HN Explorer

Ask HN: What startup has the best name?

8 points by colourfulclock ↗ HN
What are the best named startup at the moment? Purely based on name, not on quality!

Personally, I just love the name 'Backupify' (http://www.backupify.com/)

26 comments

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petervandijck
I'm not crazy about backupify. It kind of assumes you know what a backup is.
pan69
Me neither. It doesn't really role of the tongue so to say.
sucuri2
I really like DropBox's name... Matches very well what they do.
_ques
I think Ooyala is beautiful. It's a bunch of ex-googlers, I like to think the "oo" carries that. And it's an abstract name, which is ok given their business (not end-user). According to their materials, "Ooyala means cradle in Telugu, a Southern Indian language."

[i don't know anyone at Ooyala, I just found them on the web]

scottyallen
Try mentioning it in a conversation to someone, and then asking them to spell it. Total nightmare. Despite Ooyala having pretty serious traction, very few people have heard of them. As someone who used to work there, I'm convinced that the name is a huge strike against them on this front. When people ask where I've worked, I first ask them if they've heard of Brightcove, and then say that I worked at Ooyala, which is their main competitor. Much easier to explain:)

BTW, my father _still_ can't pronounce Ooyala properly, after 2.5 years, nor can a lot of people I run into in the valley.

Based on that experience, here's a couple rules I go by when naming products/companies I'm involved in:

- It has to be easy to pronounce. - It has to have a completely unambiguous spelling. - An average person should be able to spell it based on hearing it once.

You shouldn't have to say that you work for "Ooyala, spelled o-o-y-a-l-a". That's just embarrassing.

Kilimanjaro
http://deel.co

Best name ever. Short, easy, to the point, the best $30 spent so far.

ashleyw
The problem I have with .co is it's so similar to .com. If somebody sent me an IM containing "deel.co", I'd probably assume they meant deel.com and just missed the last character.
Kilimanjaro
I know, but nothing a huge marketing campaign can not fix.
Kilimanjaro
http://boog.me is not bad either, but that's more like a side project than a startup.

I like four letter names, there are some good ones left if you know where to look.

patrickk
mint.com

They spent $2m buying it, and it was a superb piece of branding.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10457870-36.html

"Mint’s product had an instant edge because of how its name branded it–a simple, easy-to-spell dictionary word, alluding to both the manufacturing of money and that fresh, clean taste."

http://www.dotweekly.com/mint-com-founder-speaks-of-branding

staunch
The price they paid was $181k in Series A stock. The return to the investor after the company sold was something like $2 million.

http://thinkvitamin.com/asides/aaron-patzer-on-how-to-take-y...

I think that's actually somewhat low as a dollar figure for the domain. It probably could have been sold for at least $300k in cash. Having Ron Conway and First Round Capital as your investors probably gets you better deals.

patrickk
Oops. Thanks for that correction. Hadn't seen that figure quoted anywhere in relation to their purchase of the domain before.
gorog
It's hard to find a great company name.

There are some WTF names like Apple Computers, or obscure acronyms like IBM. Specifically English words like MySpace are great for English-speaking customers, not so much for others. Invented proper names like Google should better be short and the Google example has the downsides of an English word since it sounds way more English than Japanese. 'Great' depends on context of course.

I would say Twitter is great because they use the metaphor consistently (tweets, the bird icon, the egg avatar).

For my own project, I will take the least bad name whose domain I can buy. People will get used to it eventually.

mashmac2
I'm going to put my vote in for GazeHawk. It's a great name for a eye tracking software company.

Gazehawk.com

solipsist
I like startup names that are made up of real words...

  Dropbox  - Drop, Box

  Facebook - Face, Book

  Linkedin - Linked, In
...or ones that sound like real words

  Notifo   - Notify
tejaswiy
I actually think Facebook is a pretty poor name, like Microsoft. Sometimes, the only reason why these names sound okay is because of repetition.
solipsist
True, it's always tough to judge a name of a company that has already taken off. You'll either like it because of hearing it so much or dislike it because you think you'll have a bias if you went the other way. The truth is that you'll have a bias no matter what you choose.
ebun
Not sure if you'd still consider it a startup, but PayPal has a great name that complements their service extremely well.