
Paul Graham's long-lost 2006 Infogami essay, "Startup Names" - dreeves
http://messymatters.com/pgnames.html
======
dirtyaura
If you are interested in evaluating names, I recommend reading The Igor Naming
Guide: [http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-
guide.p...](http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.pdf)

They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about
different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative.
Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke
an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning.
Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a
experiential name.

A quote from the manual:

 _One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke
the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or
a direct experience_

The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great
(evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines:

"But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or

"Religious people will be offended"

Or Caterpillar:

"Tiny, creepy-crawly bug",

"Not macho enough – easy to squash",

"Why not "bull" or "workhorse" "?

It's a great read.

------
staunch
I think things have changed a lot since then (it has been half a decade), but
it's still mostly right.

Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't
want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011.

These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains
like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com,
Oink.com.

For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of
credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered.
You'll have to buy them off someone.

For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names
like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will
do the job perfectly fine.

~~~
btmorex
_Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com,
Oink.com_

With the possible exception of groupon and dropbox, all of those names would
very expensive to acquire. The problem is that a startup typically has to pick
a name before they have $50000+ to drop on a domain.

~~~
staunch
I believe Dropbox and Groupon were both quite expensive (but acquired after
significant traction/funding).

Mint.com on the other hand was purchased with ~$180k in Series A stock. The
domain owner ended up making $1+ million when the company was acquired. The
founder (Aaron Patzer) seems to think it was one of the very best decisions he
made.

The paradox of choosing a domain is that you buy it when your company is small
but you live with it when your company is big.

It's a lot like choosing real-estate for a restaurant. You can launch your
restaurant in a bad location, build it up, and then move. Or you can find a
great location and build it there. A great location doesn't mean you will be
successful (it's just a big advantage), and a bad location doesn't mean you
will fail (it's just a big disadvantage).

~~~
tesseract
> The paradox of choosing a domain is that you buy it when your company is
> small but you live with it when your company is big.

thefacebook.com didn't, to pick one example.

~~~
sector
Nor did getdropbox.com, or mymint.com

~~~
staunch
It's a fair point. You can move domains. Mint isn't an example of that though.
Patzer bought mymint.com but didn't launch with it. He got mint.com before any
press/traction.

------
InfinityX0
One of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is
the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little
value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has
itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant
thinking could probably create a name that would only be _slightly_ less
effective.

Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no
idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit
generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper
domain.

But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as
"shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as
potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the
physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does"
connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant
comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.

------
btmorex
This whole problem would be solved if .com's cost $100+ per year to register.
Don't have that kind of money? Get a different TLD. I'm tired of having every
single name I can think of -- even bad ones -- already registered and unused.

------
neilk
How is Viaweb verbable?

"I viawebbed that store." "We're going to viaweb our platform"... I think not.

~~~
dreeves
Yeah, sort of a stretch. What I thought pushed it off the fence though was
that it's a whole adverbial phrase which is pretty cool and in the same spirit
as verbability. "Should we sell this stuff brick-and-mortar or viaweb?"

------
dy
Thanks for archiving this and how prescient this was about color.com: "Nothing
could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup “cool.com.”

~~~
davidhansen
I may be biased here, but I don't understand the animosity toward exact-match
domain names. The claim is made that such a name is uncool, but an
explanation, for why this is so, is not self-evident.

~~~
abuzzooz
(Apologies for going off on a tangent)

Personally I don't like domain names like cool.com or color.com because they
are impossible to google. Apple is probably the exception that proves this
rule.

~~~
davidhansen
That is a fair point, but what about product domain names, e.g. shirts.com,
beer.com, etc, for companies that sell those specific product types?

~~~
wanorris
If you own "shirts.com" then you definitely ought to make a website out of it.
You have a huge advantage, and you should use it.

But if you were making a website to sell shirts, you might reasonably ask
whether it's worth it to spend the money to buy shirts.com or to pick a more
affordable name and save your money for other things. If you're a startup and
shirts.com is in your reach, then you have a surprising amount of capital for
a startup that hasn't launched -- why do you even have that much?

I think that's the issue at hand.

~~~
meric
Definitely. You wouldn't buy shirts.com because the price of shirts.com is
roughly equal to advantage you'd get using it, except for the fact that you
had to pay upfront.

The only time you'd buy a domain like that is when the benefit you'd derive
from it is greater than the price; However when the seller hears of your offer
to buy it, goes to your website, finds out how much you'd benefit from the
domain, the price would go up accordingly. In other words, only when the
seller is clueless.

Same reason why Groupon in Australia was called "Stardeals" once upon a time,
on a domain called stardeals.com.au.

------
dylangs1030
This is probably the fifth essay I've read on the subject, and they all really
agree. Google was being highly eccentric in choosing their brand name when
they started up, and it was comparatively rare back then. But look how
fantastically successful it is now. It's even more relevant in the current
market. The easiest and most permanent way to make an impression, and thus, a
user base is with attention grabbing. Beyond that, the creativity will do hakf
the work for brand recognition, and repeat patronage will be secured.

