Question
What are tools to help one name a startup?
Answer
You really don't need tools beyond a basic whois service and a sense of the gestalt/fashion trends around naming.
When you figure out the positioning, the naming and branding problem become fairly trivial. Most people tie themselves up into knots by conflating the positioning and naming problems. This is because figuring out the positioning really supplies you with the right search heuristics you need to cut the naming problem down to size. It also makes your naming challenge easier because you figure out where you do/don't have wiggle room.
If you don't figure out positioning, naming gets elevated to an act of superstition and mystery. You end up on extreme highs and lows as you think of a great name that turns out to be taken, and then you sink into depression. Then you repeat.
Naming is the most important strategic decision in marketing. Marketing should be about 50% of the effort in a startup (there is theory behind this involving something called the Grabowski Ratio), and I'd say as much as 15-20% of that effort is crystallized in the naming. So a lot rides on naming.
People recognize this subconsciously and mistakenly devote high anxiety effort to precise naming. Turns out the naming decision itself can be somewhat sloppy if the positioning decision is more precise.
So most of the effort goes into the positioning thinking that informs the naming. Since marketing is basically the activity where most of the uncertainty in technology lies (again, provable point based on Grabowski's work).
In fact, I'll offer this whimsical equation, modeled on Heisenberg:
[math]\Delta P \Delta N \geq (T_{\min}+M_{min}),[/math]
[math]0<T_{\min}<<M_{\min}[/math]
Where the first term is the uncertainty in positioning, the second is the uncertainty in the naming decision, and the right hand side is the overall uncertainty lower limit in the product launch, most of which is in the uncertainty in the marketing piece, [math]M_{\min}[/math] rather than the technology piece [math]T_{\min}[/math].
Most people agonize over names too much because they try to drive down overall uncertainty by pushing very hard on the naming uncertainty. Beyond a point, you get a lot more leverage by pushing hard on the positioning uncertainty instead.
What is positioning? Try Al Ries Positioning for starters,followed by his naming-focused sequel of sorts, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, but positioning is a broader concept than the one understood in marketing. It spans all business functions. I summarized the current state of the art of the theory of positioning in http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/0...
There is one element in naming that is NOT covered by positioning thinking, and that's naming fashions, which seem to evolve in their own universe of semantic weirdness. So you do need to watch and develop an aesthetic sense of what's going on in naming. And then you need to decide to what extent you want to buck fashion vs. go timeless classic etc. The web product world is a lot more fashion driven than naming fashions in the rest of the economy.
When you figure out the positioning, the naming and branding problem become fairly trivial. Most people tie themselves up into knots by conflating the positioning and naming problems. This is because figuring out the positioning really supplies you with the right search heuristics you need to cut the naming problem down to size. It also makes your naming challenge easier because you figure out where you do/don't have wiggle room.
If you don't figure out positioning, naming gets elevated to an act of superstition and mystery. You end up on extreme highs and lows as you think of a great name that turns out to be taken, and then you sink into depression. Then you repeat.
Naming is the most important strategic decision in marketing. Marketing should be about 50% of the effort in a startup (there is theory behind this involving something called the Grabowski Ratio), and I'd say as much as 15-20% of that effort is crystallized in the naming. So a lot rides on naming.
People recognize this subconsciously and mistakenly devote high anxiety effort to precise naming. Turns out the naming decision itself can be somewhat sloppy if the positioning decision is more precise.
So most of the effort goes into the positioning thinking that informs the naming. Since marketing is basically the activity where most of the uncertainty in technology lies (again, provable point based on Grabowski's work).
In fact, I'll offer this whimsical equation, modeled on Heisenberg:
[math]\Delta P \Delta N \geq (T_{\min}+M_{min}),[/math]
[math]0<T_{\min}<<M_{\min}[/math]
Where the first term is the uncertainty in positioning, the second is the uncertainty in the naming decision, and the right hand side is the overall uncertainty lower limit in the product launch, most of which is in the uncertainty in the marketing piece, [math]M_{\min}[/math] rather than the technology piece [math]T_{\min}[/math].
Most people agonize over names too much because they try to drive down overall uncertainty by pushing very hard on the naming uncertainty. Beyond a point, you get a lot more leverage by pushing hard on the positioning uncertainty instead.
What is positioning? Try Al Ries Positioning for starters,followed by his naming-focused sequel of sorts, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, but positioning is a broader concept than the one understood in marketing. It spans all business functions. I summarized the current state of the art of the theory of positioning in http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/0...
There is one element in naming that is NOT covered by positioning thinking, and that's naming fashions, which seem to evolve in their own universe of semantic weirdness. So you do need to watch and develop an aesthetic sense of what's going on in naming. And then you need to decide to what extent you want to buck fashion vs. go timeless classic etc. The web product world is a lot more fashion driven than naming fashions in the rest of the economy.