When you start a new business, picking a name can be an agonizing process. It actually kind of always is an agonizing process because it’s so final. Changing the name of your company is a huge deal. And if you get your company name right, you make it easy for people to remember your name and to spread the word about your business.
But if you get it wrong, folks will struggle to find you. They’ll struggle to understand what you do, and they’ll struggle to remember your name so they can tell other people about it.
Your company name communicates so much about your company that that if at all possible, you really wanna get it right the first time.
So in this article, I’m gonna guide you through selecting a memorable business name, and I’m gonna highlight common naming mistakes that you should steer clear of at all costs. And if you stick around til the end, I’m gonna walk you through the exact process that a company I invested in used to find their domain name.
In This Article:
Why Does A Good Name Matter?
I wanna start with a disclaimer. The reality is that there are plenty of poorly named products out there that still succeed. So you can make a bad name work, but it’s like running against a headwind, right? You don’t want to start your business in hard mode.
A couple examples that I can think of are eBay with that capital B in the middle of the word.
Xerox with two x’s, and they’re pronounced differently. One pronounced like “a”, “z”, one pronounced like an x.
Microsoft. It’s just very not descriptive. It was software for microcomputers.
Even Google, I would say, is not a great name. It’s a misspelling of a large number. It’s supposed to be spelled Googol, and they misspelled it and put GLE. And frankly, it doesn’t describe much about the company or what it is.
And these days, I guess we use it as a verb, but that’s only because it’s the best search engine out there. And they definitely could have come up with a better name in the early days.
A memorable name will absolutely help you. A bad name is unlikely to kill you, but again, it’s running upstream, so to speak. Memorable names make it easier for word of mouth to happen, right? Your name is part of your brand. People tend to trust a good name and to maybe look at eBay with a bit of a side eye. I remember the first time I used eBay, I was like, what is this website with the bad design that has a pig latin name? And honestly, it made me just not trust the site cause it felt like it wasn’t a legitimate business.
And so as you’re looking for a name, usually it’s a process of elimination, right? It’s often best done as brainstorming and then eliminating the things that don’t fit and just slowly brainstorming. 20 30, 40, 50 names. And these days you can do that with ChatGPT, right? Do it pretty easily and then just narrowing down to your top 3, 5 or 10, and starting to ask for outside feedback.
Five Mistakes that You Should Avoid
So now I’m going to dive into 5 mistakes that you should avoid when coming up with a name.
Mistake 1: Lacks clarity
There’s something called the crowded bar test, which is if you’re in a crowded bar, probably noisy, probably distracting, and a friend were to tell you the name of a product or company, can you hear it, understand it, and remember it?
So, one example of this is if I were yelling over a bunch of people in a bar, and I said, if you wrote a book a bout SaaS, it’s should be called the SaaS Playbook. It’s a playbook for SaaS companies. The odds are you’re going to hear it, you’re gonna understand it, and you’re gonna remember it.
But if you have a podcast called startups for the rest of us, which is kind of a long, tricky name, I think that’s a fail, you know, it’s too long.
Another example of an unclear name comes from Matt Paulson, he had a website he called analyst ratings network, and he kept saying it to people and no one had any idea what he was saying. So he quickly went out after Microconf and bought a different domain name, Marketbeat.com
It’s a great domain name and he’s built this into a decimalion dollar bootstrapped ARR business thing to remember is if you get too clever, names are hard to describe. Or remember if you’ve ever seen that movie, that thing you do. The band’s name is the wonders, and we can all think of how that is spelled.
They start it with the oneders, and people call them the oneiters. And they want, they’re trying to be clever, they’re trying to have a pun, wonders, but it doesn’t work.
Mistake 2: A Name That Is Either Too Generic, Too Common, Or It’s Too Close To Your Competition
Mistake number two is having a name that is either too generic, too common, or it’s too close to your competition.
So there’s no differentiation. So if you watched the american version of the Office, there is an episode where they have Alfredo’s Pizza and Pizza by Alfredo, and there’s a bunch of confusion between these two names. And so realize if you’re going to name your company something generic, like website search engine optimization.com, while that’s an interesting exact match domain name, that’s not a brand, that’s just a description of what you do. So something to consider. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but I like to have names that are unique enough so that you can own the search box on Google, right? So this is the case for fictional made up names.
I mean, think of like tiny seed and microconf, right? Those kind of describe, they give you an idea or a feel for what they are. But if you search for those names, we ranked for them from day one, right? We didn’t have to go beat out other more generic sites like Imagine when Slack and Stripe first got started now, those are actually really good names, but they had venture money behind them. If you searched for slack ten years ago in Google, you probably wouldn’t have come up with the company, you know? And same with stripe, you would have gotten a noun, a Webster’s definition page or something like that.
