Names & Domains For Startups
“Giant Enemy Crab” shows over a half million results in Google. The downside of an instant brand for your band (startup, app, game) is that you’ll have to work a little harder for that top score in the search engines.
Sure it’s a little wonky to say, but in fact, it is a perfect name for a crowdsourced cooking site. Short, defensible, and unforgettable. A recipe we made, a wecipe!
Perfect name for a crowdsourced cooking site. Short, defensible, and unforgettable. A recipe we perfected, a wecipe! Wecipes.com as well, best to have both! Buy it now priced at DAN Wecipe.com Wecipes.com
@Wecipe @Wecipes
photo credit: Emily Barney
Ultimate early internet domain name play story. In this excerpt Michael Robertson tells how he came
to own mp3.com and what happened when he ‘turned on’ the traffic.
(Click arrow to play audio clip) Michael Robertson tells the story of mp3.com.
In addition to starting mp3.com (later sold to Vivendi), Michael Robertson founded Lindows
(Linspire) and SIPphone (becamse Gizmo5, recently sold to Google). He’s now focused on
building mp3Tunes.com which allows users to store their music in the cloud and access it from
anywhere. Check out the entire interview at ThisWeekIn.com.
I think this is a very powerful name for a band. I love the built-in merch angle.
I’m starting a collection of inane domain names. InaneDomainNames.com will resolve to this page on the blog. If it generates enough interest I’ll move it to it’s own site at some point. Please send me your favorite Inane Domain Names (and why you think they’re inane)!
TaskRabbit.com? Are you kidding me? Task + Rabbit = TaskRabbit! Perfect Tommy, fire up the bong!
Andy Sack, a smart, successful VC, and co-founder of VC fund and incubator Founder’s Co-op, recently ran a few articles on the difficulty of re-branding Revenue Loans. He painted the picture of he and his team of developers burning the midnight oil for weeks trying to come up with a name that the ‘domain squatters’ hadn’t snatched up. In the end they chose Lighter Capital. I must say I was highly underwhelmed and, but for the remark in the comments suggesting a cigarette lighter would make a great logo, had forgotten the name by the time I closed the tab. Why would a VC with millions of dollars at his disposal tie up his time and the time of his development team for upwards of three weeks trying to come up with a very average available domain? Why not invest some cash and get something really cool! Honestly, IMO, Andy didn’t just come up with an average name, but he sent a signal to potential future partners about his priorities.
Just listened to a great interview with the founder of Pachube.com, pronounced “Patch Bay” throughout the interview. [Wow! The very day I post this TechCrunch announces that Pachube has been acquired by LogMeIn for $15MM.]
An article I read today suggest we bow our heads for a handful of startups that fell into the deadpool in 2010. While I am not even suggesting that there is a direct corollary between their names and what happened, it is interesting to note that the domains themselves are probably worthless. Wattzy UserMojo YouCastr Riotvine Sponty Shortbord Rangle.me Geolenz If you can’t find a genius available domain (Hipmunk comes to mind) you can get a pretty good domain for a couple of grand. Your name is social proof number one – resist the urge to build out on a crappy available domain.
This just in. Kevin Rose is launching a subscription email newsletter. Granted, once you’re signed up you’ll probably never have to see it again, but for the purposes of talking about it at least he’s got to have a url. It’s being called Foundation, but the url is foundat.io/n. I think that actually raises the bar! Top that inane domain namers!
25 million in venture capital so far and the best we can do is Blekko.com. Are you kiddin’ me?
I’m overwhelmed. Just watched ThisWeekInVentureCapital and one after another Mark Suster is rolling out these recently funded multimillion dollar companies whose names are, IMO, horrific!
Xobni.com Sendgrid.com Swipely.com Assistly.com Burstly.com Telepart.com? Earlier in the day Jason Calacanis talked about paying @$18k for ThisWeekIn.com (for his network of shows). He gets it! A good name is going to cost you a little dough. If VCs are pouring in cash- stop! Get a new name! Your customers will thank you- they won’t be embarrassed telling their friends about you (and then spelling the url, and then spelling it again).
