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"Startup Names" by Paul Graham, 14 Mar 2006

aux.messymatters.com · 910 words · saved by 1 readers

[This was originally published on the now-defunct Infogami and was surprisingly hard to find online, so I put it here. I’ve added commentary, with our now internet-decades of hindsight, in brackets. I’ve also summarized the names mentioned (and alluded to) along 7 dimensions: Evocativity, Brevity, Greppability, Googlability, Pronounceability, Spellability, and Verbability. These are discussed in my own article, “Nominology”. —dreeves] 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’

"Startup Names" by Paul Graham, 14 Mar 2006 "Startup Names" by Paul Graham, 14 Mar 2006 [This was originally published on the now-defunct Infogami and was surprisingly hard to find online, so I put it here. I’ve added commentary, with our now internet-decades of hindsight, in brackets. I’ve also summarized the names mentioned (and alluded to) along 7 dimensions: Evocativity, Brevity, Greppability, Googlability, Pronounceability, Spellability, and Verbability. These are discussed in my own article, “ Nominology ”. —dreeves] One of the hardest problems new startups

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