

What’s in a name – Tips for naming your startup - swombat
http://000fff.org/?p=68

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RyanMcGreal
Perhaps the title should be, "What's not in a name - things you shouldn't
worry about when naming your startup".

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aw3c2
Definitely. A name does not make you, it might just be the "dot on the i" but
your actual quality decides about your success.

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notauser
Up to a point. There are some things that the right name can help with:

\- It gets really boring to have to spell your name out to everyone you meet
and talk to. Therefore having one that is unambiguously easy to communicate
will save you hours at the boot strapping stage where one of the primary forms
of marketing is talking to a lot of people at a lot of events.

\- Having a name that can only be spelled (or, mostly only spelled) one way
will stop a potential competitor stealing traffic. You don't want to be
PlayBlox.com when PlayBlocks.com gets bought up by an offshore competitor who
you can't sue. Equally ColourLite.com would suck as a name with potentially
four common variants to buy or lose traffic to.

I certainly think that memorability is overrated. Generally the second time I
meet people the conversation goes like this:

"Hi, I'm the guy from X..."

"Oh, that's the thing for figuring out how to do nasty projects, right? I
remember you. How's it going?"

No recollection of the name at all. Of course it could just be a bad name! :)

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100k
Not sure if I should take naming advice from the guy who registered 000fff.org
;)

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pbhjpbhj
Me too, my first thought .. 000FFF is blue not B&W.

Names: Zyp, love it; Metallica, very masculine and "metal" perfectly 80s, hard
edged; Flickr defines web-2.0 naming, was it the first, it's a better name
than Flicker IMO regardless of the reason for the choice.

In the commnets " _I’m not any less of an entrepreneur because my name is
Joe._ " - except that introductions would be a lot harder if your name was
something unpronouncable, maybe a series of clicks (Khosa (sp?)) or something
that sounds like swearing in your propositions native language.

IMO names matter a lot and no amount of interface will fix a bad name. A
terrible name on the other hand you can work for ironic advantage.

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pmjordan
#000 is black and #fff is white, at least in CSS notation.

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jeroen
#000fff is blue (with a hint of green) in css notation.

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pmjordan
I am aware of that. I'm merely putting forward an alternative explanation,
which, in my opinion, is more plausible than that, considering the site's
title.

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replicatorblog
Key advice missing from this is to be dilligent about Trademarks. I've seen a
friend's company burn through $250K in trademark law suits. They are
transitioning from the startup to small business stage so it can be absorbed,
but would kill an earlier stage venture.

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JacobAldridge
In their early '80s book on 'Positioning' and cutting through the mass of
advertising consumers see, Jack Reis and Al Trout use the example of
executives who are known by their initials (TJ, AR etc - they use real
examples, but I don't have my copy at hand).

Anyway, they demonstrated that a lot of junior executives started using
initials as well, without success.

The Junior people saw the execs with initials and thought Initials = Success.

Of course, in reality, that equation is Success = Initials. Be successful
first - your name is less (hat tip, notauser) important.

I like that that 25+ year old research has a modern-day equivalent.

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daniel-cussen
To a certain point your name matters because it can make it hard to spread by
word of mouth and if it's downright stupid, that can reflect poorly on
founders.

Beyond that, it's pretty much the color of the bikeshed:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality>

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pbhjpbhj
_it's pretty much the color of the bikeshed_

I've not heard that expression but changing the colour of the walls in a room
alters the behaviour of people in that room including how long they stay. I'd
say the colour of the bike-shed matters.

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krakensden
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem.

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pbhjpbhj
What do you mean, me? Or human psychology?

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mseebach
> If you are not in the business of domains no domain name is worth more than
> $50.000

And related to that: A domain name is (almost) not real estate.

What would inner-city real estate cost if a city had an endless supply of
perfectly nice cheap houses all within a ten minute subway ride away? This is
essentially the case with domain names.

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pbhjpbhj
I think your analogy is very poor - indeed I'd say if an analogy can be wrong,
this is.

The proximity of the location of a dwelling to the city is analogous the the
beneficial qualities of a domain name. Memorability, zeitgeist, aptness, etc..
The unity of each name is responsible for the cost of obtaining it (second
hand) as much as the proximity of location to an economic centre is
responsible for real-estate costs. Both are scarce.

Your analogy is good for one thing, both situations are impossible: you can't
allow everyone the same domain name and you can't enable everyone to occupy
the same physical space.

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mseebach
The point I was trying to convey with the analogy is exactly that of (the lack
of) scarcity in domain names.

Especially pre-bubble there was this real-estate-scarcity angle on domain-
names: if you have a website about shoes, you need shoes.com, or you'll never
be leading. But today we have Zappos which is a name I'm certain was purchased
for $2.99 back when they launched and is developed into a first-class business
today. If they'd insisted on getting shoes.com, chances are they might never
have launched.

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pbhjpbhj
No scarcity, great. I'd like Zappos.com then please for $2.99 ...

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pxlpshr
Carsonified had a good post on this back in 2007, and so did Kevin Rose and
Tim Ferris.

[http://carsonified.com/blog/business/how-to-name-your-
compan...](http://carsonified.com/blog/business/how-to-name-your-company/)

<http://vimeo.com/3934635>

When it comes to consumer goods and services, short, sweet, and memorable
should be your 3 primary objectives IMO. Be careful not to be to descriptive
with the name or logo design, it can be problematic if/when you try to expand
into other markets or grow new products that are different from your existing
focus.

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wdm954
Most of these obscure short names are chosen because #1 the domain is
available and #2 they're hoping they can somehow brand them.

Name does play a role in the success of your company. However if your product
sucks then a good name isn't going to fix that. If people can't remember or
spell your name, that can kill your word of mouth marketing.

When a startup begins seeing success and can afford to buy a better name then
in many cases re-branding is seriously considered.

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npost
Great post. I would also say: 1) don't get caught up in any one name 2) having
too descriptive of a name can be disastrous as you won't have as much
flexibility 3) have fun with it!

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ThomPete
000 black fff white

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pbhjpbhj
Who knew!

Perhaps you should go on to say it's hexadecimal RGB shorthand and that when
concatenated it should be interpreted as the long hand which gives
rgb(00h,0Fh,FFh) which is blue with a little green.

Shorthand hex notation is commonly used in HTML styles, eg p { color:#000; }
gives paragraphs black text.

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endlessvoid94
Mostly very good points. Maybe want someone else to proofread before posting
that, though. To != too. Where != were.

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ethanhunt
This really helped out! Thanks guys.

