7 ms·

How to name your startup

55 points by joshuacc 14y ago

larrys 14y ago
"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offer advice in this area? I'm seeing someone who is a few years out of college and doesn't really have the depth of experience in this area to write an article titled "How to name your domain name". Maybe "my experience with how I named my startup" would be more appropriate. Add: Some of the things he says I agree with somewhat (stick to two syllables) and some I don't (see reply to tptacek below which hmm, by the way I can never remember how to spell lest you think naming doesn't matter) The problem with advice like this is that if you know nothing you won't know what is correct and what isn't.
- eps 14y ago
  Exactly. This applies, conservatively, to a good half of HowTo articles hitting HN's front page lately.
- gamzer 14y ago
  Most of those how-to guides lack meaningful data and/or studies and/or logic. Just one example: "The domain name doesn’t matter" How on earth can one come up with such a broad statement without studying the answer for... years? Oh, he or she "learned it". Now, you can call me a believer!
- joelg87 14y ago
  I don't claim OnePage was a success by any means, in fact in many of my other articles I use OnePage as a reference to countless mistakes and learning which helped me with Buffer. One thing I would say, however, is that the reason OnePage didn't succeed was not because the domain wasn't onepage.com ;) We have a long way to go with Buffer but I'm very happy with the growth so far: we're a top 4000 website (alexa) and with almost 300,000 users we see 130,000 shares per day via the platform and are fast approaching a $1M annual revenue run rate through our freemium model. We also have some top investors on board in our seed round we closed at the end of last year. We've done all this with the domain bufferapp.com. I'm not an expert of anything, this is just how I would approach naming a new startup if I were to start something today. I agree your suggested title is perhaps more appropriate. That said, I did draw attention to a few other successful startups, and some of them have been running for a while now.
  - abcd_f 14y ago
    You are clearly attention whoring by choosing titles that are more likely to generate foot traffic than to accurately reflect the contents. This is disingenuous. You are, as GP said, in no position to offer authoritative advice, so you might try and respect your target audience and puff your cheeks less.
paulsutter 14y ago
I would add: - Distinctive - Easy to spell - Easy to pronounce - Fairly unique on Google - Abstract is better than meaningful I love the suggestion that the domain name doesn't matter. A big mental shift for me, but the examples are compelling. Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. Easy to spell and pronounce are really important. If people aren't comfortable talking about your company, they wont talk about it. We named my first company Voila! Software, and that was a really dumb name. People were afraid to say or even type it. Quantcast is the best company name I've used, and that was actually suggested by Godaddy. Imagine that.
- kabdib 14y ago
  Easy to pronounce is pretty important. One startup I was at, I had to spell the name every time I mentioned it to someone new. "I work for Wayfarer Communications." "Wafer?" "No, /Way Fare Er/" "Wayfarfar?" "Double-ewe Aye Why Eff Aye Are Eee Are." "Oh . . . what does it mean?" Not a /bad/ name, but not optimal, either.
  - mikestew 14y ago
    At least "wayfarer" is a word. I worked at "Adapx". Don't feel bad, everyone except the employees pronounced it wrong. The fact that the marketing company that charged them for it wasn't laughed out of the room amuses me. The decision makers had to have asked, "how do you pronounce it?" And they wrote a check anyway. ("Adapts" or maybe "adaps" is the intended pronunciation, I'm still not exactly sure and I worked there.)
- tomrod 14y ago
  Unique on Google I would see as sufficient, but not necessary. But, as was commented earlier, don't name & spell your project after something extremely common (e.g. Rastafarian). Given that, Python seems to have done remarkably well given these constraints. Having a superior project speaks volumes, apparently.
- david_shaw 14y ago
  > Abstract is better than meaningful I think this point is lost on a lot of first-time founders. Finding an abstract name that flows well and is unique is so much better than looking for random synonyms of a word you wanted (or even worse, mis-spellings of said word). > Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. As a technical person, it always throws me for a loop to see so many people open a web browser and type either domain names or the full URL into a search bar. I think that as browsers like Chrome continue to gain popularity, the line between the "address bar" and the "search engine" will continue to blur, until there's no difference at all. In the startup world, a name isn't everything -- you can't succeed just because you managed to snag `awesome.com`. That said, if you think "cinerjie.com" will ever work out, you're sadly mistaken. [1] [1] It's supposed to sound like "synergy." I'm lame, and I apologize :)
deleted 14y ago
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panabee 14y ago
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.
- larrys 14y ago
  "Consider Amazon." 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"?
  - panabee 14y ago
    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.
arkitaip 14y ago
I prefer guidelines for choosing bad names because they are much fewer than guidelines for good names. * Make the name offensive in some language. * Make the name difficult to pronounce. * Make the name difficult to spell. * Make the name non unique or confusingly similar to another name. As long as you DON'T FOLLOW these guidelines you'll be ok.
tptacek 14y ago
