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Paul Graham's long-lost 2006 Infogami essay, "Startup Names"
- dy 15y agoThanks for archiving this and how prescient this was about color.com: "Nothing could be less cool, at this point, than calling a startup “cool.com.”
- _pius 15y agoColor's name wasn't the problem.
- davidhansen 15y agoI may be biased here, but I don't understand the animosity toward exact-match domain names. The claim is made that such a name is uncool, but an explanation, for why this is so, is not self-evident.
- abuzzooz 15y ago(Apologies for going off on a tangent) Personally I don't like domain names like cool.com or color.com because they are impossible to google. Apple is probably the exception that proves this rule.
- davidhansen 15y agoThat is a fair point, but what about product domain names, e.g. shirts.com, beer.com, etc, for companies that sell those specific product types?
- wanorris 15y agoIf you own "shirts.com" then you definitely ought to make a website out of it. You have a huge advantage, and you should use it. But if you were making a website to sell shirts, you might reasonably ask whether it's worth it to spend the money to buy shirts.com or to pick a more affordable name and save your money for other things. If you're a startup and shirts.com is in your reach, then you have a surprising amount of capital for a startup that hasn't launched -- why do you even have that much? I think that's the issue at hand.
- maximusprime 15y agoSome people think this, but why then, don't we buy our shirts at shirts.com? Why do they not register on alexa/quantcast/etc? The fact is domains like that get no real traffic unless you promote them massively. Their main worth is in selling them on to other domain whores.
- meric 15y agoDefinitely. You wouldn't buy shirts.com because the price of shirts.com is roughly equal to advantage you'd get using it, except for the fact that you had to pay upfront. The only time you'd buy a domain like that is when the benefit you'd derive from it is greater than the price; However when the seller hears of your offer to buy it, goes to your website, finds out how much you'd benefit from the domain, the price would go up accordingly. In other words, only when the seller is clueless. Same reason why Groupon in Australia was called "Stardeals" once upon a time, on a domain called stardeals.com.au.
- apparatchik 15y agoThose are a great asset that can be taken advantage of by the owner. SEO is almost a cake walk. I know of HN user haploid for example who owns and runs ties.com and scarves.com for several years now. They might comment better on this matter than I can.
- dreeves 15y agoTo quote Paul Graham from the article: "A company with a name like that could not have arisen organically. 'Cool.com' smells of a media conglomerate trying to create a web spinoff." In other words, it indicates you have more money than brains.
- mmahemoff 15y agoWorked for mint.com though. Maybe it's more appropriate for a finance service than a kewl social network. I'm sure there's some advantage for a b2b service having an official-sounding one-word domain.
- davi 15y agogood and non-obvious (at the time) advice, at the end: "Whatever name you choose, be careful. Names stick."
- staunch 15y agoI think things have changed a lot since then (it has been half a decade), but it's still mostly right. Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011. These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com. For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered. You'll have to buy them off someone. For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will do the job perfectly fine.
- btmorex 15y agoFab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com With the possible exception of groupon and dropbox, all of those names would very expensive to acquire. The problem is that a startup typically has to pick a name before they have $50000+ to drop on a domain.
- apparatchik 15y agoActually Dropbox.com is quite a lucrative property of its own: http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/dropbox-acquires-the-domain-everyone-thought-it-had-dropbox-com/ http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/13/dropbox-acquires-the-domain... и http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=880522 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=880522
- staunch 15y agoI believe Dropbox and Groupon were both quite expensive (but acquired after significant traction/funding). Mint.com on the other hand was purchased with ~$180k in Series A stock. The domain owner ended up making $1+ million when the company was acquired. The founder (Aaron Patzer) seems to think it was one of the very best decisions he made. The paradox of choosing a domain is that you buy it when your company is small but you live with it when your company is big. It's a lot like choosing real-estate for a restaurant. You can launch your restaurant in a bad location, build it up, and then move. Or you can find a great location and build it there. A great location doesn't mean you will be successful (it's just a big advantage), and a bad location doesn't mean you will fail (it's just a big disadvantage).
- sumukh1 15y agoThe site was taking a while to load for me, so I went ahead and put it up on a PDF if anyone needs it: http://sumukh.me/MWZc+ http://sumukh.me/MWZc+
- apparatchik 15y agoThank you, it would not load for me at all. Did you re-format the content like that? If so, what did you use?
- sumukh1 15y agoI used the readability bookmarklet and saved it a PDF. (http://www.readability.com/ http://www.readability.com/)
- chaosprophet 15y agoSite seems to be down. Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messymatters.com/pgnames.html&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ng7&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&pws=0&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:messyma...
- dreeves 15y agoBack up (I hope). Really sorry about that!
- Timothee 15y agoI'm curious: how can this be from 2006 when Stack Overflow was (according to Wikipedia at least) launched in 2008? I checked because it didn't feel that old.
- dreeves 15y agoOh, note the parts in brackets are my interjections (from our now internet-decades of hindsight).
