What’s In A Name?

Picking the name of your startup is a really important exercise. With any luck, you’ll have it forever. It’ll drive your logo design…LOL. I’m a sucker for logos. Huge fan of Fiverr and Vista Print.

Your company name is your primary identifier. In my opinion, it should have meaning, relevance and most of all, be catchy.

7 Terrible Naming Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

When my BFF and I were trying to think of names for our handbag business, we worked for weeks, mashing words together, translating them into different languages, playing around with alternate spellings. All In the end, we kept it SIMPLE. Krina. Kristen and Tina? Get it??

Way back then, there was no Fiverr. So we splurged on a creation from LogoWorks. Yikes…cost us $299 as opposed to $5!!! Although I still love it to this day… =)

And while we thought our name was so unique, we were still being confused with Anna Corrina…a competitor with a lot more brand recognition and funding. I guess short, catchy and relevant didn’t cover ALL our bases.

My addiction to naming companies didn’t end with Krina.

Since all my novels to date are set in Silicon Valley, I’ve created a whole set of fictitious companies. Case in point, Play Action. This is the first company name I created for my hero’s online gaming startup. Unfortunately, it took me a year to find out that a company with the same name already exists in cyberspace. So I returned to the drawing board.

I Googled for days, trying to figure out the perfect name for his company. I wanted it to hit me like a bullet – had to sound cool but also work well with his scope of business. I finally came up with LazerShark. Perfect! Cool-sounding, relevant, quirky. Okay, you might now know what it means if you’re not a gamer but it’s a fab choice for the target audience. LOVE!!!!!

Do you even have to ask what I did next???