A recent article made the case against disregarding domain names: while Square used to be SQUAREUP.COM, and Facebook used to be GETDROPBOX.COM, neither is today; both have acquired the bare domain name corresponding to their name and use them exclusively. The issue here is then, once you make the decision to be "getFOO.COM", the better you do, the more expensive FOO.COM becomes. There is no guarantee the price for the "real" domain name will ever be reasonable. It may instead become intractably expensive. If you're committed to "getFOO.COM" forever, the strategy works just fine. But when I see people talk about how Facebook used to be "thefacebook.com", I get itchy. How much would you have charged for "facebook.com" 4 years ago?
- larrys 14y ago
  "There is no guarantee the price for the "real" domain name will ever be reasonable. It may instead become intractably expensive." Thanks for saving me the time of saying exactly that. I really can't stress this enough from my experience in this area both on the buying (and assisting sellers) side. OP: "Pick a great name, then add something to get a domain name. It really doesn’t matter all that much - whether you get the domain later or don’t. Then get building!" This is scary advice. And when contrasted with the examples given is dangerous. As you say "If you're committed to "getFOO.COM" forever, the strategy works just fine." But then if you are "bufferapp.com" don't brand as "buffer" in your logo on your website and marketing materials, brand as "bufferapp".
- jsomethings 14y ago
  This is the company naming article you're probably referring to: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/04/22/before-naming-your-startup-read-this/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/04/22/before-naming-...
- philwelch 14y ago
  When you're a kid in a dorm room (even a Harvard dorm room), the cost of "facebook.com", low as it might have been at the time, is already intractable. When you're a funded Silicon Valley startup, the cost of "facebook.com" is higher in absolute terms, but relative to your buying power is more affordable. Having such a successful startup that domain squatters will charge more for your domain is a good problem to have. The most any domain squatter will earn for the domain is the most they can get from you anyway--they can't sell it to a competitor since it'll be subject to immediate trademark dispute, and they can't sell it to anyone else since no one else will pay as much as you would. I don't think it would ever actually become intractably expensive--the business model doesn't even make sense that way.
michaelpinto 14y ago
5. hire a copywriter
nekojima 14y ago
Facebook used thefacebook.com to begin with, because its original name when founded was Thefacebook. This was changed a year later to Facebook when it purchased facebook.com.
WordBiLLY 14y ago
How about WordBiLLY.com
adastra 14y ago
Have to disagree with this article. There are three qualities that override everything else for a good name: 1) Being memorable 2) Easy to spell when you hear it said out loud (and conversely: easy to pronounce when you see it written) 3) Not being cheesy or otherwise embarrassing to say when you introduce yourself to people I just can't believe it every time I hear a company name that, if I remember it a few days later and want to go look them up, is impossible to spell. Missing a letter is fine. But having silent letters, with k's instead of c's and other non-phonetic spelling? That's just crazy.
- TillE 14y ago
  Yeah, I think those factors are a bit more important than counting syllables. Shorter is better, but clarity and memorability trumps that. As a random example based on the tabs I have open, RockPaperShotgun is probably the most popular blog that focuses specifically on PC games. That's a lot of letters and five whole syllables, but it's also easy to remember. It's a good name.
austenallred 14y ago
You only the mistake of having a bad name once. I had a copywriting side gig I tried to name and got caught up with the idea of a red pen. So we ended up with RedWrit - not only impossible to say and spell (if you know how to say it), but the red pen allusion was completely lost. This time I don't think we made the same mistake. GrassWire. It comes from grassroots newswire, but you don't need to know that - everyone knows how to read it, when someone says it you know how to spell it, it's unique and the domain was available. That's all that matters.
vlad 14y ago
All of these companies paid for a better domain name. GetDropbox.com TheFacebook.com Twittr.com
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
Speaking of names, can anyone identify the current trend of $arbitrary_number + $arbitrary_noun? I saw '80Legs' in a different thread, then there's stuff like 20Cans, 32Tractors, 99RedBalloons, and god knows what else.
- orangethirty 14y ago
  Like my username? orangethirty. In my case, it has a real world personal meaning. At least for me.
- RKearney 14y ago
  I haven't heard of those before, however 37signals comes to mind with that naming convention.
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  The pool of unique names pretty much had ran dry after 37signals. It's the concept that is memorable, and it is quite shallow here.
- eCa 14y ago
  Most likely Signals and Folders? And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU for the balloons..
b00m 14y ago
