

Ask HN: How do you name a startup? - jchonphoenix

With a vast majority of domain names taken by squatters and/or legit companies, how do you find a good name for your startup that also has an available domain name?
======
mindcrime
Ok, I may catch some flak for this, but... that is exactly the reason I domain
squat on a pile of domains. A few years ago I went through a phase where
anytime I'd come up with a seemingly cool name, I'd register the domain (if
available) and just sit on it... so I don't "domain squat" to make money on
ads or anything (although I did play around a little with trying to monetize
some otherwise idle domains, but I never put much effort into it), but rather
to reserve the domain for myself for potential future use.

With that said, when I was looking for a company name for a consulting
business a year or so ago, I threw my favorite one out to a friend of mine for
feedback, and he absolutely hated it. So I sent him a list of my favorite 5-10
out the domains I had, and one jumped out at him as "oh yeah, that's perfect."
After thinking about it for a while I decided he was right, so I went with it
(that one had been my 2nd favorite to begin with). And now I'm actually
reusing it as I move into doing a product. It's just the company name though,
now naming individual products is going to be the bigger challenge.

Of course if you need a name _right now_ none of this helps... all I can say
is generic crap like "think outside the box." Put together combinations of
words that don't seem to make sense at first and play around with them. Borrow
phrases from the top news headlines of the day and see if those words somehow
combine to form something useful. Take a word that has something to do with
what your status does, and start attaching other words in front of or behind
it, until one combo makes you go "oooh."

For example... If you were doing a "grid computing" startup, take the word
"grid" and start going:

gridstart gridcurve gridfeed gridbox gridblox gridwave gridcloud antigrid
gridhacker gridlog ... ... ...

And if all else fails, you could explore some of the alternative TLDs if the
".com" is taken. Some feel kinda ghetto for some reason (like .biz... I doubt
I'd ever use a .biz for anything) but some alt tlds are actually kinda cool...
.fm, .io, .tv and a few others seem somewhat popular.

Like, .io feels kinda right for something geeky and computer related... so if
you were doing the grid computing startup, maybe "gridcomputing.io" "io" seems
to imply a sort of techie'ish flavor (even thought the TLD actually stands for
Indian Ocean or something like that).

Another last ditch thing would be trying to buy a domain that's taken. Not
every taken domain costs a bazillion dollars to acquire. And if you establish
a trademark on the name successfully, you may be able to appeal to ICANN and
get a squatted on domain anyway. Not sure exactly how that works, but it might
be worth researching.

Edit: Another approach that might help... pick a theme, and google around that
theme for lists of important "things." For example... I was looking to name a
series of related open-source projects recently, so I picked "lighthouses" as
the theme (and this ties into the company name mentioned above), so I started
looking for lists of "famous lighthouses" and "lighthouse terminology" and
finally came up with ScrewPile (no, not a pr0n term, it refers to a type of
lighthouse), Neddick (reference to a famous lighthouse), Quoddy (again, a
particular lighthouse) and Heceta (and yet another well known lighthouse).

------
gruseom
Play with permuting the morphemes of words related to your product or space.

Say everything out loud many times.

Resist things nobody will be able to spell.

Great names often seem pretty crappy at first. Later, after repeated use,
people say "what a great name". So don't necessarily reject names that seem
crappy. Use them for a while. See which ones other people find easy to say,
spell, and remember.

Oh, and realize that the combinatorial space here is so vast as to dwarf what
the squatters can cover. Your creativity can explore much more of that space
than they can occupy.

------
Jun8
There are _many_ different ideas about this, choose it so that it can be a
verb, choose certain consonants of power, etc. etc. Eye catching, real but
rarely used English words can be tried (e.g.
<http://dare.wisc.edu/?q=node/163>).

Although this is a decision that people agonize over (your company's like your
baby after all), in the end I don't think it matters that much. You can read
PG's thoughts on this: in his first startup they wanted a name so much that
they offered a handsome sum to the holder of that domain. Then they relaxed
and saw that it didn't matter that much for success.

------
revorad
Sometimes, you can get lucky and just get a simple combination of legit words
which describes your product perfectly (I got lucky with Pretty Graph).
Otherwise, do what designers and advertisers do - pick one keyword related to
your product and couple it with a colour or animal or some other memorable
word appealing to people's emotions.

If nothing works, make ridiculous combinations of real words but please don't
get a domain with missing vowels and ly's and tr's. When you are starting out,
your domain name is your brand name. If I have to spell out your brand name,
you have already failed.

Think DuckDuckGo, not Srchly.

------
vishaldpatel
Start building it first under a code name.. name it later. Over time you'll
come up with more names and some of them will turn out to be pretty good and
previously unused.

