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.
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
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
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.
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 ;-)
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.
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 :-(
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.
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.
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.
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 :-(
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
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! ;-)
Integrating Buzz into PinkelStar, a free platform for mobile app developers. Its driving us nuts. Can't get the final redirect to hit our servers, aaargh
For now we are trying to build a platform that mobile developers will care about and want to integrate into their apps. We are focussing on the developer's ease of use and added value. We know what to do with the business model, but that isn't something I am willing to discuss here at this time. However, when we are ready for it I will definitely write a post about it and explain what our model will be about
Trying to figure out some core animation tricks in order to be able to create fully customizable buttons/shapes on iPhone/iPad without the need to use PNGs.
We have just set up tenderapp for our new Beta site www.pinkelstar.com (easy social network integration for iPhone and Android). I like it a lot so far. However, since we've just gone live I can't yet say anything about daily use. But the setup as pretty easy and convenient and the price was pretty decent too.
Privacy to me isn't about hiding things. Its about the freedom to choose where to draw the line. If you read Bruce Schneier's post, you will find a few (there are tons) examples of this. And just because everyone 'does it' doesn't make it right. Google is the biggest implicit data collector in the world. Their motto suggests that they do not want to be 'evil'. They have a responsibility to ensure this data exchange for value becomes more explicit. [fixed annoying typo]
It's wrong. I can imagine tons of things that I might want to hide form others, and none of these things necessarily are evil things. The problem isn't about hiding. It's about freedom of choice.