The policy used to arbitrate domain name disputes (UDRP or Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) dictates that building a company on a site like bufferapp.com doesn't give that company the right to the corresponding .com. (buffer.com) Attempting to sue to get the name is called "reverse domain name hijacking" and the arbitration committee is very very skeptical of those types of request. Case in point: http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/16/rick-schwartz-wins-the-udrp-on-saveme-com-get-a-finding-of-reverse-domain-name-hijacking/ http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/16/rick-schwartz-wins-the-... That being said, the price of the .com will track the perceived value of your company. It would be an awful waste to have to use a significant percentage of some round of funding to buy a domain name. Also, it seems like a significant percentage of your type-in traffic would be lost to the buffer.com. Even 10% of your type in traffic is probably worth the $xx,xxx you will pay for a decent .com name. The arguments against paying for a decent .com seem weak.
- dictum 14y ago
  Good luck finding a good name that is still available as a .com domain, or that can be bought for less than $2000. (Actually, I hate the idea of paying any amount to a domain squatter.)
timedoctor 14y ago
I think this forgets the MOST important point of the name. Easy to remember and easy for people to spread it virally. For example, facebook.com or even "thefacebook.com" is not too hard to remember. I have a systematic way to evaluate this by actually telling over 100-200 people via an audio or video the domain name and then asking them later to remember and write down the name. You will be shocked at how difficult it is for people to remember most names and also at how easily they misspell. I also totally disagree that the .com name does not matter. It matters a huge amount for referral dynamics, for the brand. The companies listed in the article were mostly forced to buy the .com name at great expense. If it didn't matter they wouldn't have bothered. In these cases listed in the article the companies succeeded DESPITE the handicap of not having a great .com domain. It's better to start with a cheap domain to save costs if you don't have the money, but if you can get a memorable .com domain then great. Whatever you do don't get a .co domain. These are proven by overstock to be total duds (they tried to launch o.co and after a huge and expensive launch they realised that a large percentage of people will remember it as .com and they lost all that type in traffic). A .net .me .biz is much better than a .co
- sopooneo 14y ago
  I agree. I ran a company with a name similar to ChicagoSpanishTutor and literally four out of five people remembered it incorrectly. No use fighting, just find a better name or make some change on your part that makes it easier to remember.
danneu 14y ago
Interesting tidbit about my ebook products, piracy, and naming: I sell a few ebooks. Let's say they're all about growing plums in your personal garden. Two of them are brandable, unique-on-Google names. Like "Plum Thumb" or "Plumateer". The other is a generic name. Like "The Plum Guide". plumthumb.com, plumateer.com, and theplumguide.com. All my ebooks are $12.99. I imagine the piracy rate increases substantially once you Photoshopize the price. My plumthumb and plumateer products are super-easy to pirate. Googling "plum thumb rar" or "plumateer ebook" brings back a whole page of ebook warez links. On the other hand, Googling "plum guide [rar|ebook]" brings back pages of unrelated plum links that aren't my product. The name is just too generic. (Note: theplumguide.com is the first google result for "plum guide"). My "plum guide" ebook serves a broader niche than the other two ebooks thus is more heavily trafficked and has more sales volume. Most of my sales volume comes from PPC->sales-letter funnels. Using free link-back tools, plum guide has a proportional word-of-mouth backlinks to sales ratio. I don't know how useful this information is. Does forcing someone to use google-fu or fish through Google results to pirate an ebook increases sales? Does a little obscurity-through-genericness provide any benefit when your sales are driven through Adwords anyways? Who knows. If general behavior is "can't pirate it? then forget it" instead of the wishful-thinking "can't pirate it? fine, here's my credit card", then isn't it better to get pirated? Audience begets more audience and there will always be shrink. It's fun to think about. I hope I didn't obscure what I was trying to say with the arbitrary plum examples.
Schadeaux1 14y ago
How do you like Schadeaux Technologies (pronounced shadow) for a business that creates censorship evasion hardware? I always thought it would be cool because "schad" was a German prefix and -eaux was a French suffix, but I then I learned that "schad" means harmful in German and -eaux forms plural diminutive male nouns, usually an animal, so it would really mean "a little harmful," but that can't be right because -eaux is only for nouns. Perhaps it would mean "a little harmful animal." :D
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  Your logo should be just the shadow of some small, invasive, but endearing or sympathetic animal, to get the oppressed-and-underground-but-not-defeated overtone. I want to say a mouse or rat, or a mole, but none of those are quite right. You might get some kind of insect to work, like a wasp, depending on what kind of vibe you're looking for.
conversionrater 14y ago
Naming a startup is something that I feel is both overrated and underrated. How can it be both? It's overrated because there are a great deal of example of companies with names that were meaningless, hard to spell, nonsense, spelled incorrectly, or had some other problem but due to a great product or other factors the company still ends up being very successful. It's also underrated because there are also tons of examples of startups that used their name to be memorable, add to their brand identity, explain their service, or provided some other major benefit that's so valuable it's hard to measure. The original post here is good, but I'd advise startups to take naming very seriously, try and match your name with a .com domain if possible, but that it's also not going to break you. A great name and a bad product will fail. A great product and a bad name will still win.

