
So you want my job: Name Consultant - JacobAldridge
http://artofmanliness.com/2009/10/07/so-you-want-my-job-name-consultant/
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holaamigos
After we raised our series A, the new investor insisted we change our name.
The old name kind of sucked. We discussed it as a team for months - it was a
pure time-sink, never getting to agreement, so looked into hiring a naming
agent - I thought it would be like $1000, a full day workshop, beanbags, hit
the bong...... I contacted a namer and it was like $45k....WTF....$45k for a
fucking name. I tried haggling, and she brought her fee down to $15k, but this
would be for a list of 10 names.

Fuck that! I pushed through my favorite name and moved on.

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vaksel
these type of prices are common in the old world of business.

I know a non-profit, that paid $30,000 for a logo and a tagline, and thought
they got an awesome deal, since the going rate is like $150,000.

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huhtenberg
That's an OK number since it likely covers more than _just_ a logo and a
tagline, but rather a full brand, positioning and identity definition.

But $15K for a name alone is an overkill.

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JacobAldridge
Seems like an interesting field - specialised, yet creative, and demanding
core business skills as well.

Just one thing - surely he put Network Solutions in there as a red herring
trap for young players? Why, oh why would you name check URL availability with
a provider notorious for squatting?

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gojomo
The bay area seems the nation's capital of naming consultants, too. Here's an
old article from Salon about some of the agencies:

[http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/print....](http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/11/30/naming/print.html)

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JacobAldridge
Great article - thanks. Naming is all over the news down under at the moment
because one of our most beloved brands - Vegemite - just released a new
product and called it 'iSnack 2.0'

Truly a name chosen by a committee only because nobody hated it ... nobody
except the consumer.

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netsp
I still think it may have been all a joke made by someone who had never tried
one before.

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slice
Coming up with the right name for a variable or a function can easily become
the most difficult part of my day. I always wanted to open variable and
function names consultancy.

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elai
if you get stuck, just do the objective c thing: aInt, anArray, aXMLFile, etc.
Still fairly generic, but still useful and easy to read (vs single letter
variables or random things. Worse comes to worse, you can also just make a
sentence out of it.

~~~
huhtenberg
I sometimes have a problem coming up with variable names of the same length so
that they would align nicely in a struct declaration :)

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rokhayakebe
_I didn’t have to listen to people in market research groups ramble on and on
about their ATM usage or what kind of features they wanted in a mobile phone._

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ramanujan
Seriously, if this is the kind of thing you're outsourcing, you have major
creative problems.

