

How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding - paulitex
http://www.learndot.com/findings/how-to-name-your-startup/

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pud
According to the article, one of the reasons they changed the company name is
because it was hard for people to understand the old name when spoken
verbally.

Their new name seems to have the same problem.

For example:

Learndot: "Email me at paul-at-learn-dot-dot-com"

Customer: "learn dot com?"

Learndor "No, learn dot dot com"

Customer "???"

~~~
paulitex
Hey pud, OP here.

The thing is, we never say the domain. We say the name of the company. I
totally agree that "Learn dot dot com" is confusing. But "Learn dot" isn't.
Vast majority of people use Google to find things on the web (that was the
theory). Last couple weeks of trying it out has backed that up.

~~~
pud
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 as snarky. Naming isn't easy.

~~~
paulitex
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.

~~~
anigbrowl
Pud is right. You would have been better off going to a naming
company/consultant that does this as its trade, and also does the foreign
language checks, trademark searches, and so forth. Most large companies
outsource that sort of stuff because branding isn't their core competency.
Sorry to be so blunt.

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randomdrake
First off: great post!

I've told clients similar things before. You need to be able to tell someone
your website name and be able to have them find it very easily. Unless you're
one of the only ones in your space and people will find your site searching
for key terms, it's very important that your site is easy to find, pronounce
and spell.

With all that said, I'm curious as to why you went with a logo that, to me, is
hard to read? Before I even got to the body of your post, I was looking at the
background on the header image and struggled with:

Leai ndot...

Why did I have problems with this? The dot is often used as a syllable spacer
when you are looking at pronunciation guides. For example: mis·take.

I don't know if you considered this but I thought I'd mention it because I
can't be the only one. It seemed appropriate to mention since having a logo
that is easy to read and understand should go along with having a name that is
easy to pronounce and understand.

~~~
paulitex
[meta: HN is a great critic, the two biggest issues we had before pulling the
trigger was this one and what pud pointed out :)]

This was a tough call. We thought it was a clever design that tied together
the name mark and the logo. In the post I mentioned I printed it out and got
people on the street to read it – that was specifically because some people
found the 'r' hard to read!

If it turns out to be an issue for a lot of people, we'll revisit.

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fbuilesv
I'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 already taken but had never been used. I'd
be interested to learn what are the Twitter policies regarding this.

~~~
johns
The way to do this (I've heard) if you do not know anyone at Twitter is to buy
a lot of ads then ask your sales rep to see if they can help.

~~~
huhtenberg
That's certainly one way to get to know somebody who works at Twitter.

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pclark
I think the most important – and only thing – you should worry about naming
stuff is simply not having a terrible name. Honestly, learndot is very poor
for the reasons pud articulated.

* Have the .com

* Be able to pronounce it and the url without confusion.

Got those two things? Great, now get back to shipping your product. Seriously,
names are irrelevant and unless you have mega cash you're not going to get a
10x name (eg: path.com) so just make sure you're not terrible.

Here is a better name for learndot: learnduck.com you're welcome.

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MicahWedemeyer
Hey, let me also jump on the bandwagon of armchair-quarterbacking your
decision! -Insert quip about how easy it is to do this stuff here...- Boom! I
showed you!

Seriously, I'm not sure why everyone in this thread is so convinced that their
name or name-choosing process is somehow genius or better than that of the OP.
Obviously the OP knows that choosing a name is tough and you're never going to
get the perfect name. It's all about compromising in the right places to get a
name, a domain, a social presence, and so forth.

Personally, I found the story educational and a close parallel to my own
difficulties with choosing names. I'm especially grateful for the discussion
of buying the domain name. I'd like to hear the actual dollar value, but I can
understand why that wasn't mentioned. At least it's clear that the price moved
by $1000's which gives some frame of reference instead of us just guessing
whether it was $100 or $100,000.

~~~
paulitex
Thanks Micah. The final price was greater than 1k and less than 5k.