10/20/10 Deal site Postabon.com relaunched today as SignPost.com. Nice! Are we seeing a pattern emerge- startup-> traction -> Angel round -> more traction ->A round – NEW DOMAIN NAME!
Sorry, even the press articles covering the launch are calling it unvarnished.com, but it’s actually GETunvarnished.com I feel for these guys, that’s one crappy domain name. [Update 10/19/10 There is a god! Unvarnished has just changed its name to Honestly.com. Thank You!]
Kevin Rose just sent out a tweet announcing his investment in a new startup. He links to a NY Times article about said startup. I’m just sayin’, if Kevin Rose is investing in you and the NY Times is writing about you it’s probably too late to change your domain/company name, but give me a break! formspring.me? For another question/answer site? Amazing.
This looks like a great product and I loved Andrew Warner’s Mixergy.com interview with Harry Lin that hipped me to it but, really, Lottay.com? Described as a cross between lottery and latte. More like a cross between can’t spell and can’t remember. I think this was one of the situations where by the time they had some money and momentum to run with the idea, they’d actually become fond of the name.
The Crunchpad fiasco is ongoing, but in the meantime the manufacturer is offering the tablet pc for sale as the Joo Joo. Bad enough they don’t even own the domain name joojoo.com but doubly inane because of the the.
theJooJoo.com
This has been mentioned elsewhere on the blog. Vark itself isn’t all that bad a domain name. The problem here is that the company is called Aardvark.
vark.com. (Wow! Aardvark/vark.com sold to Google for $50 Million! Wonder if they’ll keep the name.)
See also: http://goodurlbadurl.blogspot.com/
Have you been to Brazil? Saudade de Brazil.
Imagine having a site/business that would take you to Brazil a few times a year. I can dream can’t I!
Berimbaus.com Buy it now priced at DAN.
(Click arrow to listen) Brazilian Bermimbau
Salon has a super-interesting article on the business of naming companies. It’s long and detailed with lots of quotes from main players in the industry. It’s a huge industry and people are charging a lot of money to help companies find that just right name for their business. At the end of the day they’re going to need a url. You can find the article here: The Name Game by Ruth Shalit, but I want to share a few quotes to whet your appetite.
…eventually cost the client more than $1 million and involve up to 40 Landor executives around the globe. The first step was to interview key executives at the massive new entity, then known only by its code name of NewCo. After four months of this sort of intensive brand therapy, the group settled upon the only name capable of conveying such protean emotions — “Agilent.”
“The most namby-pamby, phonetically weak, light-in-its-shoes name in the entire history of naming,” declared Rick Bragdon, president of the naming firm Idiom. “It’s like a parody of a Landor name. It’s insipid. It’s ineptly rendered … It ought to be taken out back and shot.
“Steve Manning of A Hundred Monkeys, a San Francisco naming firm, was also appalled. “What a crummy name,” he says. “It sounds like a committee name. ‘Who’s your competition?’ ‘Lucent.’ ‘Well, we want to play off Lucent — only we’re agile. I mean, if you wanted a name like that, I could come up with that kind of name in about four seconds.”
Hey, those guys sound like they’ve been hanging out on the domain forums!
The Idiom url is actually idiomnaming.com! Idiom branding examples here: http://www.idiomnaming.com/credentials.html. A domainer at heart? Look where their hompage Idiom Naming Survey takes you: http://www.hugedomains.com HugeDomains.com, there’s a name for you. But where’s the survey?
A Hundred Monkeys at least owns their own domain and I do like a lot of these product names. A lot of their brand names leave everything up to the imagination, as far as what the company does, but as I’m beginning to understand, that’s often considered not a bad thing. I will definitely be checking out their website further. I want to know what people pay $65k for, and that’s before the domain name! (Well a few of the companies I checked had the domain name, but most were parked! What is this telling me?)