55 points by joshuacc 14y ago

"My current startup is named Buffer, but the domain name is bufferapp.com. My previous startup was named OnePage, but the domain name was myonepage.com." Best of luck to the OP with their strategy and advice. But I wouldn't say "myonepage.com" was a big success by any stretch. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ http://siteanalytics.compete.com/myonepage.com/ I'd also like to know specifically why the OP feels they have the long term experience to offer advice in this area? I'm seeing someone who is a few years out of college and doesn't really have the depth of experience in this area to write an article titled "How to name your domain name". Maybe "my experience with how I named my startup" would be more appropriate. Add: Some of the things he says I agree with somewhat (stick to two syllables) and some I don't (see reply to tptacek below which hmm, by the way I can never remember how to spell lest you think naming doesn't matter) The problem with advice like this is that if you know nothing you won't know what is correct and what isn't.

eps 14y ago
Exactly. This applies, conservatively, to a good half of HowTo articles hitting HN's front page lately.
gamzer 14y ago
Most of those how-to guides lack meaningful data and/or studies and/or logic. Just one example: "The domain name doesn’t matter" How on earth can one come up with such a broad statement without studying the answer for... years? Oh, he or she "learned it". Now, you can call me a believer!
joelg87 14y ago
I don't claim OnePage was a success by any means, in fact in many of my other articles I use OnePage as a reference to countless mistakes and learning which helped me with Buffer. One thing I would say, however, is that the reason OnePage didn't succeed was not because the domain wasn't onepage.com ;) We have a long way to go with Buffer but I'm very happy with the growth so far: we're a top 4000 website (alexa) and with almost 300,000 users we see 130,000 shares per day via the platform and are fast approaching a $1M annual revenue run rate through our freemium model. We also have some top investors on board in our seed round we closed at the end of last year. We've done all this with the domain bufferapp.com. I'm not an expert of anything, this is just how I would approach naming a new startup if I were to start something today. I agree your suggested title is perhaps more appropriate. That said, I did draw attention to a few other successful startups, and some of them have been running for a while now.
- abcd_f 14y ago
  You are clearly attention whoring by choosing titles that are more likely to generate foot traffic than to accurately reflect the contents. This is disingenuous. You are, as GP said, in no position to offer authoritative advice, so you might try and respect your target audience and puff your cheeks less.

