How many of the following UK startups (as listed by TC) would you say have pretty silly names?
• Groupspaces – Can forgive this one, just
• Tioti – Surely there must be better 5 letter .coms around
• Exabre – Erm
• Coull – Sounds painful
• Zogix – Yay, a Z
• Byteplay – Hmmm.. not bad
• Trampoline Systems – LOL, at least it’s funny
• Hubdub – So Rubadub was taken,m right?
• WAYN – And Waynetta ;)
• TrustedPlaces – Not bad!
• Slicethepie – Not to trashy either
• Mydeo – Hmmmm
• Skimbit – Iffy
• Huddle – Finally a good ‘un
• Rummble – Didn’t misspelling names go out a bit back?
• Zebtab – Another Z :D
• Silobreaker – Makes me feel a little queasy
• Kwiqq – Um…
• edocr – …
• ShortFuze – Don’t get ’em angry!
Made me chortle, and yes, I know, Incsub isn’t exactly clear and simple but Edublogs is… isn’t it ;)
Those have to be the worst startup names ever.
-Jeff
True – they are challenging… but as I said in my blog post http://www.birthofastartup.com/2007/02/13/the-challenges-of-finding-a-business-name/ I would have loved to pick another name, but internet property developers are buying up any possibly sensible domain names and holding them to ransom for fees new start-ups just can never ever justify paying. So we are forced to be creative and come up with new words or variants of common words.
I created Skimbit…. because my site ‘skims’ the best ‘bits’ of sites you like, to help you research and make group decisions. Its not the prettiest of words, but it definitely is related to what my site does, and has allusions to ‘skimming’ which conjures images of birds skimming an ocean, or kites skimming in the air, all very pretty allusions, which help… And so my task now is to make the service popular, so the name is inconsequential.
In Australia, you can’t buy a domain unless you can prove its related to a registered business name you own… that limits the purchase of names you never intend to use, so true business owners can get something sensible. The explosion of silly domains is a product of that lack of control in the .com space. I know they are funny, but its a kinda sore spot for bootstrapping start-ups.
Tell me about it… http://incsub.com
But still funny ;)
Best of luck with it all!
And I only said you were ‘Iffy’ – that’s practically a compliment :D
Looking at the names in a list does make you realise how funny some of them look. Basically, the structure of the web lends itself to short, distinctive and slightly wacky names.
Firstly, they have to be short as people stuggle with long domain names. Secondly all the obvious short domain names are taken so you have to be creative (i.e. as the song goes ‘add a g, drop the e’). Thirdly, it has to be distinctive and easy for someone to spell if they are told it in a crowded bar (that is why you get a lot of Z’s and oo’s, they are distinctive sounds).
It is funny you picked out Huddle as the good one. It is. Unfortunately that is Huddle.net. Mike Butcher got it wrong in his write up as will a lot of users.
I’m one of the co-founders of Hubdub. My 2-year old son named the company for us after we spent 2 months trying to come up with something. We loved it.
All I can say is that Zebtab is a damn sight less iffy than any of our 3 previous incarnations – iZebra anyone!!!! A prize to anyone who can find a short, intelligable word for which the .com is still available…
By the way, congrats to everyone who made the list. Looking forward to showing our American cousins that innovation doesn’t end once you leave ‘the valley’.
Rich