Believing Your Own Bullshit | Hacker News Reader

Believing Your Own Bullshit

nickoneill.com

29 pointsnatasham255 comments

I dono if ycombinator is good or bad at teaching people about branding... but personally, I don't really think a name has that much to do with it. I mean, you want something unique that doesn't sound like it's a weak knock-off of something else, and you want something that shows up in google, but I think a brand is something you build up over time.

Your brand is a reputation; just like changing your name to something that sounds better isn't going to improve your reputation, having a cool name isn't going to make your brand strong.

A neutral name is fine if you can own it (and I don't mean in the trademark sense here). eg. Amazon... or Zappos. Neither of these names are cool on their own, they simply mean what they mean because the company behind them worked hard to establish the brand as a symbol of quality (of customer service, mostly).

OTOH, there are names that aren't really neutral and those can hurt you no matter how good your product/service is. Nick's examples of Fukime and MunchOnMe (1) are perfectly representative of this, IMO. Those two names give me a bad impression of the company to begin with, so they are starting off in a deep hole instead of at sea level when trying to get me to use them.

(1. FWIW, I made the same connection back when Fukime was doing their launch post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2848436 )

huh. MunchOnMe seems like a reasonable name for a groupon clone (which looks like what it is?) I guess I'm missing how that is bad or offensive.

I mean, Fukime sounds like a handle on a cosplay form. Not really what I'd go for, but being Japanese is a thing and that's okay. The real problem is that a google search confirms it - the first hit I got (safesearch off) is the deviantart page of... some cosplayer. oh man. On the first page, I found references to the cloud platform, but not their home page. This is a serious, serious problem, if you ask me, /much/ more serious than a vague resemblance to a curse word in the name.

On the other hand, I'm told I'm horrible at picking names so maybe I'm exhibiting bad taste here.

I think this article was pretty good. Sometimes I sit back and wonder-- why the heck am I struggling so hard for stuff? Why not just give in and go with the flow, kick back and let others take the rein. I just can't though, it's something in me, and probably in you, too.

The world needs more entrepreneurs.

I was wondering, are you ever afraid of taking the reins? The OP says how they failed a few times before they had success. Is that something that keeps you in that mode of kicking back and letting others take the rein, or is the want to succeed greater than your fear of failure? Or do you simply enjoy the challenge and struggle that comes with entrepreneurship?

I don't mean to prod, I'm just curious as I'm thinking of starting my own personal project but fear it's too big to complete.

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