

What's the story behind the name of your startup/company ? - Stasyan

It would be interesting to know what influenced the choice of name of your company ? What other names were amongst the candidates and why they weren't chosen ? Is there a story behind your company's name ?
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matt1
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 available domain names. Surprise
suprise: some of them were not half bad. "Hey, I thought, some people might
find this useful." I dropped the other ideas and started working on a new
project:

<http://www.domainpigeon.com>

The name -- Domain Pigeon -- was discovered using the software I originally
wrote to find available domain names. That same software found the 90,000+
domain and Twitter names that are currently listed on the site.

On an unrelated note, a decent percentage of people that search for Domain
Pigeon on Google misspell it: 'Domain Pidgeon' (like fridge or ridge)--stupid
French etymology. I also own and redirect people from domainpidgeon.com
because of that hiccup. I admit its a little ironic that its a somewhat
difficult domain name... :)

~~~
pclark
+1 for domainpigeon, its awesome.

~~~
matt1
+1 for pclark for his neverending kind words

~~~
pclark
(domainpigeon appears to be down?)

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ryanwaggoner
Ours is a tale of the sunk cost fallacy. Back in 2006, we started working on a
social network aggregator called BlueSwarm that was very similar to FriendFeed
or SocialThing. We originally called it BlueSwarm.org, because the .com was
taken, but just before we launched in Summer 2007, we bought the .com, paying
way way more than we should have. Stupid. Anyway, the launch went OK, but
after awhile, we realized that the space was crowding fast and it was a
difficult idea to monetize, so we put it on the back-burner.

Meanwhile, we launched a little side blog called MightyBrand that covered
personal branding through social media. We posted there occasionally, but not
much. It was one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas you do on a weekend that
gradually lose steam over the next few months.

In early 2008, we decided to take the codebase from BlueSwarm and re-purpose
it to be a social media monitoring platform for brands. This is where the sunk
cost fallacy comes in: because we paid so much for the BlueSwarm.com domain,
we really wanted to use it, so our social media monitoring platform for brands
and companies was also called BlueSwarm. We went through these mental
marketing gymnastics trying to relate it to what we were doing: "Who's
swarming around your brand?" We launched an alpha prototype under BlueSwarm
and applied to YC as BlueSwarm.

Finally, about six months later, we realized that it probably wasn't the best
fit, and it suddenly dawned on us that MightyBrand was actually a pretty good
name for what we were attempting to do, and would grow with us as we expand
because just monitoring. So when we launched our public beta in Jan 2009, we
had completely re-branded as MightyBrand.

PS - If anyone wants to buy BlueSwarm.com, .net, and .org, email me. :)

~~~
MikeMacMan
You should try to sell BlueSwarm.com to the Columbus Blue Jackets :)

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lacker
Some angel investor who wanted to cut a check couldn't spell the name of the
company right, so we had to change the name of the company to the misspelled
version and live with it forever. It was a disaster! Watch out for bad company
names!

~~~
brlewis
That's a real bummer. Maybe your company should save up cash to buy googol.com
and fix the situation.

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pclark
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, awesome. If its clever,
awesome. Be wary of long names - we love _Broadersheet_ , but it is rather
long. We'll see.

Don't do the d.o.t thing, its lame, annoying, hinders your audience, maybe
even hurts your SEO. Yahoo bought delicious.com, and note the techy audience
initially.

I have this belief, you know you've found a great name (eg "how about z?")
when you then type z into a domain checker and the .com is available -- I take
that as a sign of _yes!_

~~~
ivankirigin
Isn't DropBox's success evidence that domains don't matter that much?

I suppose they are mainly download software, and not a destination site. Also,
the site can be reached from the desktop with a direct link.

~~~
pclark
how many users were put off by the domain (eg, couldnt find it / signed up to
wrong service)? Answer: you don't know, but you can guarantee at least 1 was.

