3/16/2006

Paul Graham on Startup names

Choosing a good name for internet startups is a task that requires imagination....why? As Paul Graham says in his blog:

"One of the hardest problems new startups face is choosing a name. All the good domain names seem to be taken-- and not by other companies, but by domain squatters.

The good news is, the feeling that all the good names are taken is an illusion. It must be, because I felt it in 1995. Squatters have registered huge numbers of names, certainly, but they can't register names as fast as 26^n grows.

Because so many names have been taken by squatters, a strange new phenomenon has arisen. It's now uncool to have a name that was obviously bought from squatters. It's like running Microsoft software on your servers. It suggests you have more money than brains, and that's not a good thing for a startup brand to suggest.

Hence names like Flickr, Writely, and Del.icio.us. These are the stars of recent startupdom, and yet they're living in decidedly marginal name space. It's a bit like when fashionable people started living in lofts in industrial neighborhoods."


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