paulsutter 14y ago

I would add: - Distinctive - Easy to spell - Easy to pronounce - Fairly unique on Google - Abstract is better than meaningful I love the suggestion that the domain name doesn't matter. A big mental shift for me, but the examples are compelling. Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. Easy to spell and pronounce are really important. If people aren't comfortable talking about your company, they wont talk about it. We named my first company Voila! Software, and that was a really dumb name. People were afraid to say or even type it. Quantcast is the best company name I've used, and that was actually suggested by Godaddy. Imagine that.

kabdib 14y ago
Easy to pronounce is pretty important. One startup I was at, I had to spell the name every time I mentioned it to someone new. "I work for Wayfarer Communications." "Wafer?" "No, /Way Fare Er/" "Wayfarfar?" "Double-ewe Aye Why Eff Aye Are Eee Are." "Oh . . . what does it mean?" Not a /bad/ name, but not optimal, either.
- mikestew 14y ago
  At least "wayfarer" is a word. I worked at "Adapx". Don't feel bad, everyone except the employees pronounced it wrong. The fact that the marketing company that charged them for it wasn't laughed out of the room amuses me. The decision makers had to have asked, "how do you pronounce it?" And they wrote a check anyway. ("Adapts" or maybe "adaps" is the intended pronunciation, I'm still not exactly sure and I worked there.)
tomrod 14y ago
Unique on Google I would see as sufficient, but not necessary. But, as was commented earlier, don't name & spell your project after something extremely common (e.g. Rastafarian). Given that, Python seems to have done remarkably well given these constraints. Having a superior project speaks volumes, apparently.
david_shaw 14y ago
> Abstract is better than meaningful I think this point is lost on a lot of first-time founders. Finding an abstract name that flows well and is unique is so much better than looking for random synonyms of a word you wanted (or even worse, mis-spellings of said word). > Most people find sites with a Google search and not by direct navigation anyway. As a technical person, it always throws me for a loop to see so many people open a web browser and type either domain names or the full URL into a search bar. I think that as browsers like Chrome continue to gain popularity, the line between the "address bar" and the "search engine" will continue to blur, until there's no difference at all. In the startup world, a name isn't everything -- you can't succeed just because you managed to snag `awesome.com`. That said, if you think "cinerjie.com" will ever work out, you're sadly mistaken. [1] [1] It's supposed to sound like "synergy." I'm lame, and I apologize :)

deleted 14y ago

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panabee 14y ago

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.

larrys 14y ago
"Consider Amazon." 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"?
- panabee 14y ago
  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.

arkitaip 14y ago

I prefer guidelines for choosing bad names because they are much fewer than guidelines for good names. * Make the name offensive in some language. * Make the name difficult to pronounce. * Make the name difficult to spell. * Make the name non unique or confusingly similar to another name. As long as you DON'T FOLLOW these guidelines you'll be ok.

tptacek 14y ago

A recent article made the case against disregarding domain names: while Square used to be SQUAREUP.COM, and Facebook used to be GETDROPBOX.COM, neither is today; both have acquired the bare domain name corresponding to their name and use them exclusively. The issue here is then, once you make the decision to be "getFOO.COM", the better you do, the more expensive FOO.COM becomes. There is no guarantee the price for the "real" domain name will ever be reasonable. It may instead become intractably expensive. If you're committed to "getFOO.COM" forever, the strategy works just fine. But when I see people talk about how Facebook used to be "thefacebook.com", I get itchy. How much would you have charged for "facebook.com" 4 years ago?

