I'll be the first to admit I did not realize it was a substituted letter and simply accepted it must a randomly created word.

I'd like to claim the invention of the use of V in the software domain. I have a pet project called Bvckup that dates back to 2009 and I am pretty sure I was the first one to mangle a software product name that way. Otherwise the medal goes to the Italians for Bvlgari.

It was a half-joke, but the name stuck and now I wish I picked something else. The problem, obviously, that it's unpronounceable. As "online" as the life is right now, people still communicate in person and the name like this is a stumbling block. Though on the other hand this is what makes it memorable. So, all in all, V-mangled names may not be a bad idea, but only for as long as yours is the only one in its respective domain.

This seems apropos: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~choh/german.htm

Finding a startup name is hard... I went through a list of hundreds of names for my project, and all the ones I liked were already taken (the .com domain name at least).

I'm not sold yet on using something other than .com for a consumer-facing startup, unless it's not web-focused (maybe mobile apps can get away with non .com tlds).

The next step will be to use f instead of s