How to create a great name for your startup
Next, only to its logo, a company’s operating name is equivalent to a nation’s flag when it comes to its identity. A company’s name serves as a critical banner that touches everything from product packaging to business cards; in short, you want to get right. If you read the Genesis stories behind the naming of many of today’s the most iconic companies, you will be hard pressed to find a standardized formula to follow. Whether it is Isaac Newton’s apple, inspiring a young Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, or a high-pressure brainstorming meeting that led Blue Ribbon Sports to rename itself to Nike after seven years of operations, a clear step by step guide has not surfaced.
Bootkik is the name of the company I work for. It is unclear whether or not the name Bootkik will achieve ‘icon status’, but what is clear is the process by which the name was created. I now share it with you in hopes of starting a conversation towards developing a trustworthy recipe for how to create a great name for a startup.
We didn’t get it right from the start
Originally, we incorporated the business as Launch Platform Inc. in a rush to hit a requirement for a grant that we did not end up landing. Six months later we unanimously agreed that the name ‘Launch Platform Inc.’ achieved a whopping zero on the ‘originality-o-meter’, so we decided to make a change. As a young team, we agreed upon seven requirements that our new name had to pass. We were not complete zealots in our observance of the requirements but they certainly helped guide us to an original name that, over time, has come to fit like a glass slipper.
Seven requirements for creating a great name for your startup
- The name must be less than seven letters long.
Your first impression may be to think that this is an odd requirement. Rather than providing an exhaustive defense of this first requirement, I submit to you the following list:
- Alibaba (7)
- Apple (5)
- Amazon (6)
- Oracle (6)
- Intel (5)
- Tencent (6)
- Google (5)
- Twitter (6)
- Uber (4)
- Airbnb (6)
- Facebook (8)
- Microsoft (9)
- Bootkik (7)
This list should tell you three things. First, that Bootkik looks right at home on that list, right? Second, that Mark and Bill didn’t get the memo. Third, that you should keep your company’s name around seven letters. Onto requirement two!
2. There must be a ‘.com’ extension available
Though I don’t doubt a .io (Indian Ocean), .app (application) or .ca (Canada) domain extension would serve you well, a .com extension is non-negotiable if you are pursuing a global market. From day one at Bootkik we have had our eyes fixed on becoming a technology company that reaches a global market, so we set a .com as a ‘need to’ rather than a ‘nice to’. I can’t speak for you, but the reason we nearly compromised on this requirement is that when we agreed that we would re-name the company, we started in the dictionary and the thesaurus and came up with some epic names before checking availability. As tea of strongly opinionated individuals, we found ourselves defending name suggestions that didn’t meet this requirement. Fortunately, faithful observance of process won out in this circumstance.
3. It must be a made-up word, a word that does not bring with it pre-assigned meaning. Much like reflecting on Highschool, certain words bring baggage front of mind. We didn’t want our word to mean anything at face value to avoid our users assigning good or bad feelings to our name. We wanted to give our company a clean slate. And wanted our customers to assign new meaning to the word. We certainly hope that the value we create for our customers equates to happy feelings every time they see our name or logo. Bonus nugget, made up words are easier to trademark.
4. It should be easy to pronounce and not require the assistance of a speech pathologist for someone to read it and pronounce it easily at first attempt. Amongst my peer group, tech founders, from time to time I find myself in front of a scowling founder set on me knowing that the reason I cannot pronounce their oddball company name is my fault. Similarly, I’m at the age now where friends are having babies, many babies. Many of these babies have pretty unique names, with even more unique spelling. I think first-grade teachers and your customers will appreciate if you commit to selecting names that anyone can simply read and pronounce without requiring someone in a knitted sweater and a fedora to give them a lesson in phonics.
5. It must pass the ‘Nova Test’. A fun piece of branding bloopers folklore occurred when Chevrolet launched the ‘Chevy Nova’ car in South America to the Spanish speaking markets. Chevrolet failed to notice that the word ‘Nova’ in Spanish means ‘Does not go’, and not surprisingly a car called ‘Won’t move forward’ was not a hit. So in short, we wanted to make sure our name would not create any translation issues. We punched each name we considered into Google Translator with every major language group we could think of, from Mandarin to Magahi, from Russian to Romanian, we tested them all.
6. Exact or reasonable variants were available on desirable social media platforms. This is pretty self-explanatory. You are very likely going to use some form of social media to promote your product or service, and some of your prospective customers are likely going to search for you on their social media channel of choice. Ensure that exact for attractive alternative social handles are available for the company name before you pull the trigger. We cross-checked with Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google +, and Snapchat.
7. We will make the final decision democratically. We started with a list of around twenty or so candidates and used requirements one through six to narrow the list down to just a handful of candidates. We still own a handful of domains for top contenders. We put our final list of proposed company names on the whiteboard and at the end of every day, each team member got to cast a vote with a check mark. By day four or five a clear winner stood out. Without much delay and the help of our friends at GoDaddy and Visa, we bought www.bootkik.com for $4.99 and secured a smattering of social handles.
Looking back, I wish I had a clear, step by step recipe to follow for naming my startup — so much wasted time. We built Bootkik to resolve problems just like this. A marketplace for clear, step by step guidance, from road-tested experts.
Time to name that baby.
