

Ask HN: Naming our startup: does it matter? - biocho

I met my co-founder a month ago.<p>He had the vision of creating a better P2P marketplace and has gotten some starting traction (around 500-1000 signups).<p>I've jumped on-board because I believe in the vision, but the name has always left a sour taste in my mouth.<p>I've asked for people's opinions on the name, and also asked on /r/startups (http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/1afhlm/ask_rstartups_whats_your_opinion_on_the_name/). I've always received either neutral or negative feedback.<p>Am I being too obsessive about the name of this start-up? Or is it something that is worth changing while we're early in the game?
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mindcrime
I think it matters, and I don't like Stuffak very much. Like somebody else
said, it sounds like something you take when you have chest congestion or a
sinus infection or something.

I would warn against being too attached to names that you come up with. We all
have a tendency to fall in love with our own ideas, and sometimes we need a
3rd party to tell us "that's crap". To illustrate, let me share an anecdote
from my own adventure:

We have 3 "real" projects that make up our product suite at the moment, and a
fourth project that might or might not continue to exist as a standalone
project. All are Open Source and the projects are all named after light-
houses. All along we figured we'd eventually have a different name for the
"branded" release, vs. the OSS project name... kinda like the way Fedora ->
RHEL. Anyway... we had the idea of an "umbrella project" to refer to the
entire suite. Since all our branding is based on light, illumination, light-
houses, etc.

Company: Fogbeam Labs

Product 1: Quoddy (named after the West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Maine)

Product 2: Heceta (named after the Heceta Head Lighthouse in Oregon)

Product 3: Neddick (named after the Cape Neddick "Nubble" Lighthouse in Maine)

Product 4: Hatteras (named after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North
Carolina)

So, when trying to come up with a name for the "umbrella" project, I had this
bright (pun intended) idea to name it "ScrewPile" since screwpile[1] is a
technical term related to lighthouses.

Brilliant, right? Except... like 3 people in the entire world actually _know_
what "screwpile" means and would "get" the connection, and - even worse - if
you _don't_ know what it means, it just looks... ugly. Almost vulgar, to be
honest.

It took the VP of Sales from a former employer of mine calling me out on it,
in no uncertain terms, to convince me to change it. But once he really pulled
the wool from over my eyes (wool _I_ put there) it was dead obvious to me what
as stupid name it was.

So, we renamed it Fogcutter and so far everybody is a lot happier with that.
:-)

What's astonishing though, is the degree of rationalization and self-delusion
I experienced before finally changing the name. Hell, I _knew_ it was a bad
name in many ways, but I was convinced "it isn't that bad" and "at least it's
consistent with the other branding", blah, blah, blah. None of which mattered
in the least when we have a product name that sounds like it should be the
name of a porn flick or maybe a personal lubricant. :-)

Stuffak might not be _as_ bad, but my honest opinion is that you should change
it.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-pile_lighthouse>

~~~
biocho
Fantastic response, thanks for your insight!

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stevekemp
I started a service, once upon a time, and to keep a clear separation I
figured I'd register a company, get a company bank account, etc.

In my case the actual product was a website, and that had a name which was
good. The actual company itself was less important - the only time folk would
see it would be on cheques, or invoices.

on that basis I figured I'd take the first name that sprang to mind, and I
became "Pink Pony Productions"; a name shamelessly stolen from a throwaway
line from Lisa Simpson - Episode "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner".

So: Product name / Website name / Service name == Important, but company name
/ startup name .. less so.

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jamesbritt
Random thoughts:

\- If, when you say it, you find yourself having to spell it for people, it's
a bad sign.

\- A name that succinctly describes a service is great for that service, but
can make it hard to pivot. Conversely, a nonsense name gives you more latitude
(and likely unique Google-mojo) but now you have to teach people what it
means,

\- If a name isn't obviously _interfering_ with what you're doing then it's
probably not that big a deal while you're validating an idea, but of course if
things don't take off you're going to wonder how it might have been different
if you had a catchy clever name :)

~~~
mindcrime
The advice I've always heard is that names should have four primary
attributes:

1\. easy to pronounce

2\. easy to spell

3\. easy to remember

4\. memorable

To that list, I'd add:

5\. Don't have obvious negative connotations (eg, sounding like a sexual
perversion or a cough medicine)

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gregcohn
Critical. Change it, it's terrible.

Ref: [http://blog.launch.co/blog/how-to-name-your-startup-and-
land...](http://blog.launch.co/blog/how-to-name-your-startup-and-land-the-
perfect-domain.html)

------
timmm
Criteria you should concern yourself with.

1\. Brevity 2\. That is relates to the service or product 3\. Phetically
accurate easy to transcribe from sound