- Timothee 15y agoOh I see. I didn't understand until I clicked the link at the top that the different criteria, and thus the images, were not from pg. I was a bit surprised that Viaweb ended up all green, but it wasn't pg's choice, just yours, correct? :) I disagree on evocability and verbability actually. One thing with verbability though, is that it's probably hard to predict. I don't think it would have been easy to predict that you could "facebook" someone.
- dreeves 15y agoYeah, that's just me with the colors. I tried to justify my scheme in my own post about naming: http://messymatters.com/nominology http://messymatters.com/nominology Good point about the trickiness in predicting verbability. As for the evocativity of "viaweb" I think it seems generic now but at the time it was more novel: conduct your business via the web. Wow!
- BerislavLopac 15y agoI just submitted your article to HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180861 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3180861 -- I think you are too modest! ;)
- btmorex 15y agoThis whole problem would be solved if .com's cost $100+ per year to register. Don't have that kind of money? Get a different TLD. I'm tired of having every single name I can think of -- even bad ones -- already registered and unused.
- InfinityX0 15y agoOne of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant thinking could probably create a name that would only be slightly less effective. Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain. But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.
- gcb 15y agowhat did webshaka came to be?
- dreeves 15y agohttp://youOS.com http://youOS.com
- smugengineer69 15y agoGoddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it really pisses me off. Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air. It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business. Look at Chinese search engine Baidu （百度）. Startups of the world, I want you to read this shit: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... . In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homeprofile http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... . You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine. You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd. If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business. Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst. You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? Go here, press a button and BAM: http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"... Worthless, reproducible, empty. Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile. If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here? EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?
- nirvana 15y agoCan someone explain the criteria for each of the tags given in the article? For instance, the "google" tag presumably means "if you google this term, the startup will likely be on the first page of results" (or maybe it means something else?) Is agreeability essentially the same thing (Eg: a unique word) or is it something else? What decides whether something is yellow or red in the "mis-spellings"? We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.
- jwallaceparker 15y agoTotally agree. Plus 1. Good point.
- irahul 15y agoI see that you have been around for some time, and you tend to post "totally agree" style comments. Just so you know, the general etiquette here is to upvote if you agree, and don't have anything else to add.
- irahul 15y ago> (or maybe it means something else?) I think it mostly has to do with loaded terms. If you company is called "cool.com", it's a loaded term and searching for something related to the company will yield a lot of false positives - e.g. cool cms.
- buddydvd 15y agoEVOC Evocativity Conveys at least a hint of what it’s naming BREV Brevity Shorter = better GREP Greppability Not a substring of common words GOOG Googlability Reasonably unique (and domain name available) PRON Pronounceability You can read it out loud when you see it SPEL Spellability You know how it’s spelled when you hear it VERB Verbability The name (or variant thereof) can be used as a verb Source: http://messymatters.com/2011/10/31/nominology/ http://messymatters.com/2011/10/31/nominology/
- pdenya 15y agoGood essay, still fun to read. I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an article as I'm reading it.
- jwallaceparker 15y agoThis is terrific. This is newsworthy. Hope it gets legs.
- neilk 15y agoHow is Viaweb verbable? "I viawebbed that store." "We're going to viaweb our platform"... I think not.
- dreeves 15y agoYeah, sort of a stretch. What I thought pushed it off the fence though was that it's a whole adverbial phrase which is pretty cool and in the same spirit as verbability. "Should we sell this stuff brick-and-mortar or viaweb?"
- eavc 15y agoIt's better as an intransitive verb. "Should we do a call or would you rather viaweb?"
- dirtyaura 15y agoIf you are interested in evaluating names, I recommend reading The Igor Naming Guide: http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.pdf http://www.igorinternational.com/process/igor-naming-guide.p... They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative. Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning. Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a experiential name. A quote from the manual: One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct experience The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great (evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines: "But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or "Religious people will be offended" Or Caterpillar: "Tiny, creepy-crawly bug", "Not macho enough – easy to squash", "Why not "bull" or "workhorse" "? It's a great read.
- dylangs1030 15y agoThis is probably the fifth essay I've read on the subject, and they all really agree. Google was being highly eccentric in choosing their brand name when they started up, and it was comparatively rare back then. But look how fantastically successful it is now. It's even more relevant in the current market. The easiest and most permanent way to make an impression, and thus, a user base is with attention grabbing. Beyond that, the creativity will do hakf the work for brand recognition, and repeat patronage will be secured.
- dreeves 15y agoDon't forget Yahoo! And I actually think there's plenty of other precedent for whimsical company-naming, even before the internet.
- ssp 15y agoWithout the commentary: http://fpaste.org/GJCi/ http://fpaste.org/GJCi/
- robjohnson 15y agoThe categorization rankings seem pretty subjective. I read somewhere that your best bet, if possible, is to call your company what it does. If your software emails timed newsletters, call it newsletter or emailer and keep working around that until you find something available.