How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding

How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding(learndot.com)

90 points by paulitex 13 years ago | 46 comments

pud 13 years ago |

According to the article, one of the reasons they changed the company name is because it was hard for people to understand the old name when spoken verbally.

Their new name seems to have the same problem.

For example:

Learndot: "Email me at paul-at-learn-dot-dot-com"

Customer: "learn dot com?"

Learndor "No, learn dot dot com"

Customer "???"

paulitex 13 years ago | |

Hey pud, OP here.

The thing is, we never say the domain. We say the name of the company. I totally agree that "Learn dot dot com" is confusing. But "Learn dot" isn't. Vast majority of people use Google to find things on the web (that was the theory). Last couple weeks of trying it out has backed that up.

pud 13 years ago | | |

In that case:

Learndot: "Our company is called learndot."

Customer: "Learn dot what?"

Learndot: "Learn dot nothing - that's the name of the company."

Customer: "Learn dot nothing?"

Learndot: "Well, dot com."

Customer: "Learn dot com? Why didn't you say that?"

Learndot: "No, it's learn dot dot com."

Customer: "Dot dot?"

Learndot: "No, the first dot is spelled dee-oh-tee."

Customer: "???"

I hope I'm not coming across as snarky. Naming isn't easy.

chaz 13 years ago | | |

I don't necessarily disagree, but remember that while you may be saying "learn dot," your users/customers are saying "Hey, you should check out learn dot dot com." You can train your team, but you can't train your customers.

DinosaurArms 13 years ago | |

This was my first thought exactly. They went from a name that was difficult for people to spell/pronounce correctly to one that is confusing in the context of the web. I'm not sure which is worse to be honest. After hearing the new name verbally people may either; type in "learn." into Google which I doubt they will be the first result, or be left waiting for the "com" part and still not have the right idea.

ericfranklin 13 years ago | | |

Same thoughts here on the web context of dot spelled out. However, that is an easier hurdle to overcome than the difficult pronunciation/spelling of your former name, as long as you write it as "Learndot" instead of "Learn." Once people learn the d-o-t the first time (no pun intended), they shouldn't have trouble with it going forward.

We went through similar issues in our rebranding, with both a dot and pronounceability (D.NEA). In our case, the '.' is not spelled out, and the domain works with or without it (d.neadiamonds.com). Being primarily internet based, most people don't need to pronounce it, they just follow a link or search for the name. If we talk to them, they'll hear us say it when answering the phone, but we aren't too concerned with how people pronounce it. After five years of using this name, most people get it close enough.

Learndot looks to be an overall better name than Matygo.

mikkohypponen 13 years ago | |

Google has applied for the ".dot" top-level domain: http://gtldresult.icann.org/application-result/applicationst...

So, eventually, getting http://learn.dot might be possible...

randomdrake 13 years ago |

First off: great post!

I've told clients similar things before. You need to be able to tell someone your website name and be able to have them find it very easily. Unless you're one of the only ones in your space and people will find your site searching for key terms, it's very important that your site is easy to find, pronounce and spell.

With all that said, I'm curious as to why you went with a logo that, to me, is hard to read? Before I even got to the body of your post, I was looking at the background on the header image and struggled with:

Leai ndot...

Why did I have problems with this? The dot is often used as a syllable spacer when you are looking at pronunciation guides. For example: mis·take.

I don't know if you considered this but I thought I'd mention it because I can't be the only one. It seemed appropriate to mention since having a logo that is easy to read and understand should go along with having a name that is easy to pronounce and understand.

paulitex 13 years ago | |

[meta: HN is a great critic, the two biggest issues we had before pulling the trigger was this one and what pud pointed out :)]

This was a tough call. We thought it was a clever design that tied together the name mark and the logo. In the post I mentioned I printed it out and got people on the street to read it – that was specifically because some people found the 'r' hard to read!

If it turns out to be an issue for a lot of people, we'll revisit.

scott_meade 13 years ago | |

Also had the same initial read of the logo. Thought it said "Leai·ndot". Other than that: Paul, "thanks" for sharing your story. Interesting and well written.

ericfranklin 13 years ago | |

I had the same "Leai ndot" impression of the blog logo, though felt it was more legible on your homepage.

Maybe connect the post and dot with a bar, or remove some of the spacing. Make the "o" a solid dot instead?

fbuilesv 13 years ago |

I'm interested in this particular thing:

Twitter handle was registered, but had never tweeted and looked abandoned. I contacted a friend who works at Twitter and after a bit of investigation was able to get @learndot as well

Is this something that's easy to do? Can it be done if you don't know anyone inside Twitter? I had to settle for something like @myappnameapp instead of @myappname because the username was already taken but had never been used. I'd be interested to learn what are the Twitter policies regarding this.

johns 13 years ago | |

The way to do this (I've heard) if you do not know anyone at Twitter is to buy a lot of ads then ask your sales rep to see if they can help.

huhtenberg 13 years ago | | |

That's certainly one way to get to know somebody who works at Twitter.