larrys 14y ago
"There is no guarantee the price for the "real" domain name will ever be reasonable. It may instead become intractably expensive." Thanks for saving me the time of saying exactly that. I really can't stress this enough from my experience in this area both on the buying (and assisting sellers) side. OP: "Pick a great name, then add something to get a domain name. It really doesn’t matter all that much - whether you get the domain later or don’t. Then get building!" This is scary advice. And when contrasted with the examples given is dangerous. As you say "If you're committed to "getFOO.COM" forever, the strategy works just fine." But then if you are "bufferapp.com" don't brand as "buffer" in your logo on your website and marketing materials, brand as "bufferapp".
jsomethings 14y ago
This is the company naming article you're probably referring to: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/04/22/before-naming-your-startup-read-this/ http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2012/04/22/before-naming-...
philwelch 14y ago
When you're a kid in a dorm room (even a Harvard dorm room), the cost of "facebook.com", low as it might have been at the time, is already intractable. When you're a funded Silicon Valley startup, the cost of "facebook.com" is higher in absolute terms, but relative to your buying power is more affordable. Having such a successful startup that domain squatters will charge more for your domain is a good problem to have. The most any domain squatter will earn for the domain is the most they can get from you anyway--they can't sell it to a competitor since it'll be subject to immediate trademark dispute, and they can't sell it to anyone else since no one else will pay as much as you would. I don't think it would ever actually become intractably expensive--the business model doesn't even make sense that way.

michaelpinto 14y ago

5. hire a copywriter

nekojima 14y ago

Facebook used thefacebook.com to begin with, because its original name when founded was Thefacebook. This was changed a year later to Facebook when it purchased facebook.com.

WordBiLLY 14y ago

How about WordBiLLY.com

adastra 14y ago

Have to disagree with this article. There are three qualities that override everything else for a good name: 1) Being memorable 2) Easy to spell when you hear it said out loud (and conversely: easy to pronounce when you see it written) 3) Not being cheesy or otherwise embarrassing to say when you introduce yourself to people I just can't believe it every time I hear a company name that, if I remember it a few days later and want to go look them up, is impossible to spell. Missing a letter is fine. But having silent letters, with k's instead of c's and other non-phonetic spelling? That's just crazy.

TillE 14y ago
Yeah, I think those factors are a bit more important than counting syllables. Shorter is better, but clarity and memorability trumps that. As a random example based on the tabs I have open, RockPaperShotgun is probably the most popular blog that focuses specifically on PC games. That's a lot of letters and five whole syllables, but it's also easy to remember. It's a good name.

austenallred 14y ago

You only the mistake of having a bad name once. I had a copywriting side gig I tried to name and got caught up with the idea of a red pen. So we ended up with RedWrit - not only impossible to say and spell (if you know how to say it), but the red pen allusion was completely lost. This time I don't think we made the same mistake. GrassWire. It comes from grassroots newswire, but you don't need to know that - everyone knows how to read it, when someone says it you know how to spell it, it's unique and the domain was available. That's all that matters.

vlad 14y ago

All of these companies paid for a better domain name. GetDropbox.com TheFacebook.com Twittr.com

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

Speaking of names, can anyone identify the current trend of $arbitrary_number + $arbitrary_noun? I saw '80Legs' in a different thread, then there's stuff like 20Cans, 32Tractors, 99RedBalloons, and god knows what else.

orangethirty 14y ago
Like my username? orangethirty. In my case, it has a real world personal meaning. At least for me.
RKearney 14y ago
I haven't heard of those before, however 37signals comes to mind with that naming convention.
huhtenberg 14y ago
The pool of unique names pretty much had ran dry after 37signals. It's the concept that is memorable, and it is quite shallow here.
eCa 14y ago
Most likely Signals and Folders? And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9whehyybLqU for the balloons..

b00m 14y ago

The policy used to arbitrate domain name disputes (UDRP or Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) dictates that building a company on a site like bufferapp.com doesn't give that company the right to the corresponding .com. (buffer.com) Attempting to sue to get the name is called "reverse domain name hijacking" and the arbitration committee is very very skeptical of those types of request. Case in point: http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/16/rick-schwartz-wins-the-udrp-on-saveme-com-get-a-finding-of-reverse-domain-name-hijacking/ http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/16/rick-schwartz-wins-the-... That being said, the price of the .com will track the perceived value of your company. It would be an awful waste to have to use a significant percentage of some round of funding to buy a domain name. Also, it seems like a significant percentage of your type-in traffic would be lost to the buffer.com. Even 10% of your type in traffic is probably worth the $xx,xxx you will pay for a decent .com name. The arguments against paying for a decent .com seem weak.

dictum 14y ago
Good luck finding a good name that is still available as a .com domain, or that can be bought for less than $2000. (Actually, I hate the idea of paying any amount to a domain squatter.)

