5 Things to Remember When Naming Your Startup

A great startup by any other name would be just as successful, right? Well, no.

Finding the proper handle for your company is no small decision — make the wrong choice and you may end up spending valuable time and resources overcoming unproductive associations, or worse, trying to build a brand that no one will relate to, no matter how good the product is. In this guest post for GigaOm, Andrus Purde, startup marketer and co-founder of Achoo, offers five suggestions to help companies land on a name that fits and sticks.

The first step to naming your startup, says Purde, is to do the research and determine where you want your name to fit in the marketplace. “If everyone is zigging with ‘awesome’ web 2.0 names, sometimes you want to zag and go for something old school,” Purde writes. “Other times you want to blend in…then, of course, there are often SEO considerations to bear in mind.” As for the decision process, Purde adamantly argues against brainstorming sessions, “where someone is forced to write bad names on a whiteboard and others are forced to look at that person’s backside.” Instead, each member should stick to doing their creative thinking individually, and meet back for group discussion of the results.

What is the most important thing to consider when choosing a name for your company? According to Purde, it all comes down to memorability. “If people remember your name, they’ll find you,” he writes.

Have a story about a naming brainstorming session gone bad? Any particularly bad duds you’d like to share, or, on the flip-side, any pointers for getting a name right? We’d love to hear them! Add them to the comments section below.