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Depending on your market, you want to find something that 1. you can pronounce well [1], and 2. whose pronunciation and meaning are clear across countries.
[1] I'm an Italian living in US, especially in the beginning I had this problem
The best metaphor for this might be aerodynamic drag. A bad name can slow you down. You'll prevail eventually if you're good enough, but slower than you would have done with a good name. Whereas a good name won't get you anywhere without a good product, just as a plane with a low drag coefficient won't go anywhere without powerful engines.
"a plane with a low drag coefficient won't go anywhere without powerful engines." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_%28aircraft%29
Stepping back to a less sarcastic point, your metaphor is useful. I don't really understand why Medium is called Medium, but it doesn't really matter, because I have a degree of trust in where it came from.
In the most polite way, I must ask: what are you hoping to accomplish with this poll? Of course a name "matters:" you can't call your flower company "moldy cheese flowers."
It is something I've thought a lot about and wondered. You consistently see "hip" short names come out of YC for example. Sometimes it's just a word with "ly" attached to it, sometimes it's the concatenation of two short words. Rarely do I see multiword names or traditional, older style names with "the" or "co"/"company". So I think the answer is probably more nuanced than "as long as it's not a name that is blatantl…
My default position after watching this industry for a few years is that if you have a trendy name, I won't even bother visiting your home page. I'll change my mind given a good reason, but that would be something like a personal recommendation from a trusted source or seeing favourable comments from credible posters on sites like HN.
For example, right now, if you have a start-up and you have chosen a name consisting of some random, non-descriptive word followed by ".ly" or ".io", I am going to assume you would be a waste of my time without even looking. Sure, I might miss out on a good thing for a while, but I'm willing to accept that risk to avoid forming a foolish business partnership with a couple of youngsters who once read a book about MVPs, spent a weekend throwing up a sign-up page using Bootstrap, and hope to flip their company or at least secure an acqui-hire within a year. When you launch selfish.ly or blocking.io, that's what you look like in my head.
Yes, names matter a lot. Being that a name is a basis for a brand, and building the right brand is a core of building a successful business, you can not underestimate it. Two of my favorite naming examples are Dropbox and GoPro, both manage to be memorable, succinct and convey a clear purpose without being cheap, literal or generic (e.g. "ShareAnywhere"). I'm sure these names helped the brands get to where they are.
Unless you adopt a definition of the term "brand" that is so general as to be useless, building the right brand is not the core of building a successful business; that is the kind of thing a PR firm would say. For every Dropbox, there's a Heroku.
"I'll put it in the Dropbox tonight."
If you treat this as an equation, you want to increase: % of people that 'Get' what you do (off the bat), and % of instances people can easily recall your name, the next time they have that problem you solve.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"a plane with a low drag coefficient won't go anywhere without powerful engines." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glider_%28aircraft%29
CUT TO: A glider, motionless on the ground, trying to go somewhere. Stepping back to a less sarcastic point, your metaphor is useful. I don't really understand why Medium is called Medium, but it doesn't really matter, because I have a degree of trust in where it came from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you adopt a definition of the term "brand" that is so general as to be useless, building the right brand is not the core of building a successful business; that is the kind of thing a PR firm would say. For every Dropbox, there's a Heroku.
I think where this might fork a little is consumer vs enterprise. Dropbox is meant to be understood by a much wider audience than Heroku. For a consumer facing company being easily understood makes you much more accessible to many more consumers. It also makes your service more memorable when your name is: simple, appropriate, and conversation-optimized. "I'll put it in the Dropbox tonight." If you treat this as an e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think where this might fork a little is consumer vs enterprise. Dropbox is meant to be understood by a much wider audience than Heroku. For a consumer facing company being easily understood makes you much more accessible to many more consumers. It also makes your service more memorable when your name is: simple, appropriate, and conversation-optimized. "I'll put it in the Dropbox tonight." If you treat this as an e…
I'd be interested in any kind of study that demonstrated that rigorously, but I'm pretty skeptical by default. Most consumer brands I can think of are completely meaningless taken on their own, and to the extent they mean anything, it's not even the right thing. What does a "Wal" Mart sell? What do I buy at a "McDonald's"? IKEA?! Is "Siemens" a German condom company? Is a "Safeway" a shelter for victims of violence?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296304...
Consequently naming is not the end all be all of branding. But studies have shown that a name's: connotations, imagery, and ability to generate "top of mind awareness", has proven to generate equity and favorably move a company upwards in consumer preference ranking. This may be diluted at when a company reaches a certain critical mass.
But consider this: Why wouldn't you want a name that's expressive to: who you are, and what you do as a company? It makes you much easier to remember and talk about.
If you search brand name in google scholar there's many more interesting studies on this subject.
tldr: It's not everything but it certainly helps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you adopt a definition of the term "brand" that is so general as to be useless, building the right brand is not the core of building a successful business; that is the kind of thing a PR firm would say. For every Dropbox, there's a Heroku.
Possibly the opposite. A successful business turns into being the right brand? As one example, I can't think of a more generic name than Southwest Airlines, but somehow they've managed to brand themselves as the fun airline. With a little more effort, I'm sure even better examples could be identified. Coca-cola? McDonald's? Meaningless names.