What's in a name? Almost nothing.
Concentrate on how people feel about your company, not the label you give it.
I strongly believe that having a great name has almost zero impact on a startup being successful. The mistaken belief that names are important wastes time trying to get it juuuuust right.
People get this wrong because they mix up the company name and the company brand.
Your brand is how people feel about your offering. It’s a complex and emotional blend of every interaction they have with the company. Your logo, colours, name, adverts, onboarding, pricing, customer support, blog, API documentation, recruitment processes, and offices all influence how the world thinks about your brand.
Your name is the label that you give to the brand. A name is part of your brand. Your brand is far, far more important than your name.
It’s easy for early stage startups to confuse the name and the brand, because they likely don’t yet have a blog, adverts, or customers to support. So the name is one of the only brand assets that they have to put into the world. This makes it tempting to force the whole nuanced brand experience into just the name.
Let’s take Apple as an example:
When you think of Apple, you probably think sleek designs. You might think of privacy champions. You might think of overpriced electronics. You might think about people working factories in China. Whatever you think of Apple - that’s their brand. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the name of a fruit.
As a startup, you’re better off obsessing about how you can deliver your customers value, as a way to grow your brand equity. Don’t worry much about the label you give it.
Startup naming expert Arielle Jackson spoke about this on an episode of Lenny’s Podcast where she said that a good name can help your company, but a bad name won’t harm it. My belief is that even the perfect name will only have limited help for your startup.
There are no rules when naming a company
When renaming our startup (now called Jitty), I found a bunch of “rules” about how to name a company. I believe these rules are bullshit and don’t matter at all, so I’ll provide some examples where breaking the rules didn’t hold a company back.
Myth #1 - People have to hear the name and know what you do
But this rule doesn’t apply to: Google, Klarna, Uber, Amazon, Volvo, Disney, Apple, Spotify, Kodak, Rolex, Lego, Slack. For Slack it probably does the opposite. AirBnB doesn’t host BnBs.
Myth #2 - The name has to have some kind of meaning behind it
But this rule doesn’t apply to: Zillow, Amazon, Spotify, Monzo. Or anything named after a person. People love to share how a googol gives meaning to the Google brand, but I bet 99.9% of people don’t know that meaning.
Myth #3 - The name has to easy to spell
But this rule doesn’t apply to: Reddit, Digg, Fiverr, Flickr, Tumblr, Lyft.
Myth #4 - You need a .com
But this rule doesn’t apply to: Notion(.so), Pleo(.io), Hinge(.co), Twitch(.tv), Craigslist(.org).
So if you come across this because you’re currently naming your company, and spending weeks wrestling over it: instead spend your time working out how to give your customers a modicum of extra value. That will be worth more than landing on a great name.
If a band called Green Day can become one of the greatest rock groups of all time, your company can do it with any name.