Why picking a name for a startup does matter | Hacker News Reader

Why picking a name for a startup does matter

blog.pinkelstar.com

32 pointsvanelsas42 comments

There are the right reasons to agonize over a name, and then there are the wrong reasons. Your name needs to be easily and intuitively pronouncable in the user's head. Furthermore, and similarly, it needs to be easily spellable.

IMO, too much fuss is made over the need for a "memorable" name. Names usually don't become memorable until they become known. We all think Google is the ultimate example of a "memorable" name, inasmuch as it became a verb through its ubiquity. But it's memorable in hindsight. It became a verb only because the product became ubiquitous. I can guarantee you that, had Google been named something different -- let's say Gorkle -- we'd all be talking about "gorkling" things right now.

Memorability is the product of good marketing; it is not the antecedent to it. Focus on getting to memorable.

I fully agree that the basis for becoming memorable is by providing value.

Picture a meeting with a customer or VC that understands German (and there are many!). It took us valuable distraction time to get away from the name of the service to its value. In some cases a good conversation was just not possible anymore. Too much distraction from the story we felt was important :-(

The logo's rather unfortunate as well. Double entendres can also be visual. A star inside a pink circle? At least it wasn't brown (hit me with your best down vote).

It was actually a visualization of the inside of an apple. We seemed to have failed at that too (LOL).

So you chose a name that was actually a word in another language (tl;dr: pinkeln = peeing in german), and it was embarrassing when you found out. But then you say, "Did it hurt us in the end? I don’t think so." And this is evidence that Color made a good choice to go after a name like theirs.

Color paid half a million dollars for domain recognizability... and this is beneficial because they didn't accidentally choose a name that means peeing.

I don't think your evidence actually argues for your point. What about all the names that aren't a common word in your target language, but don't mean peeing in others, either?

It didn't hurt us (yet) as we were just starting out. But remember, meetings with VC's became awkward, and as said, I am still awaiting the first German app developer to use the service. So, in the end, it got us traffic (which didn't hurt). But the name will be an issue that will haunt us unless we change. We made that decision, knowing that it would cost us. But no regrets now.

Color IMO is a bad name as it's too generic.

That they paid a lot of cash for the domain name - well, if they have it, why not. Some startups are strapped for cash, others aren't. If the service becomes as popular as they think it will, $500k are irrelevant.

PinkelStar - oh, you funny Dutch people!

I'm going through the process of picking a name for a product and I have to say, it's tough. You need something memorable, but also something that's easy to say or turn into a verb. You want it to be able to roll of people's tongues without sounding awkward or stupid. It also has to be obvious how it pronounced so you don't end up with confusion.

When I started Mandalorian I had no idea of the trouble I was getting into. People calling us Mandolin, having to explain how to spell it three times in a row, and worst of all, coming mid table on alphabetised supplier lists.

If you're starting up, think about your market and your competitors. You don't need a cool funky name. It just needs to be fairly short, easy to spell and say, preferably starting with A or 1 if you're going on supplier lists and not easily confused with or tied to something else in the market.

The rules are so simple, but getting a name right (and getting a domain for it), just isn't simple. And, as the post shows, shouldn't be decided upon lightly :-(

I once worked for Stagecast - easy enough right? But people kept calling us Stagecraft or other varieties...

I guess it depends on whether they would know what it is you offer, and where to find you, would define if that was an issue or not. Choosing a name has advantages and always unexpected side effects. It doesn't always have to be negative though

Is it better to:

-create a name using a combination of existing words? (e.g. MySpace, RadioShack, etc.)

-create a name that doesn't really mean anything to a majority of users (but possibly memorable)? (e.g. Twitter, Tumblr, etc.)

-create a name from existing word(s) but change the spelling for funkiness? (e.g. Digg, Reddit, etc.)

-create a name derived from another language? (e.g. Roku, uh...)

-do something else?

Also, randomly found this too: clickable: http://www.thenameinspector.com/10-name-types/

I would say, choose something that you feel comfortable with first, and then wonder if your customer/user would feel comfortable with it too. That matters too. Don't try to satisfy the entire world. That won't work ;-)

Of course, the mother of all cross-language naming errors was when Chevrolet tried to sell the Nova in Mexico. In Spanish, "no va" means "it doesn't go".

> the mother of all cross-language urban legends

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

Hey, it's still a good story, and makes a good point.

