How to Name Your Startup
I love names.
Names of things I’ve built have ranged from bad; “Habit Kangaroo,” “Tacklebox,” to decent; “The Hoops Bridge,” “3Degrees,” to great; “Find Your Lobster,” “Idea to Startup,” and “Basketball Lessons for a College Scholarship.”
I think of startup names like the neck hole on a tee shirt - if they’re good enough, you don’t notice them. If they’re wrong, they make the shirt unwearable.
Like everything, the way to think about your startup’s name is to think about how your customer will interact with it. To figure out what “job” you’re hiring the name to do. In our case, the job is “understanding.”
Here’s how your startup will grow early on:
A potential customer complains about the problem you’re solving to a friend who is either already a happy customer or has heard about your service. The friend recommends you.
A few days later, when the problem pops up again for the potential customer they remember you and search for you online. Hopefully, they find you and convert.
Weeks or months after that, a friend of theirs complains about the same problem and they recommend you and the cycle starts again.
The vast majority of your early growth will be driven by word of mouth. Any formal marketing will be too expensive and ineffective until you’re bigger. That’s why it’s so important to pick a cohesive customer base and a problem that happens frequently - it gives you the most potential for the “complain” moment that will drive growth.
So, our name needs to fit into that moment. Which means it needs to be easy to recall and to help people answer the big question - “is this thing for me?”
Your business will always be discussed in the context of the problem you solve and why that problem is particularly hard for some people to navigate. Humans love recommending solutions to uniquely hard problems. We like being useful.
If you ask me for a barber recommendation and you have long, straight hair, I won’t have one. But, if you have short, curly hair like I do I’ll tell you about Stevie, my barber who cuts that type of hair really well. It was hard to find her so I’m happy to share with people who will get a ton of value out of the rec.
So, we recommend things that are specific. Don’t forget that when you name. Which brings us to our first naming approach.
Naming Convention #1: Describe the Problem
Name your startup a tight description of the specific, uniquely hard problem you’re solving (and for who, if you can fit it in).
My favorite personal accounting software is called “You Need a Budget.” It’s an unbelievably effective name. It’s memorable not because it’s clever, but because it describes the exact moment their customer is in when they go to buy the product. In our word of mouth scenario, someone is talking to their friend about trying to figure out how much they can spent on rent or how to save money for a vacation and their friend chimes in - “you need a budget.” The name implies that this is the first budgeting software you’ve used, so it helps a customer self-select.
If you’re starting a company that helps people organize their lives so that they sleep more, you might name it “You Need to Sleep More” or “Sleep More.” If the problem is more specific—say, helping shift workers sleep—you might go with something like “How to Sleep When You Work the Night Shift.”
These might seem like objectively bad names, but you need to remember the two jobs of a name are:
To be memorable and easy to recall
To help a customer know exactly what you do and whether you’ll be helpful for them
These do each.
But if you don’t like this, you might like our second naming approach.
Naming Convention #2: Describe the Outcome
The second way to name your company is to describe the outcome you’ll create for your customer.
The best book title I’ve ever seen is “The Million-Dollar One Person Business.” This describes an outcome every solo-entrepreneur wants, so they buy it. The name describes the outcome and implies the barrier to getting there - in the case of the book, “one person businesses are usually hard to scale.”
For the sleep product, you might name the company “Sleep Through Back Pain” if you’re helping people with chronic pain.
Through this lens you can see:
Idea to Startup is a great name for a podcast that helps people turn an idea into a startup.
Find Your Lobster was a great dating name for people looking to find their soulmate (if you watched Friends).
Basketball Lessons for a College Scholarship was a great name for my coaching service that catered to 11 year olds who’s parents thought they were capable of playing in college.
Tacklebox is a terrible name for a business that helps people build a business.
The first three had much better organic growth than Tacklebox.
Another hidden value of both naming constructs is that they force you to pick a problem and a customer.
Which brings us to the three main sources of pushback/questions:
What if I outgrow the name?
My answer is always the same: let’s get to mile 20 of the marathon before you worry about mile 21. Once you’re there, you can change if you need to. But to get there you’ll need to grow organically, and the right name will increase organic conversion significantly.
My name is long. Can people remember it and what about a website?
Don’t worry about this - you can always shorten for a website (You Need a Budget → YNAB). And people remember phrases better than words.
What about Google searches?
This is the best type of name for google searches, because people will google the problem or the desired outcome. And that’s… you.
We’ll end with what not to name your startup.
The Worst Business Names
A quick list of the worst ways to name your business:
Something specific / meaningful to you. Don’t name your business after you’re aunt or your dog or the street you grew up on. That’s selfish. The business is about your customers, not you.
Something clever that isn’t an inside joke only your customers will get. Clever is dangerous because clever isn’t easy to understand. The point is to be obvious. “You Need a Budget,” “Junk Luggers,” “Idea to Startup.” If the name is an “insider word” that’ll build trust, that can work. But problem is better.
Something you, or your customers, won’t enjoy saying out loud. I never ordered the “Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity” at iHOP even though it sounded delicious because I didn’t want to sound silly saying it.
So, that’s how to name your startup. Describe the problem you’re solving or the outcome you’re creating. If you can get the customer in there as well, all the better.
Send me any great names you’ve come across (I’m a nerd about this stuff), and even if you have a name for your business, think up a few that are problem / outcome focused. Changing a name early is often worth it.