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stringbot

If your product is killer I don't think it matters what your domain name is. People are going to get the word out.

Look at "blekko" for crying out loud.

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Blekko is still very far from proving that its horrible name wasn't a huge mistake.

Well it is short, unique and somewhat phonetical. I'd give it a B.

We hired a naming company, and they couldn't come up with a better name -- most of their suggestions were too boring.

http://www.skrenta.com/2008/01/about_the_name_blekko.html

If we succeed, the name will be considered great. If we fail, people will blame the name. Does the name really affect anything? I bet good results are more important.

Mind if I ask how much you paid the naming company? Unless you have money to burn, I can't imagine paying a company to name your startup.

My employer paid for a branding agency and wound up throwing away most of their names and settling on a name we came up with ourselves. They did give us one good name that I wound up using for a logging tool two years later, so it wasn't a total waste.

I'm of the opinion that if you don't have creative enough people on your team to come up with a good name you probably have bigger problems than the lack of a creative name.

Every startup I've been in paid a naming company. I've never liked the results, but the VCs always have liked the results...

Of course you're right. You can succeed with a bad name and fail with a good name. It's just a mistake to make your job harder than it needs to be (since it's already so hard!). With as much money as you guys raised there's really no excuse for having such a poor name. IMHO.

Note: I'm a fan, and hope you guys kick ass -- I'm just being honest with my opinion.

I don't think you can generalize this as being binary. It makes it a hell of a lot easier for someone to spread the word if the name rocks. Your product has to be killer enough to over-compensate for a bad name, but imagine a killer product and a killer name.

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