WePay (YC S09) founders put down roots in Palo Alto, raise $1.6 million | Hacker News Reader

WePay (YC S09) founders put down roots in Palo Alto, raise $1.6 million

boston.com

35 pointssachinag16 comments

The name WePay is on the mark. Asking people for money is awkward. But, WePay frames the process in a very clever way: a collaboration rather than a collection.

I think the name WePay reduces the creepyness of asking people for money lower than any cooperative payment brand yet. In the end, the creepyness of WePay may be low enough to work.

I proposed this business to a few partners in 2005, but we couldn't come up with a name that could sell it. Now, I'm terribly jealous.

Very well done guys.

Of all the things to worry about, and there is probably a list of hundreds, the one thing you should absolutely never, ever be concerned about is the company's name.

Off the top of my head in less than 15 seconds:

  o payshare
  o allpay
  o wefund
  o alldollar
  o gofund
  o gopay
  o paynow

But, think about the great companies out there with names that really don't mean much:

   Google
   Yahoo
   Zynga

The company I work for is named after the _road_ it was founded on - it was just supposed to be a temporary thing, but it "took."

The key is to generate value.

Of course branding is important. Branding is one of the principle ways "value" is built.

Building something people want is not enough. After the building bit, you need to convince people to use whatever it is you created.

What is more, often a brand contributes the majority of a product's value. Consider the entire apparel industry.

So if you can't figure out how to brand a product and you can't figure out how to market a product and you can't figure out how to sell a product, I don't think it is very clever to build the product.

And Google and Yahoo do mean something. They are whimsical and lyrical and memorable.

I don't think these would "take":

  allsearch
  wesearch
  gosearch
  searchnow

> What is more, often a brand contributes the majority of a product's value. Consider the entire apparel industry.

I disagree. I think you're confusing cause and effect. I'm sure Gap, Armani, Gucci, etc., started out with great products and amateur brands. As the products gained traction, they gained more resources to develop the brand.

> So if you can't figure out how to brand a product and you can't figure out how to market a product and you can't figure out how to sell a product, I don't think it is very clever to build the product.

Building a product and finding a market for it is step 1. Branding/growth is step 2.

Marc Andreessen said something around 2000 that really stuck with me with regards to spending on marketing/advertising. His take was basically you create something that has underlying value, and is useful to customers, and _then_ you advertise. If you try and do it the other way around, build excitement around a brand prior to the value existing, you are just flushing your dollars away. The brand becomes an extension of the underlying value - marketing is just one mechanism to communicate that value in building a brand. I do think the software/online applications are a different type of industry with regards to branding than apparel - the value is immediately more apparent (Taking nothing away from Calvin Klein and friends).