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Episode Date: May 22, 2014
https://youtu.be/FNbQYisK5Wc
What’s in a name? It’s either a literal description of your company, or it evokes something in your customer. Think: Yahoo, Google. In this edition of WSGR Startup Basics from This Week in Startups, host Jason Calacanis shares tips and tricks for finding a great name. Plus how important is the .com domain?
Top Insights
- You want a name that is beautiful, simple, and clean.
- Name the company and the domain name should approximate that. UberTaxi was the first name of Uber. They eventually dropped the taxi. Wait it out and figure out when it's your turn.
- If someone can't say it to another person on a bad mobile phone connection and be understood, it's not a good domain name to use.
- Look at how other people are branding and adapt it. Zendesk put "zen" in front of a very basic word. What you gain is the credibility that the original brand created. However, what you stand to lose is that the word is associated with the original, more popular brand. They may even sue you. You have to think about that.
- Don't beat any ideas down. Let them all come out and go from there. People like personal or clever names.
- Come up with a name that you love.
- Remember, you can always change the name later.
- One of the most important things you'll ever do with your startup is naming it and this is incredibly hard.
- There can be legal issues like trademarks and confusion issues like Apple (tech company) vs Apple Records.
Weblogs, my second company, was creating a lot of blogs. When we sold to AOL, we had 96 different blogs. That means we had to do a naming exercise 96 times. - Jason
- Do you want it to be literal or evoke something in someone? A name that evokes a feeling, like Yahoo or Google, doesn't mean something until it means something. When you use something literal, you get the benefit of people knowing what you're doing.