

Why I Left Microsoft - PaulMest
http://paulmestemaker.com/why-im-leaving-microsoft/

======
PaulMest
Hey, original author here. I had written about a few random topics before, but
this post single-handedly dwarfed the rest in pageviews, time on site, and
comments compared to all other posts on my site. I was talking with some
friends about it and they suggested I submit it to Hacker News.

The HN community has been influential in the ~1 year I have been lurking. I
hope to give back by distilling my learnings leaving a big company I enjoyed
being a part of and compare/contrast my lifestyle as a founder of a new
startup as we go through a lot of experimentation to find a sustainable
business model.

~~~
googoobaby
May I ask why the awful 'ly' startup name?

~~~
PaulMest
Heh, is Mythly really that bad?

We spent quite a long time trying to come up with an original name. We had a
few principles: * The name should be two syllables or at most three syllables.

* Something unique enough that we could easily win the top spot on search engines.

* Be able to register the .com

* Something to do with our mission/team/future brand (e.g. "myth" is about story telling)

Unfortunately, a lot of names we wanted were already taken, or the domain
names were taken. We had another name, but it was morphed from a previous
venture that had some issues with the other people involved so we didn't want
to get into a legal dispute over it. We had been showing around some
prototypes for quite some time and potential clients/partners really wanted a
name they could refer to us by so we sat down for hours and finally pulled the
trigger with Mythly.

~~~
shin_lao
Take it is easy, the name of the product/company doesn't matter too much.

Our software currently has a crappy name (wrpme) and as it's being successful
we're simply in the process of rebranding it.

The crappy name didn't prevent us from making a couple of successful sales...

Focus on value.

~~~
PaulMest
That's what we're hoping, too. Mythly is at least unique and haven't run into
too many people forgetting it.

"Focus on value" is great advice and very much inline with YC's mantra of
"build something people want". Thankfully, our prototypes have had some
consistently positive reactions. Now we just need to build something that is
strong enough to be released on the app store or showcase our talent in a more
scalable fashion.

