Click here to subscribe
Startup names still suck
It’s now been a while since Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0. Thousands of applications and services emerged since – however chances are you can only remember and name about 10. Truth is branding has been ignored by many of the entrepreneurs looking to launch their ideas – and many are paying for the mistake with slow adoption or failure.
Not everything can be generic, and a brand is one of the most important things to nail down when launching a product or service. If you’re still thinking of removing vowels from words to make up a 2.0-ey name, stop because you’re clearly doing it wrong. Here’s an example of how naming is a zoo these days. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from a post by Om Malik:
Earlier this year we wrote about Gaboogie, a web-based conference call service started by Erik Lagerway. The service didn’t quite work out, and the company reconfigured its business focus to offering instant group calls from mobiles, and is now called Lypp.
Another web-based conferencing service, Foonz might be going down that route. Randy Corke, CEO of Foonz’s parent company, RPM Communications was in town last week to bring me up to speed on their new offering, Utterz, which is sort of like blogging-via-voice-calls from your cellphone.
Gaboogie is now called Lypp, and Foonz is launching Utterz. Are these people having a laugh? If I asked you to name the company with the golden arches, you’d probably say McDonalds; If I talked about the drink with the great bottle and the red brand, you’d likely say Coca-Cola; If I asked you about a web-based conferencing system, you would probably never remember Gaboogie, Lypp, Foonz or Utterz.
In contrast, I haven’t forgotten Joost’s pre-launch name “The Venice Project” (witty and smart) or “Jackson Fish Market” (weird and unexpected), a startup doing virtual gifts. Some will argue that once you hit critical mass how good a name is isn’t important, but it’s easy to make the argument that the name may have a huge impact on the growth itself – so please, do think about leaving those vowels in and give naming your new company more than 5 minutes of your time.
These names, and unfortunately many of their products and services, engender no feelings in the customer. I am a motorcycle and maxi scooter enthusiast, names mean something to me, as a matter of fact they mean so much, they are no longer just names – they are marques.
IN the blog business, maybe, just possibly, TechCrunch or Ars Technica, or Anandtech, are brands. In the office 2.0 demand services, I cant think of a single one with brand-share.
The stupidest thing a founder can do is name a B2B or service economy webware app with a foolish name. Better a blatantly obviously funny name.
My venture I am struggling to fund: ThruDispatch (hosted dispatch for towing and independent servicers). Might Rename this MyDispatch, or TrueDispatch – go ahead m jump on the domains my day, punks.
But I would never name a service based web venture, ‘glahoo’, or ablingru.
Triumph – Honda – Yamaha – Toyota – Oracle -Apple – KLH, some have long lasting cache. you remember them, their name is built over time and product life cycles.
37 Signals? Bleh…Salesforce.com yeah!
Bluemark (what does it do anyhow? It’s complex) Blah
Twitter, yeah!
Comment by Alan Wilensky — December 26, 2007 @ 4:34 pm