4 ms·

In the most polite way, I must ask: what are you hoping to accomplish with this poll? Of course a name "matters:" you can't call your flower company "moldy chee

by cjrd 13y ago

In the most polite way, I must ask: what are you hoping to accomplish with this poll? Of course a name "matters:" you can't call your flower company "moldy cheese flowers."

gburt 13y ago
I bet you could...
- invizabl 13y ago
  Can't. .com domain name is taken ;)
reikonomusha 13y ago
It is something I've thought a lot about and wondered. You consistently see "hip" short names come out of YC for example. Sometimes it's just a word with "ly" attached to it, sometimes it's the concatenation of two short words. Rarely do I see multiword names or traditional, older style names with "the" or "co"/"company". So I think the answer is probably more nuanced than "as long as it's not a name that is blatantly awful" like the one you suggested.
- Silhouette 13y ago
  Part of the reason I read HN now is to get a feel for whether any of these oh-so-hip start-ups is actually worth investing the time and money to integrate, or even the time to investigate in the first place. My default position after watching this industry for a few years is that if you have a trendy name, I won't even bother visiting your home page. I'll change my mind given a good reason, but that would be something like a personal recommendation from a trusted source or seeing favourable comments from credible posters on sites like HN. For example, right now, if you have a start-up and you have chosen a name consisting of some random, non-descriptive word followed by ".ly" or ".io", I am going to assume you would be a waste of my time without even looking. Sure, I might miss out on a good thing for a while, but I'm willing to accept that risk to avoid forming a foolish business partnership with a couple of youngsters who once read a book about MVPs, spent a weekend throwing up a sign-up page using Bootstrap, and hope to flip their company or at least secure an acqui-hire within a year. When you launch selfish.ly or blocking.io, that's what you look like in my head.
gamerdonkey 13y ago
I believe that you could build a successful business like that, if you took on the name appropriately. Self-deprecating names do have some history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-a-Wreck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-a-Wreck

by cjrd 13y ago

In the most polite way, I must ask: what are you hoping to accomplish with this poll? Of course a name "matters:" you can't call your flower company "moldy cheese flowers."

gburt 13y ago

I bet you could...

invizabl 13y ago
Can't. .com domain name is taken ;)

reikonomusha 13y ago

It is something I've thought a lot about and wondered. You consistently see "hip" short names come out of YC for example. Sometimes it's just a word with "ly" attached to it, sometimes it's the concatenation of two short words. Rarely do I see multiword names or traditional, older style names with "the" or "co"/"company". So I think the answer is probably more nuanced than "as long as it's not a name that is blatantly awful" like the one you suggested.

Silhouette 13y ago
Part of the reason I read HN now is to get a feel for whether any of these oh-so-hip start-ups is actually worth investing the time and money to integrate, or even the time to investigate in the first place. My default position after watching this industry for a few years is that if you have a trendy name, I won't even bother visiting your home page. I'll change my mind given a good reason, but that would be something like a personal recommendation from a trusted source or seeing favourable comments from credible posters on sites like HN. For example, right now, if you have a start-up and you have chosen a name consisting of some random, non-descriptive word followed by ".ly" or ".io", I am going to assume you would be a waste of my time without even looking. Sure, I might miss out on a good thing for a while, but I'm willing to accept that risk to avoid forming a foolish business partnership with a couple of youngsters who once read a book about MVPs, spent a weekend throwing up a sign-up page using Bootstrap, and hope to flip their company or at least secure an acqui-hire within a year. When you launch selfish.ly or blocking.io, that's what you look like in my head.

gamerdonkey 13y ago

I believe that you could build a successful business like that, if you took on the name appropriately. Self-deprecating names do have some history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-a-Wreck http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-a-Wreck