Then again, PinkelStar is actually even better. I am a native German speaker: PinkelStar is just funny, and the Dutch are known for their strange humor anyway - all credibility for investing would be lost, even if I'd accept that it could still be a huge hit outside Germany.

+1, I agree.

I think the real lesson here is one that many companies have leanred the hard way: be aware of translational problems if you will be going international.

Also, I would have advised them against the use of the Elstar part. Most people probably have/had no idea what an Elstar is outside of that region.

We actually assumed that PinkelStar would be something that was meaningless. It just sounded good at the time. We checked domain names, but didn't check what Pinkel could mean (star seemed pretty obvious at the time).

A pretty expensive oversight in retrospect and a mistake I will not make lightly in the future. Now let's hope no one comes up with something we didn't expect when we choose Zwapp! ;-)

Pinkel pinkel little star how i wonder what you are.

+1!

One of the big contentions over the Colo[u]r debate wasn't necessarily the name but the domain name. I'm pretty used to seeing colourapp.com or mycolour.com, etc. at this point. The start-up name IS definitely important, but the domain name is less so imo.

Besides the obvious successes of companies generating huge distribution on other channels, I would still say that having a great domain name will help a startup get on its way. It isn't nearly as important as providing great value, but if no one finds that value, well, then you will fail.

Are you sure you've drawn the right conclusion?

Why picking a name for a startup does matter

Did it hurt us in the end? I don’t think so.

Seems that the correct conclusion is: even if you pick a disastrous name, you can always change it later.

See my other comment below. Think about the costs involved, both in terms of cash (startups want to manage cash!), design and development time spent to fix this. At some point you find that your brand is in MANY places.

For example. We can fix our site, but we also need to fix EVERY framework that we release to developers. etc. etc.

Then you're arguing that it did hurt you in the end.

It is hard to measure the potential damage. Did we lose users/customers? We don't know. We certainly didn't gain German devs on board. Did we lose investors? We got ourselves a great investment ( $500K), but it may hurt future rounds. This is a "better be safe then sorry" decision in the end I think.

Rebranding is expensive. Just a redesign is expensive, rethinking the concept, etc. Hopefully it will give us some extra publicity and people will have another good laugh :)

If you're going to change names I would go for one you won't have to spell out loud to every single person. It also feels awkward to say in English with the 'w' after the 'z'.

I'm afraid that's a tough one to solve too. We thought about it, asked a few native English speaking friends to take a look at it. We liked Zwapp very much because to us it associates with our idea that friends would like to swap apps. That name, and domain are obviously not available, so we ended up with Zwapp. We hope it will work out well, but it is a bit of a worry to us.

Depending on your service changing names can be expensive. Of course if you can buy domain names for $250k then everything becomes more fluid.

OUr rebranding costs less than the $250 K color spent on their domain. But if I could have avoided our costs by selecting a better name to start with I would have.

Zwapp Connect and the hyphenated domain name are not good.

So, you're throwing away all that free publicity?

In my opinion 'free publicity' really doesn't exist. It always comes at a cost. In this case, we got loads of traffic, but only from German people that had a good laugh. There wasn't a way (we could think of) that would help us turn that traffic into new customers

I can see that - now you have a HN frontpage link, AND you can have a great rebranding campaign for the Germans in the future.

True. I am very happy with this discussion on HN, but I do hope others will learn from this and not be tempted to make the same mistake. I'd rather would have had an excellent review on TechCrunch and then lots of people signing up from all over the world, including Germany. This attention now is great, but obviously doesn't fix the false start. In the end it is so much better if people talk about the value you may or may not deliver, then discuss the name

Im in the process of putting up some landing pages to tes 3 names for the same service, it plots actions you take to a visual timeline.

What do you think of the following names:

Plotsdots.com

Whatstat.us

Timestat.us

Without having seen anything else which would you say rolls off the tongue better?

Plotsdots. To me the other two read like 'stat dot us' not 'status' because stat is a word in its own right.

"Plots dots dot com"? It's cute, but I prefer Timestat.us. If you take it as "Time Stat" that isn't so far off the mark, and "Time Status" sounds spot on.

I say: pointsinti.me

I think landing pages are a good idea. Maybe have a possibility for comments so people can comment on any bad aspect of the name?

Posting it here in the comments was probably a good idea :)

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