~~~
dreeves
Don't forget Yahoo! And I actually think there's plenty of other precedent for
whimsical company-naming, even before the internet.

------
sumukh1
The site was taking a while to load for me, so I went ahead and put it up on a
PDF if anyone needs it: <http://sumukh.me/MWZc+>

~~~
apparatchik
Thank you, it would not load for me at all. Did you re-format the content like
that? If so, what did you use?

~~~
sumukh1
I used the readability bookmarklet and saved it a PDF.
(<http://www.readability.com/>)

------
Timothee
I'm curious: how can this be from 2006 when Stack Overflow was (according to
Wikipedia at least) launched in 2008?

I checked because it didn't feel that old.

~~~
dreeves
Oh, note the parts in brackets are my interjections (from our now internet-
decades of hindsight).

~~~
Timothee
Oh I see. I didn't understand until I clicked the link at the top that the
different criteria, and thus the images, were not from pg.

I was a bit surprised that Viaweb ended up all green, but it wasn't pg's
choice, just yours, correct? :) I disagree on evocability and verbability
actually.

One thing with verbability though, is that it's probably hard to predict. I
don't think it would have been easy to predict that you could "facebook"
someone.

~~~
dreeves
Yeah, that's just me with the colors. I tried to justify my scheme in my own
post about naming: <http://messymatters.com/nominology>

Good point about the trickiness in predicting verbability.

As for the evocativity of "viaweb" I think it seems generic now but at the
time it was more novel: conduct your business _via the web_. Wow!

~~~
BerislavLopac
I just submitted your article to HN at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180861> \-- I think you are too modest!
;)

------
chaosprophet
Site seems to be down. Google Cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messyma...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messymatters.com/pgnames.html&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ng7&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&pws=0&strip=1)

~~~
dreeves
Back up (I hope). Really sorry about that!

------
robjohnson
The categorization rankings seem pretty subjective. I read somewhere that your
best bet, if possible, is to call your company what it does. If your software
emails timed newsletters, call it newsletter or emailer and keep working
around that until you find something available.

------
ssp
Without the commentary: <http://fpaste.org/GJCi/>

------
pdenya
Good essay, still fun to read.

I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't
seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an
article as I'm reading it.

------
davi
good and non-obvious (at the time) advice, at the end: "Whatever name you
choose, be careful. Names stick."

------
nirvana
Can someone explain the criteria for each of the tags given in the article?
For instance, the "google" tag presumably means "if you google this term, the
startup will likely be on the first page of results" (or maybe it means
something else?) Is agreeability essentially the same thing (Eg: a unique
word) or is it something else? What decides whether something is yellow or red
in the "mis-spellings"?

We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by
other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it
publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of
it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.

~~~
buddydvd

        EVOC  Evocativity       Conveys at least a hint of what it’s naming
        BREV  Brevity           Shorter = better
        GREP  Greppability      Not a substring of common words
        GOOG  Googlability      Reasonably unique (and domain name available)
        PRON  Pronounceability  You can read it out loud when you see it
        SPEL  Spellability      You know how it’s spelled when you hear it
        VERB  Verbability       The name (or variant thereof) can be used as a verb
    

Source: <http://messymatters.com/2011/10/31/nominology/>

~~~
brc
You can have a phonetically spelt word that still is close to a real word, but
that gets auto-corrected when people try and use it. And that is bad. Because
auto-correction is everywhere these days.

For me this problem didn't appear until all the predictive spelling started
appearing. Now it is a major problem.

------
gcb
what did webshaka came to be?

~~~
dreeves
<http://youOS.com>

------
smugengineer69
Goddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it
really pisses me off.

Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You
know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the
dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to
think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.

It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop
/ intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes
about the probable quality of your business.

Look at Chinese search engine Baidu （百度）. Startups of the world, I want you to
read this shit: [http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-
homepr...](http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile) .

In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice:
[http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-
homepr...](http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile) .

You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on
the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic
glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many
obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.

You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10
seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.

If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire
fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to
misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your
business.

Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways.
This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence,
but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.

You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? Go here, press a button and
BAM: <http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html>

Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of
sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo",
"Topicpad", "Rhysero"...

Worthless, reproducible, empty.

Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first
started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless,
consumer-hostile.

If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time.
Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is
and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods
and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The
next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a
day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the
entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a
confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which
appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out
of place here?

EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the
grounds for your disagreement?

~~~
vetler
> If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire
> __deleted __English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to
> misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your
> business.

Sounds like something that should be testable, given a dictionary and some
time to write a script that look up domain names. Any takers?

~~~
ericflo
I did this last week, pretty much only crappy domains are left in .com, so you
either have to buy one from someone, choose a different TLD, or get creative
with spelling.

~~~
dreeves
I think ideally you create an entirely new word, like a portmanteau, that is
nonetheless spelled exactly the way you'd expect it to be.

------
jwallaceparker
This is terrific. This is newsworthy. Hope it gets legs.