And so being just a little clever and having either compound words like Laura Roeder did with paperbell, she got paperbell.com and if you google paperbell or search that anywhere, you’re going to come up with her company.
And Craig Hewitt as well. He’s a tiny seed founder. He has castos.com and Kastos is, of course, something he owns in the search results.
Mistake 3: Misspellings
The third mistake I see are misspellings. I’m not sure if you watch she Hulk, but there’s a character named Madisynn, and her tagline is, my name is Madisynn with two n’s and one y. But it’s not where you think.
And it’s just this super confusing thing. Now, that’s not a brand name or a product name, but you get the idea is the further you misspell something, you have to explain that every time you say it out loud. So imagine you were getting clever with your URL shortener, urlybird.com. u r l y. Producer Ron came up with that. It’s terrible, but it’s a good example. Like, it’s clever. It’s a URL, but urly bird, except it’s spelled urly and everyone’s going to say why.
Examples of this of companies that are big and successful but have misspelled names and I think are probably to their detriment, is lyft with a y, flickr with no e, tumblr with no e, and fiver with an extra r at the end. Something to think about is watch out for google autocorrect. Right? So when you type your potential name into a google search bar, do the results get autocorrect? And consider that every customer searching for your brand may suffer the same doubt.
Mistake 4: Name That Difficult to Pronounce
The fourth mistake I see people making is having a brand name that is difficult to pronounce. This is similar with misspellings. If someone can’t read it and pronounce it, there will be confusion. Or everyone pronounces it two different ways. Like I’ve always thought, you know, the moleskine, moleskina. Moleskine notebooks, I mean, we all use them and Hemingway used them and all this, but I think that’s a bad name.
I think if they just removed the e and called it moleskin, it would be so much better. Or if they said it is 100% pronounced moleskine because the e implies a harder.
I don’t like that name because different people pronounce it differently. So if you show the name to five or ten different people, do they all pronounce it the same, or are they unsure? And if they’re unsure, it makes it harder for word of mouth. Like I said, a couple examples of this, and this is going to be in english speaking places that they’re hard to pronounce.
But Huawei, Huawei is a huge electronics manufacturer, and I would have no idea how to pronounce that if I hadn’t heard Tom Merritt say it on Daily tech news show. Often we have Reuters, which I know these are big companies, but today I would not pick that name, this name that’s on screen here that I’m not even going to attempt to pronounce.
Mistake 5: Pigeonholing Themselves Being Too Specific With Their Names
The fifth and final mistake that people make is pigeonholing themselves being too specific with their names.
So, for example, if you have a job board for linemen, which is electricians, and you had apprentice linemanjobs.com or linemanjobs.com, versus something a little more brandable and generic like ampjobs.com, lineman jobs would have some obvious search traffic, but it really limits what you can expand into. It might be great for SEO, but it’s gonna cause you headaches later if you need to pivot.
So consider a fictitious job board called remoteonlyjobs.com. Does that name unnecessarily pigeonhole your business in terms of you maybe wanting to expand into non remote jobs down the line? What if you need to pivot the business or expand the focus? And you might be thinking, yeah, but if I follow all the above, there’s nothing left.
But that’s not true.
As I said, start with a brand name, and I try to get the best name and then reverse engineer and figure out what’s the best domain name I can get that works for this. So you can add a prefix like get or hey or use or lets, or you can add a suffix if you’re an app like app. And so when you’re first starting out adding a prefix or a suffix, it’s okay. It’s not ideal, but it’s okay.
I had some negotiating leverage. In addition, especially if you’re in the SaaS space, different top level domains can work. Code, AI IO, evenly, not as much anymore.
But these are all acceptable, right? Think of customer IO that has built a deca million dollar ARR SaaS customer IO. Think of close IO. I think they actually bought the.com, but I still call them close IO.
One of the final things I’ll wrap with is don’t use two or more of these suffix workaround things. So, like get bumpcrm.code, it’s hot garbage, right? If you could get bump.co versus bumpcrm.com and you could get either one for a decent price, I’d consider it like bump co, bump AI, bump IO. These are not bad domain names.
Conclusion
Choosing the right name for your business, startup, brand, or product is a crucial decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. A well-chosen name can become a valuable asset, helping you stand out in a crowded market and connecting with your target audience. Conversely, a poorly chosen name can hinder your success and create unnecessary obstacles.
Remember, while there’s no perfect formula for selecting a name, following these guidelines can help you make an informed decision. Take your time, gather feedback, and trust your instincts. The right name will not only represent your business effectively but also provide a strong foundation for your future growth and success.
Ultimately, your chosen name is just the beginning. It’s the quality of your product or service, your customer experience, and your overall brand strategy that will truly define your success in the long run.