“I used to work by writing names on individual pieces of paper and sticking them up on the wall,” says Steve Manning of A Hundred Monkeys. “I don’t do that anymore.” The reason? “People were walking around the room with cameras, taking pictures of my names,” Manning says blearily. “It got a little creepy. I mean, this is Silicon Valley. People move around a lot … If they liked one of my names, they might be drawn to register it as a URL. And that would be very bad. Because, you know, I own those names.”
The monkeys don’t come cheap. “We charge $65,000 per name,” says Altman. “But we work with you for a month. And for that month, we are basically yours. It’s actually a much lower price point than many of our competitors.”
Consider Luxon Cara’s $70,000 “identity program” for US Air. The airline “wanted to be repositioned and perceived as a major U.S. airline…
“No, no,” Lagow says. “It’s been changed to US Airways.” “That’s it?” I asked.If $70,000 seems like a hefty price for a word fragment, consider the chutzpah of Ira Bachrach. Several years ago, he charged Infiniti $75,000 for a single letter. Or, to be fair, two letters…
One model became the Infiniti J30, another the Q45.
Great article. I’m keeping a copy of it on my computer for the next time someone starts arguing about a $xxx price for what I know is a great domain name.
Homework:
Could a New Name Fix a Company?
From Inc, 1984! Name-Calling Feature on Ira Bachrach and Name Lab.
How Did The Blackberry Get Its Name Feature on Lexicon (url Lexicon-Branding.com A hyphen! They do own the non-hyphenated).
From Wired: How do they come up with names like Pentium and AirTouch?
See also:
The Name Inspector
The Naming Group
Good Domain Names Grow Scarce Inc. Magazine
When you have a ‘great’ idea, one of the first-actions you can take is to register the best domains you can find to brand the idea.
Even if you don’t execute, the perfect domain name may turn out to have some value later when someone else discovers the idea and decides they want to build a business around it.
Domainers have a phrase, ‘category killer’, they use to describe a top tier name that exact matches a search term, especially when it’s higher up on the search chain–like Shoes.com. The ‘long tail’ version would be domains like RedSpikedHeels.com.
Category killer generic domains are long gone. I think that’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to new idea websites. If the idea is fresh enough, you can create the category killer name for it.
It gets a little subjective at this point, but what I look for first of all is a domain name that is easy to remember but that also conveys the purpose of the site. Ask.com, eHow,com, Savings.com are good examples of almost perfect domain names.
While the internet may be young in many respects, with over 113M active domains currently registered, I can assure you that domain names have been pretty much picked clean.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to find a decent domain name available for registration prices. I am saying you’re going to have to work very hard to find one (or hire me to do the looking for you). Most likely you’re going to be better off having a budget set aside to buy a decent domain name. While a ‘category killer’ might cost you hundreds of thousands or more, for $2-5k you can often find a great domain.
The rest of this article is going to show you how I went about branding an idea for a new site. The idea is for an online tip jar service. Authors would create an account, paste a little code into their site, and users would donate with a single click. Pretty obvious idea right? I don’t understand why it hasn’t been implemented at the web 2.0 level. Let’s get started.
[Update July 8, 2010: Flattr is doing just this – an all-internet tip jar. Wishing them the best of luck with it.]
TipJar.com Originally registered in 1996 as a place for members of a small organization to pay dues. It’s the category killer domain name for this idea. At least it hasn’t been developed, although the owner appears to have ideas for it. This domain might be available for the right price.
iTip.com Doesn’t resolve. Whois shows a 2000 registration. iMac was introduced in 1998 so it’s likely that by 2000 people were starting to buy up every iDomain that was available. This is another domain I’d make an offer on if I were a startup with some funding.
eTip.com Doesn’t resolve either. Whois shows a 1997 registrations. Another candidate for a purchase offer.