JacobAldridge 13 years ago | |

I had to do this sans connections, and found their form worked pretty well.

In my case I had a stronger claim - the company I was with (@ShirlawsUK) had registered the handle originally, but handed it over to an ex-staffer who had changed the password, never used it, and left several years prior (so email mailbox was long dead). Took about 48 hours from memory, and the account was ours again.

karendenny 13 years ago | |

hi we are trying to get an account rather urgently that registered in 2011 but never used.

can someone on this forum perhaps help me? contact me at karen.denny@quirk.biz

thanks karen

pclark 13 years ago |

I think the most important – and only thing – you should worry about naming stuff is simply not having a terrible name. Honestly, learndot is very poor for the reasons pud articulated.

* Have the .com

* Be able to pronounce it and the url without confusion.

Got those two things? Great, now get back to shipping your product. Seriously, names are irrelevant and unless you have mega cash you're not going to get a 10x name (eg: path.com) so just make sure you're not terrible.

Here is a better name for learndot: learnduck.com you're welcome.

MicahWedemeyer 13 years ago |

Hey, let me also jump on the bandwagon of armchair-quarterbacking your decision! -Insert quip about how easy it is to do this stuff here...- Boom! I showed you!

Seriously, I'm not sure why everyone in this thread is so convinced that their name or name-choosing process is somehow genius or better than that of the OP. Obviously the OP knows that choosing a name is tough and you're never going to get the perfect name. It's all about compromising in the right places to get a name, a domain, a social presence, and so forth.

Personally, I found the story educational and a close parallel to my own difficulties with choosing names. I'm especially grateful for the discussion of buying the domain name. I'd like to hear the actual dollar value, but I can understand why that wasn't mentioned. At least it's clear that the price moved by $1000's which gives some frame of reference instead of us just guessing whether it was $100 or $100,000.

paulitex 13 years ago | |

Thanks Micah. The final price was greater than 1k and less than 5k.

dreeves 13 years ago |

Shameless plug of my own take on this: http://messymatters.com/nominology

Sam Stokes (Rapportive co-founder) called it his "favourite post on naming things". :)

Ooh, and Sam's coworker called it "absolutely brilliant". I might be reaching now.

btyrad 13 years ago | |

Dreeves~ Loved the post myself! Thank you for sharing. I at times wonder about my startup name, but your criteria laid out does help rationalize a decision. Still am curious about names with numbers...37signals, or 86..

artgon 13 years ago | |

How would you rate Learndot based on that scale?

dreeves 13 years ago | | |

Great question! Let's see...

EVOC: green, especially with the cute tagline, "learning, period"

BREV: green or yellow; slightly shorter than wikipedia

GREP: green; perfectly greppable

GOOG: green; perfectly googlable

PRON: green; perfectly pronounceable

SPEL: yellow or red, given the confusion with "learn dot dot com"

VERB: yellow; the verbification isn't obvious but probably verbable

So all in all I think it's a good name!

stanmancan 13 years ago |

It should say (or at least suggest) what you do, who you are, and what makes you different; your position in a word or two.

I spoke to a branding/marketing guy the other day that had a very interesting philosophy behind product and company names. His idea was that your name should make _no_ sense until you explain it to someone.

If you name your company "Stan's Golf Lessons" then you fit into the crowd. You don't stand out. Your customer know's exactly what you do based on your name and they don't dig for more information. They also don't remember you in specific when they want golf lessons. Instead, name your company "Perfect Lies". This gets peoples attention. They have no clue what you do, but it piques their interest. They ask what it means. You tell them you give golf lessons, and suddenly the name Perfect Lies makes more sense (for non-golfers, 'lie' means where your ball sits on the course). They remember you.

debacle 13 years ago |

I really like the story behind the domain acquisition. It sounded like it was going to be unfun before you got to it, but I'm really glad it went over well and it sounds like both parties were happy.

Sometimes it's the hardest part of the rebranding.

Tyrant505 13 years ago |

I learned quite an interesting "hack" to aid in naming a company. Talk to children, under 10, and see what names they come up with and their reaction. You will be quite surprised!

edit: a little proof; yumbud.com

eps 13 years ago |

Tangentally related, мотыга is Russian for Hoe. As unglamorous and boring word as it gets.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoe_(tool)

bonobo 13 years ago |

Nice reading. The catch-22 mentioned in the article ringed a bell to me. I'm prone to analysis paralysis whenever I need to choose a name, especially if I start thinking about these kind of things. Seriously, it's been about four months since I decided to choose a new nickname on github, and so far I didn't find anything that satisfies me.