timedoctor 14y ago

I think this forgets the MOST important point of the name. Easy to remember and easy for people to spread it virally. For example, facebook.com or even "thefacebook.com" is not too hard to remember. I have a systematic way to evaluate this by actually telling over 100-200 people via an audio or video the domain name and then asking them later to remember and write down the name. You will be shocked at how difficult it is for people to remember most names and also at how easily they misspell. I also totally disagree that the .com name does not matter. It matters a huge amount for referral dynamics, for the brand. The companies listed in the article were mostly forced to buy the .com name at great expense. If it didn't matter they wouldn't have bothered. In these cases listed in the article the companies succeeded DESPITE the handicap of not having a great .com domain. It's better to start with a cheap domain to save costs if you don't have the money, but if you can get a memorable .com domain then great. Whatever you do don't get a .co domain. These are proven by overstock to be total duds (they tried to launch o.co and after a huge and expensive launch they realised that a large percentage of people will remember it as .com and they lost all that type in traffic). A .net .me .biz is much better than a .co

sopooneo 14y ago
I agree. I ran a company with a name similar to ChicagoSpanishTutor and literally four out of five people remembered it incorrectly. No use fighting, just find a better name or make some change on your part that makes it easier to remember.

danneu 14y ago

Interesting tidbit about my ebook products, piracy, and naming: I sell a few ebooks. Let's say they're all about growing plums in your personal garden. Two of them are brandable, unique-on-Google names. Like "Plum Thumb" or "Plumateer". The other is a generic name. Like "The Plum Guide". plumthumb.com, plumateer.com, and theplumguide.com. All my ebooks are $12.99. I imagine the piracy rate increases substantially once you Photoshopize the price. My plumthumb and plumateer products are super-easy to pirate. Googling "plum thumb rar" or "plumateer ebook" brings back a whole page of ebook warez links. On the other hand, Googling "plum guide [rar|ebook]" brings back pages of unrelated plum links that aren't my product. The name is just too generic. (Note: theplumguide.com is the first google result for "plum guide"). My "plum guide" ebook serves a broader niche than the other two ebooks thus is more heavily trafficked and has more sales volume. Most of my sales volume comes from PPC->sales-letter funnels. Using free link-back tools, plum guide has a proportional word-of-mouth backlinks to sales ratio. I don't know how useful this information is. Does forcing someone to use google-fu or fish through Google results to pirate an ebook increases sales? Does a little obscurity-through-genericness provide any benefit when your sales are driven through Adwords anyways? Who knows. If general behavior is "can't pirate it? then forget it" instead of the wishful-thinking "can't pirate it? fine, here's my credit card", then isn't it better to get pirated? Audience begets more audience and there will always be shrink. It's fun to think about. I hope I didn't obscure what I was trying to say with the arbitrary plum examples.

Schadeaux1 14y ago

How do you like Schadeaux Technologies (pronounced shadow) for a business that creates censorship evasion hardware? I always thought it would be cool because "schad" was a German prefix and -eaux was a French suffix, but I then I learned that "schad" means harmful in German and -eaux forms plural diminutive male nouns, usually an animal, so it would really mean "a little harmful," but that can't be right because -eaux is only for nouns. Perhaps it would mean "a little harmful animal." :D

andrewflnr 14y ago
Your logo should be just the shadow of some small, invasive, but endearing or sympathetic animal, to get the oppressed-and-underground-but-not-defeated overtone. I want to say a mouse or rat, or a mole, but none of those are quite right. You might get some kind of insect to work, like a wasp, depending on what kind of vibe you're looking for.

conversionrater 14y ago

Naming a startup is something that I feel is both overrated and underrated. How can it be both? It's overrated because there are a great deal of example of companies with names that were meaningless, hard to spell, nonsense, spelled incorrectly, or had some other problem but due to a great product or other factors the company still ends up being very successful. It's also underrated because there are also tons of examples of startups that used their name to be memorable, add to their brand identity, explain their service, or provided some other major benefit that's so valuable it's hard to measure. The original post here is good, but I'd advise startups to take naming very seriously, try and match your name with a .com domain if possible, but that it's also not going to break you. A great name and a bad product will fail. A great product and a bad name will still win.