The most crucial point is to not obsess over names.
Obsess over product, not name. Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping. Would you care if Google renamed itself to Moogle? Probably not. Google's search engine is the best, independent of name. To paraphrase billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, brands are nothing more than proxies. Meaning, great names cannot hide poor products -- especially in the information age.
There are many examples of ordinary names representing extraordinary businesses. Apple. Four Seasons. Amazon. These names evoke excellence because the underlying services are excellent. Strong brands today will fade tomorrow once quality suffers. Think GM, Dell, and Sears. In short, search for a cool domain, but remember a name is nothing more than a proxy. Build something people value, and value will flow to the name.
~>Amazon outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though Buy.com owns the perfect name for online shopping
I'm not sure i agree with this analysis.. amazon is a great name; i don't think sharing a name with something real is a disadvantage, there's pre-existing recognition (no need to spell it out, doesn't sound weird) but no real chance of confusion. By not being 100% generic (as buy.com is), it has a chance to build a brand. 'Generic'.com ironically makes it unprofessional, as they are handicapped in making a strong brand, imo. About.com is pretty much the only generic name that i could honestly attribute any benefit and success to- definitely not anything commerce related.
But i agree with the sentiment that if you get a name that is not awful, it will not hold you back.
Using Amazon, Yahoo, Google, ebay etc., backed by years of free traditional media publicity (90's style) to validate a strategy I certainly take issue with that. I'm not saying it's not possible to develop a made up name but using those legacy companies and the advantages that they had at the time is not in itself justification for thinking any startup can do the same.
Similarly news.ycombinator.com is very successful in spite of the fact that the domain is highly unusual. It's an outlier.
And obviously you have to build something of value. But naming does matter and certainly deserves a great deal of attention.
"Four Seasons" - This contradicts your point. Do you really think any old name could be used by a luxury hotel brand? What if it was called "Roomsville Hotel"?
i'm not sure we're in disagreement. names matter and warrant attention. the less direct your name (e.g., amazon), the more you need to invest in marketing and educating consumers about your company/product. the macro point, which i suspect you agree with, is that ultimately the product mattes more than the name, and that is where people should obsess. good names will not lift companies into prosperity, though terrible names can sink companies per your point and my edit.
> Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping.
While true, I would hesitate investing with a group called "Bernie Madoff Groupies" or purchasing a DVD from an Ebay company called "KnockOff".
A recent example of a terrible product name is Fit Sliq Jeans by H&M. Fit sounds very similar to "fitta", the Swedish word for cunt and Sliq sounds like "slicka", i.e. (to) lick. You would think that in a global company such as H&M, which has its roots in Sweden, there would be at least one person who would notice the error.
Obsess over product, not name. Companies prosper or fail because of their product, not their name. Consider Amazon. It outshines competitors in e-commerce, even though one rival -- Buy.com -- owns the perfect name for online shopping. Would you care if Google renamed itself to Moogle? Probably not. Google's search engine is the best, independent of name. To paraphrase billionaire investor Vinod Khosla, brands are nothing more than proxies. Meaning, great names cannot hide poor products -- especially in the information age.
There are many examples of ordinary names representing extraordinary businesses. Apple. Four Seasons. Amazon. These names evoke excellence because the underlying services are excellent. Strong brands today will fade tomorrow once quality suffers. Think GM, Dell, and Sears. In short, search for a cool domain, but remember a name is nothing more than a proxy. Build something people value, and value will flow to the name.