

Ask HN: Name your company after your first product? - babyshake

Most YC companies have eponymous names. You make a product called Airbnb, so you call your company Airbnb Inc. There are some counter-examples (like 280 North), but they seem to be the exceptions.<p>But then there are the various "Labs" startups and 37 signals type shops that use umbrella names, which seems to work better if you release multiple products.<p>I'd appreciate any advice about which approach to take, assuming you're starting a fairly normal company that is going to start with one product but is likely to eventually build more.
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jeffmould
If you are building a single product and have no plans for further products it
is just as easy to name your company after your product, assuming that your
product has a "user-friendly" name and is simple to remember. For example,
AirBnB is catchy and easy to remember, and the company is built around the
single product.

If you know ahead of time that you will be marketing several products down the
road I think it is better to go with a name that encompasses those products
(i.e. Adobe, Microsoft, 37 Signals, Zynga, etc...).

Microsoft wasn't named Disk Operating System for a reason, it was named
Microsoft and DOS was a product so you combined the two to have Microsoft DOS.

Having a name that is different from the product if you plan to develop
multiple products makes it easier to spin off or sell that individual product
down the road. For example, it would be easy for Zynga to sell off the
Farmville asset without having to change their entire corporate marketing
scheme and deal with rebranding the company.

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bond
It depends if you're going to have multiple products or not.

If one product is the goal then go with company name=product name.

If multi product is the goal then go with a company name different than
product name. This way you'll be able to market several products under one
brand...

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Mz
Defining things in a way that is both adequately specific and adequately broad
is pretty challenging. Several really large companies have changed their names
after achieving a certain level of success. I kind of think this is a little
like those discussions about worrying about how to produce will scale: If you
get that successful, that's a good problem to have. Right now, not necessarily
so important. I mean, yeah, put some thought into it. But don't get too hung
up on it.

My .015 cents worth.