~~~
ivankirigin
I'm sure you're right, that users like it less. But you can't say a good
domain is requires for success, given theirs.

~~~
pclark
certainly not, but a bad name can _restrict_ success.

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anuraggoel
My criteria:

1\. Acceptable

2\. Trivial to spell and pronounce for target audience (and from lacker's
comment, I suppose investors too)

3\. Unique enough to be the top result when searched by name

4\. No existing trademarks

5\. An intelligent answer for how the name is associated with the product

6\. Unregistered .com

I try not to spend more than a few hours brainstorming names because it's an
endless process. The product should define the name, not the other way around.

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greaterscope
From my post here: [http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional-
soft...](http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional-software/)

Back in 2002 I thought of "Intentional Software" as a company name. It was
supposed to imply that we wouldn’t be creating haphazardly designed products.
But then again, I'd only been coding for a year or two at the time, which
doesn't seem like enough time to be doing anything other than haphazard
development.

All of that is beside the point, because Charles Simonyi came along a few
years later and started a company of the same name. He was born well before me
so he had a killer head-start. Plus, as the originator of "hungarian
notation", he knew how to not program all willy-nilly.

My ideas for a company name progressed, especially once I stopped using the
space bar. Out came "Greaterscope" as a possibility. The encapsulation of
optimistic, forward-looking, expansive ... a chord was struck. Or rather, a
saw was wobbled to make a sound. But don’t worry, the saw’s teeth are clean.
(Yeah, that was a stretch, but I had to reference Scope mouthwash somewhere,
since you probably thought of it upon seeing our company name)

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alexkearns
I recently went through the process of choosing a name for my current project
(<http://www.webalon.com/gamemanager/>). The site is aimed at the casual
gaming market. This is a pretty crowded area, and most of the good names -
game.com, player.com... - have long since been taken and even average names
like - playfire, casualgames, gameking, playhub etc, etc - have been snuffled
up. Choosing a name was always therefore going to have to be a big compromise,
determined to a large part by what was available.

In cases like this, when most of the best names have already been taken, I
find that a thesaurus is invaluable in coming up with a half decent name. My
project is a rich interent style app for creating and managing a library of
online games. Think iTunes for online games. So I was looking for a name that
would capture the ideas of both collecting and playing. Scouring the
thesaurus, I came up with a few different words for collections, and
eventually drew up a list of potentual urls. This was then whittled down
significantly to remove names that had already been taken.

This left me with the following:

playheap.com playhoard.com plather.com (play and gather) plhub.com

To be honest, none of these got me particularly excited. I could live with one
of them, if I had to. But ideally I would like something a bit more
interesting. So back to the thesaurus, this time looking at alternative words
for playing or gaming. This eventually led me to the word: gambol, which means
'to leap about playfully'. That's quite a nice word. It has a pretty cool
meaning, and even better it starts with the first three letters of 'game'. On
the downside, most people probably won't know what the word means and it also
sounds a bit like gamble.

But as I said at the start, choosing a name was always going to be a big
compromise. I was never going to get my ideal name. Unfortunately, gambol.com
was taken. Back to the thesaurus, then. Wait a sec. Why not stick an "io" on
the end. It worked for "tr", after all!

So there you have it, my chosen name for my new project: gambolio.com

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mgk
Use a name that doesn't mean anything.

It will violate the branding law that a name should impart some sense of what
the product/service does, but I think it's worth sacrificing that dogma in
favor of having a name that: 1\. Will derive a decent Google search without
having to fool with any SEO stuff. 2\. Work internationally. 3\. Will be
distinctive. 4\. Will provide the flexibility you'll need as your
product/service evolves over time.

After wasting a ton of time trying to come up with a name, we took the first
letter of four key words that were relevant to our software, stuck them in to
scrabble dot com, got some suggested words, one of which was pithy and sounded
OK, and then stuck a 'x' on the end to make it unique.

The dot com is easy if it's made up.

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sunir
Some of our customers at FreshBooks remember use from the days the product was
named after the company name: 2ndSite. That name has all sorts of problems,
not least the website (<http://www.secondsite.biz/>) so at the top of 2006
they decided to rebrand.

Well, that's putting it lightly. They actually murdered the brand:

<http://www.brandmurder.com/>

For those of you curious about how we chose FreshBooks as the new brand, Mike
wrote all about it in ThinkVitamin:

[http://thinkvitamin.com/single/features/how-to-name-your-
com...](http://thinkvitamin.com/single/features/how-to-name-your-company/)

P.S. Pro tip: .biz is not .hip. ;)

\-- Sunir, Chief Handshaker, FreshBooks

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Dyllionaire
Our (Leah and Dylan Higginbotham) company is called HugaMonkey. We make and
sell baby slings! When we decided to start the company we knew that it would
start out online and have a strong ninternet presence. We brought my buddy
(Clint Eagar) along because he had created and sold an internet business
before. Clint and I spent several days coming up with different names that
might convey a baby sling in use. As we came up with the names, we'd check to
see if the domain was available. One after another, our clever names
(wraparoo, cuddlebug, etc...) were shot down. We got on a "huga" kick with
hugakid, hugabug until we came to hugamonkey. It was funny and memorable.
Luckily the domain was available, so we snagged it. It's a great name because
people laugh when they hear it and rarely forget it!

------
tjit
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?).

