While this comment may not contribute much because I didn't read the article yet I would like to complain on the font size way too big for me to read comfortably without resorting to zoom. Not just the text but the "Stay Updated" area in the bottom too.
How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
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Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#32Shameless plug of my own take on this: http://messymatters.com/nominology Sam Stokes (Rapportive co-founder) called it his "favourite post on naming things". :) Ooh, and Sam's coworker called it "absolutely brilliant". I might be reaching now.
Dreeves~ Loved the post myself! Thank you for sharing. I at times wonder about my startup name, but your criteria laid out does help rationalize a decision.
Still am curious about names with numbers...37signals, or 86..
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#33I'm interested in this particular thing: Twitter handle was registered, but had never tweeted and looked abandoned. I contacted a friend who works at Twitter and after a bit of investigation was able to get @learndot as well Is this something that's easy to do? Can it be done if you don't know anyone inside Twitter? I had to settle for something like @myappnameapp instead of @myappname because the username was alread…
I had to do this sans connections, and found their form worked pretty well.
In my case I had a stronger claim - the company I was with (@ShirlawsUK) had registered the handle originally, but handed it over to an ex-staffer who had changed the password, never used it, and left several years prior (so email mailbox was long dead). Took about 48 hours from memory, and the account was ours again.
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#34It should say (or at least suggest) what you do, who you are, and what makes you different; your position in a word or two.
I spoke to a branding/marketing guy the other day that had a very interesting philosophy behind product and company names. His idea was that your name should make _no_ sense until you explain it to someone.
If you name your company "Stan's Golf Lessons" then you fit into the crowd. You don't stand out. Your customer know's exactly what you do based on your name and they don't dig for more information. They also don't remember you in specific when they want golf lessons. Instead, name your company "Perfect Lies". This gets peoples attention. They have no clue what you do, but it piques their interest. They ask what it means. You tell them you give golf lessons, and suddenly the name Perfect Lies makes more sense (for non-golfers, 'lie' means where your ball sits on the course). They remember you.
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#35Shameless plug of my own take on this: http://messymatters.com/nominology Sam Stokes (Rapportive co-founder) called it his "favourite post on naming things". :) Ooh, and Sam's coworker called it "absolutely brilliant". I might be reaching now.
How would you rate Learndot based on that scale?
Great question! Let's see...
EVOC: green, especially with the cute tagline, "learning, period"
BREV: green or yellow; slightly shorter than wikipedia
GREP: green; perfectly greppable
GOOG: green; perfectly googlable
PRON: green; perfectly pronounceable
SPEL: yellow or red, given the confusion with "learn dot dot com"
VERB: yellow; the verbification isn't obvious but probably verbable
So all in all I think it's a good name!
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#36The most attractive website, with a catchy name, and all the bells and whistles amounts to nothing if your product is nothing to be proud of.
Why not choose a simple name with a different TLD? Basecamp has been basecamphq all these years. Also, read Evan Williams' thoughts on this: http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-impo...
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#37Nice reading. The catch-22 mentioned in the article ringed a bell to me. I'm prone to analysis paralysis whenever I need to choose a name, especially if I start thinking about these kind of things. Seriously, it's been about four months since I decided to choose a new nickname on github, and so far I didn't find anything that satisfies me.
This tendency leads me to take the opposite strategy: take a word that has no special meaning (checking first that it has no bad connotations, of course), that sounds rather good and it's easy to spell. I also often wonder if taking a name that has a deep relation with your current targets won't hurt you whenever you need to pivot.
I also liked the discussion that developed on another thread about a month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684599
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that case: Learndot: "Our company is called learndot." Customer: "Learn dot what?" Learndot: "Learn dot nothing - that's the name of the company." Customer: "Learn dot nothing?" Learndot: "Well, dot com." Customer: "Learn dot com? Why didn't you say that?" Learndot: "No, it's learn dot dot com." Customer: "Dot dot?" Learndot: "No, the first dot is spelled dee-oh-tee." Customer: "???" I hope I'm not coming across a…
Fair enough - usually I just say "Learndot, dee oh tee" and it's no problem. Though I agree it's not perfect. The other factors balanced it out (spellability, MVP-ness and so forth). You're right, naming is hard.
I understand that it may be difficult over the phone, but that would be just about the only confusing moment. Although considering they found your phone number, they already know your name. If they find it on the internet your SEO rating is helped by the name a little. If you are talking to them in person, they will have your card in hand or some visual. Also, if they have confusion with the name, you have an excuse to hand it to them. I no issues with this name.
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#39learndot[dot]com
"how to name your compnay"
nothx
Re: How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding
#40So, you spent 9 months on changing a name (which IMHO is just as peculiar as matygo, as the comments in this thread have shown), rather than working on your product itself?
Nice blog mate, but seriously think you're losing track of time here. Facebook (thefacebook), Twitter (twttr), Google (a typo of Googol) are all products that didn't take naming too seriously when they started. Don't you think spending 9 months on a rebranding campaign for a startup that was set up just 3 years ago is a little rash?
Personally, loved the earlier Matygo logo.... the 2 word bubbles intersecting told me everything I needed to know about the company. And the business card was sharp too.
Hope this all works out for you guys! :)