------
dreeves
Shameless 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.

~~~
artgon
How would you rate Learndot based on that scale?

~~~
dreeves
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!

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stanmancan
_It 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.

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debacle
I really like the story behind the domain acquisition. It sounded like it was
going to be unfun before you got to it, but I'm really glad it went over well
and it sounds like both parties were happy.

Sometimes it's the hardest part of the rebranding.

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Tyrant505
I learned quite an interesting "hack" to aid in naming a company. Talk to
children, under 10, and see what names they come up with and their reaction.
You will be quite surprised!

edit: a little proof; yumbud.com

------
eps
Tangentally related, мотыга is Russian for Hoe. As unglamorous and boring word
as it gets.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_(tool)>

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bonobo
Nice 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>

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se85
I think that spending 9 months on a naming problem and coming up with a name
that is still not very good at all is indicative of the real problem which is
that you guys need to look for outside help on this one from someone who has
the expertise to actually execute well in this area.

If you had done this originally, this blog post would never have been written,
but you would have had a superior name to learndotdotcom 8+ months ago.

I know it may look bad to change your name again, but thinking long term, this
confusion around this name is going to impact your organisation in ways that
you can't even measure so if it is at all an option at this case I would
strongly recommend pursuing an alternate path.

Sometimes its cheaper to do things the expensive way.

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madmax108
So, 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! :)

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mcrider
_Instead, put your subconscious to work on it. Think about it in the shower.
Bounce names around off hand. Be patient._

I'm a big fan of this technique in many aspects of my work. Whether it be a
programming problem or needing to work through a creative idea, if I'm not
100% confident in a solution I step away from the problem for a day or two and
usually have a lot more insight when I come back to it.

BTW, glad to see you guys moving forward; I check your blog once in a while
and haven't seen much lately. Good luck!

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ropz
I like the story, I like the website - it's pretty. You don't see so many
long-form websites. And based on the principle that improvement happens in
discernable, incremental steps forward - the new name is much better than the
old one. But what do they do? They're selling the sizzle, but to get to the
steak, you've got to sign up - estimate the number of 'learners' you might
create, and so on. This sounds more critical than it's meant to be. But what
do they do?

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capex
The 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...](http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-
important.html)

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ALee
A hack that we used in my previous startup was to come up with a bunch of
names, then send out a survey to friends and potential target customers and
asking them how much they like the name. You can also randomize the questions
so that people can just choose names that they like, then tell them what the
service is about, then have them choose again.

Takes the whole, "I like this name" arguments out of the mix.

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daemon13
Hi Paul,

how much time / money did it cost you to register your trademark? I've heard
from various sources that the time can be from 1 mth to 6 mth, and money from
$300 to $2000, so just wanted to check with the person who had first-hand
experience.

Also, can you recommend a lawyer for this kind of stuff.

thank you

~~~
prlambert
I haven't received the legal bill yet for the trademark work. Expect it to be
close to the middle of the range you gave. Time was minimal, a couple emails
to our trademark agent was all it took.

We're in Vancouver and our lawyers are Clark Wilson. I'm happy but this is my
first time registering a trademark, so I don't have a frame of reference.

email paul at learndot.com if you have other questions. :)

~~~
daemon13
Thank you...will do for sure.

So you are Canadians, nice to see the start-up land diversifying a bit. I was
in Toronto 14 years ago, loved Canada. Good luck with re-branding! :-)

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DanBC
I like this post!

Your "three tests of a name" don't mention "does someone else own that name,
or something similar, and are they likely to sue?" That could be important for
some people.

I'm really relieved that your name is 'learndot', and not 'learn.'.

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LoneWolf
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.

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nmahendran
I like it. I like the business cards. I like all of it!!

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erode
The ability to fluidly fire off your website address is just as important as
the actual name itself. You fumbled twice in a row, my friend.

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naww
I was thinking about getting "sheeple media", dot com and trademarks but it is
a bit condescending if you know what I mean.

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pwniekins
learndot[dot]com

"how to name your compnay"

nothx