This tendency leads me to take the opposite strategy: take a word that has no special meaning (checking first that it has no bad connotations, of course), that sounds rather good and it's easy to spell. I also often wonder if taking a name that has a deep relation with your current targets won't hurt you whenever you need to pivot.

I also liked the discussion that developed on another thread about a month ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4684599

se85 13 years ago |

I think that spending 9 months on a naming problem and coming up with a name that is still not very good at all is indicative of the real problem which is that you guys need to look for outside help on this one from someone who has the expertise to actually execute well in this area.

If you had done this originally, this blog post would never have been written, but you would have had a superior name to learndotdotcom 8+ months ago.

I know it may look bad to change your name again, but thinking long term, this confusion around this name is going to impact your organisation in ways that you can't even measure so if it is at all an option at this case I would strongly recommend pursuing an alternate path.

Sometimes its cheaper to do things the expensive way.

madmax108 13 years ago |

So, you spent 9 months on changing a name (which IMHO is just as peculiar as matygo, as the comments in this thread have shown), rather than working on your product itself?

Nice blog mate, but seriously think you're losing track of time here. Facebook (thefacebook), Twitter (twttr), Google (a typo of Googol) are all products that didn't take naming too seriously when they started. Don't you think spending 9 months on a rebranding campaign for a startup that was set up just 3 years ago is a little rash?

Personally, loved the earlier Matygo logo.... the 2 word bubbles intersecting told me everything I needed to know about the company. And the business card was sharp too.

Hope this all works out for you guys! :)

mcrider 13 years ago |

Instead, put your subconscious to work on it. Think about it in the shower. Bounce names around off hand. Be patient.

I'm a big fan of this technique in many aspects of my work. Whether it be a programming problem or needing to work through a creative idea, if I'm not 100% confident in a solution I step away from the problem for a day or two and usually have a lot more insight when I come back to it.

BTW, glad to see you guys moving forward; I check your blog once in a while and haven't seen much lately. Good luck!

ropz 13 years ago |

I like the story, I like the website - it's pretty. You don't see so many long-form websites. And based on the principle that improvement happens in discernable, incremental steps forward - the new name is much better than the old one. But what do they do? They're selling the sizzle, but to get to the steak, you've got to sign up - estimate the number of 'learners' you might create, and so on. This sounds more critical than it's meant to be. But what do they do?

capex 13 years ago |

The most attractive website, with a catchy name, and all the bells and whistles amounts to nothing if your product is nothing to be proud of.

Why not choose a simple name with a different TLD? Basecamp has been basecamphq all these years. Also, read Evan Williams' thoughts on this: http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-impo...

ALee 13 years ago |

A hack that we used in my previous startup was to come up with a bunch of names, then send out a survey to friends and potential target customers and asking them how much they like the name. You can also randomize the questions so that people can just choose names that they like, then tell them what the service is about, then have them choose again.

Takes the whole, "I like this name" arguments out of the mix.

daemon13 13 years ago |

Hi Paul,

how much time / money did it cost you to register your trademark? I've heard from various sources that the time can be from 1 mth to 6 mth, and money from $300 to $2000, so just wanted to check with the person who had first-hand experience.

Also, can you recommend a lawyer for this kind of stuff.

thank you

prlambert 13 years ago | |

I haven't received the legal bill yet for the trademark work. Expect it to be close to the middle of the range you gave. Time was minimal, a couple emails to our trademark agent was all it took.

We're in Vancouver and our lawyers are Clark Wilson. I'm happy but this is my first time registering a trademark, so I don't have a frame of reference.

email paul at learndot.com if you have other questions. :)

daemon13 13 years ago | | |

Thank you...will do for sure.

So you are Canadians, nice to see the start-up land diversifying a bit. I was in Toronto 14 years ago, loved Canada. Good luck with re-branding! :-)

DanBC 13 years ago |

I like this post!

Your "three tests of a name" don't mention "does someone else own that name, or something similar, and are they likely to sue?" That could be important for some people.

I'm really relieved that your name is 'learndot', and not 'learn.'.

LoneWolf 13 years ago |

While this comment may not contribute much because I didn't read the article yet I would like to complain on the font size way too big for me to read comfortably without resorting to zoom. Not just the text but the "Stay Updated" area in the bottom too.

nmahendran 13 years ago |

I like it. I like the business cards. I like all of it!!

erode 13 years ago |

The ability to fluidly fire off your website address is just as important as the actual name itself. You fumbled twice in a row, my friend.

naww 13 years ago |

I was thinking about getting "sheeple media", dot com and trademarks but it is a bit condescending if you know what I mean.

pwniekins 13 years ago |

learndot[dot]com

"how to name your compnay"

nothx