tue, May 05, 2009, 4:06 PM UTC

tjit wrote: post #6

Ours is "Tjetter" ( http://www.tjetter.com ), which is "Chatter" spelled phonetically in Dutch. We really wondered whether this would be a good idea, because I'm guessing it's practically impossible to pronounce 'tjetter' in English (is it not?).

If you were to pronouce this name to me (an american) and ask me to type it in, I would probably do this - cheddar.com

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#32

Post by jlees » Tue, May 05, 2009, 4:26 PM UTC

My company's name is a play on words and also deliberately begins with A to be near the front of alphabetical listings, but this has also backfired in that I had to go first on two recent pitching sessions.

My product's name, I'm not sure about. It seems to stick in people's heads, and is a combination of a term that describes what the product does and a number, so we could get the .com. (The number's relevant to the product as well, but I don't really like the complicated name that results.)

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#33

Post by spatulon » Tue, May 05, 2009, 4:35 PM UTC

pclark wrote: post #4

names are mostly irrelevant. domains however, are not. Make sure you get the .com, make sure you get all the typos (if you haven't bought ~10 domains you're doing it wrong). Avoid stuff like "getx" (getdropbox) no one remembers the get and that'll piss users off, you'll also have to deal with dropbox.com being a competitor/spammer/something bad down the line. If you can get a name that vaguely tells what you do, awes…

I agree about the importance of having a .com domain, but it's still rather unfortunate, since I can only presume it's the primary cause of all the obnoxious nonsense-words we see as Web 2.0 company names.

Flickr, digg, reddit, pownce, frappr, tumblr spring to mind as a few high-profile example.

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#34

Post by racy_rick » Tue, May 05, 2009, 4:58 PM UTC

[perhaps nsfw link (adult novelties, etc)]

We wanted to sound racy and to be non-graphic and originally had racytoys.com before we obtained http://racy.com last year.

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#35

Post by undefinable » Tue, May 05, 2009, 5:01 PM UTC

After watching the movie Sunshine, I got the name for my company IcarusONE

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#36

Post by matt1 » Tue, May 05, 2009, 5:28 PM UTC

pclark wrote: post #30

matt1 wrote: post #5

I was finishing up my last project and looking for something new to work on. I wanted a good name for it so I hit up ajaxwhois.com, where I spent a good ten hours over the course of two or three weeks looking for a good domain name for one of the projects I was considering (How crazy is that: I was letting the domain name availability decide which project I would pursue). Frustrated, I wrote some software to scan for…

+1 for domainpigeon, its awesome.

+1 for pclark for his neverending kind words

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#37

Post by longint » Tue, May 05, 2009, 5:30 PM UTC

LeraoSoft. Lerao is an alternate name for Yggdrasil or the Norse World Tree. We chose this based off of philosophy and it sounds not too bad. Also gave us some excelent project names, including Mimir. Too bad that Mimir is a Database... wish i knew that before o-well.

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#38

Post by jamroom » Tue, May 05, 2009, 5:53 PM UTC

Talldude Networks, LLC. - I'm 6' 10", and really am a "tall dude". After hearing this for years from other people - "man your a tall dude", I thought it was appropriate ;)

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#39

Post by pclark » Tue, May 05, 2009, 6:13 PM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #36

pclark wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for domainpigeon, its awesome.

+1 for pclark for his neverending kind words

(domainpigeon appears to be down?)

Re: What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ?

#40

Post by csbartus » Tue, May 05, 2009, 6:20 PM UTC

when creating a brand i'm always inventing a new word, a new name.

it's the best part of the whole venture, it takes time, lot of dreaming and skipping to the real word but the final feeling is fantastic: cathaia, smuff, kobi, mushka ...

all names have the story of the business behind them + made to be remembered immediately in their context:

cathaia was an ai r&d company, smuff is a gadget & gizmo webshop, kobi is personal finances and mushka is a private fashion store