And here’s a list of other unavailable domains, going farther and farther away from the perfect domain as we go down the list.
TIPPER.COM
TIPPED.COM
2CENTS.COM
ITIPPED.COM
TIPR.COM
HATTIP.COM
TIPWIDGET.COM
ISPONSOR.COM
ISUPPORT.COM
TIPTO.COM
TIP2.COM
TIPOUT.COM
TINYTIP.COM
TIPTIP.COM
TIP.ME
CHIP.IN
OPENWALLET.COM
TIPD.COM
HATTIPS.COM
If you want to see the entire list (if only to know what kind of crap is already registered) have a look here.
So what did I find available that wasn’t horrible?
HATPASS.COM
PASSTHEHATAROUND.COM
TIPAPPS.COM
TIPGADGET.COM
TIPGADGETS.COM
OPENTIPJAR.COM
EKICKIN.COM
IKICKIN.COM
ICHIPPEDIN.COM
ICHIPPED.IN
Did I actually buy any of them? Yes, and why.
HATPASS.COM As in, Pass the hat. Sounds good out loud. Also I like the word ‘pass’ as in ‘season’s pass’. Try this on for a tag line, “Get a HatPass”. It’s short, associates well with the idea and is somewhat memorable. TipJar it’s not. But it’s okay.
So, for reals?
I would be building, testing, and talking about HatPass.com. It would be my working title. But if/when/as attention built, I would be looking for a little Angel money to go shopping. And when I actually launched I’d have one of these: TipJar, iTip, or eTip. Something like…
TipJar.com
Saving the internet. One ad at a time.
Again from ThisWeekInStartups.com, the Jason Calacanis ustream.tv show. It’s a great show, and the experience of watching it live has turned out to be a little bit addictive. Check out #TWIST on Twitter. Jason is simply Twitter.com/Jason.
In this audio clip from ‘Jason’s Shark Tank’, Jason tells caller/developer Kevin, of pikk.com what he likes about what Kevin’s created so far.
Jason Calacanis: Everyone should follow you on Twitter obviously, Pikk. You have that up and running, and you have a four letter domain name. These are, again, signals of quality for me. You have a decent domain name decent web design. I’m not crazy about your web design, to be totally honest with you I think it’s a 7 or 8 out of 10 but, listen, Mahalo was a 6 out of 10 at one point, now it’s a 10 out of 10, so, it’s progress you know, and I can appreciate that. Smart enough to pick a four letter domain, great – how did you get the domain was that available or you bought it.
Kevin: I bought it.
Jason: Yeah, how much did that cost you?
Kevin: Ah, I’ve been told I got the bargain of the century, this cost me about twenty-five hundred dollars.
Jason: That’s a great deal.
Kamran Pourzanjani: Yeah.
Jason: For a four letter domain…
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s another Jason Calacanis audio clip from This Week In Startups, episode 29.
The context is a domain/brand a caller mentioned in a previous ‘Ask Jason’ segment.
Jason Calacanis: Isn’t it amazing though Tyler? The people with the naming.
Tyler Crowley: I just found out… I think lean.ly is available. With the dot L-Y which seems to be the hot new…
Jim Lanzone: Hmm!
Jason: Oh…
Tyler: Don’t get you started with that?
Jason: gov.ly? (refers to earlier in the conversation)
Tyler: gov.ly?
Jason: gov.ly
Tyler: lov.ly gov.ly
Jason: lov.ly gov.ly… I hate that nonsense.
Tyler: Yeah.. L-Y’s catchin’ on, so is dot F-M
Jason: (Sighs)
Tyler: But it gives people more of an option to come up with names… You use Bit.ly all day long!
Jason: You know what, De.licio.us did this as well, and then when they were successful they wound up buying Delicious dot com.
You’re going to wind up with a dot com anyway, You might as well make the effort and spend the money to get it early. So you don’t have to re-brand it!