~~~
qeorge
Now that you've explained it I can see how its pronounced. But honestly I
would have thought it was "tee jetter".

I like the local flavor though.

~~~
tjit
Thanks for informing me about how americans (you are, right?) interpret the
name.

We'll see whether this will hinder growth in any way. I hope not ofcourse :)

~~~
qeorge
Yes, I am American. I suppose by assuming you'd know I highlighted that quite
well :)

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qeorge
Our company is named Illuminati Karate, which arose from an MF Doom (as King
Ghedorah) song, "No Snakes Alive."

We wanted something memorable, rhyming, and catchy that we could own in Google
and get the dotcom. We also liked the themes of higher knowledge and
discipline the name implies.

We've been in business for a few years, and if I had it to do over I would
probably choose a different name. That said, I started my business with one of
my best friends, and a big part of the spark that got it off the ground was
our desire to do something different. So in that sense, a ridiculous name like
Illuminati Karate captures the spirit that started the enterprise.

Regarding domains, Google my company's name. There's a pretty good story that
will come up.

~~~
tezza
He 'wrote the book on Rhymes, a Note from the Author.'

Good choice!

~~~
qeorge
Thanks, I appreciate it. Madvillainy is a classic.

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jlees
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.)

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workpost
<http://www.workpost.com>

Bought workpost.com in 2003, intending to turn it into some kind of work /
labor-related site (a place to find and post work etc.). Years later, we're
finally doing something with it.

Even back then, it was not particularly easy to find a good domain name..

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mparent61
My new company is called Monkey Wrench Games.

We liked the idea of "mixing up the games industry", and my co-founder had a
cool idea for a logo. Oh, and we'd tried 100 other names, and they were either
all taken or not-quite-right.

<http://www.monkeywrenchgames.com>

~~~
alexkearns
Cool logo!

~~~
mparent61
HAHAH Thanks!

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longint
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.

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jhancock
patternWare - 1990s company, Smalltalk Application Frameworks. The name is in
"camel-case" as any cool Smalltalk company should be. Later we rewrote the
frameworks for Java and the name continued to fit.

eunum - 1999 dot-com start-up. Name came from the latin "e" and "unum". I got
the words off a dollar bill sitting next to my PC after a late nite of
searching for a domain name that wasn't taken. eunum was about convergence
between client/sevrer and web-centric interaction. This would later be called
"rich internet applications".

ShellShadow - current company. I like the alliteration and thus far I've never
had to spell the name for anyone. I'm still quite amazed that my first choice
was available.

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racy_rick
[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.

------
csbartus
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

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jamroom
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 ;)

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andhapp
I normally pick the names of my projects randomly. But the names in some sense
describe the essence of the project. If its an outstanding name it will
definitely stick.

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

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skwiddor
It's a palindrome and I'm going to use it as a document mirroring service, not
finished yet so not posting the name.

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rossriley
One Black Bear We drank lots and somehow a name came from the session. I
Highly recommend it, it seems to be well liked.

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Dana
Wiggio.com - we strive to provide the simplest platform for people to Work In
Groups (hence the W.I.G.)... the G.I.O. was added to make it sticky

