Comments on: Choosing a business name

By: Taryn

Taryn — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 20:46:47 +0000

I’m still googling easy ways of coming up with a good business name. In my country (South Africa) we cant use those Letter only names which makes it a lot tougher. These dont seem to follow any of the normal name selecting rules, see for e.g. http://gxi.co.za/growing-your-business/197-4-rules-to-choosing-a-great-business-name.html

By: Luke

Luke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:25:08 +0000

We came up with TBODA during a pub session…
Its obscure enough to get peoples attention and we have a fun back story behind it.

By: Mario

Mario — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:51:18 +0000

One more small tip for domain names – as well as there are many mobile devices without qwerty keyboard (most cellphones are using other standard), it’s good to have an easily ‘inputable’ name from your mobile phone. Especially if you have a social network or other frequently used resource.

P.S. Sometimes bookmarking is not a solution – mails are involved, and if you have ‘speed.de’, it would be 2 times the ’7′ key and 5 times the ’3′ key of a regular phone. It’s not comfortable for quick and flexible fingered guys

By: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 | shiner.clay

Wednesday, March 25, 2009 | shiner.clay — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:04:13 +0000

[...] How to choose a name for your company? [...]

By: Morningtime

Morningtime — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 08:02:57 +0000

Clear article. I ended up buying my .com for 1500$. I’ll need it in the future for international expansion. In the meantime I get a lot of business through my local TLDS.

By: John-Daniel

John-Daniel — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:08:27 +0000

@Chris – Nice site and handy domain name Thanks for dropping your thoughts in.

@Hyacinth – I just checked and no, he hasn’t kicked it and neither have any of the staff. We’re not a new business – we’re in our third year of operation. I posted the story onto DNK because I’m sure there are thousands of geeks out there, just like me, who are thinking about starting a business. I want to ensure these posts do have the “development tools company” angle to them because I do believe they’re unique and more relevant to a geek crowd.

Being cynical is fine but to clarify: this is more just for my own benefit than Mindscape’s. I don’t think too many people will read about naming a company and think “hmm… and I really need WPF Flow Diagrams too”. I don’t think that’s happening somehow

Our company blog had many many more readers and subscribers – the content I post here I didn’t think appropriate for all our company readers. They can subscribe here if they like it.

By: Hyacinth Broadchest

Hyacinth Broadchest — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:34:14 +0000

I have to say that your series is shameless self-promotion for your new company. ‘Advertorial’ is too weak a term for what you are doing. The moderators of dot net kicks should stop it, as this is a transparent attempt at generating foot-traffic to your site. I think ‘linkbait’ is the current phrase.

The flaw in the logic is that web 2.0 networking amongst a bunch of fellow geeks is probably not going to generate any work for your company, just fleeting visibility in the twitter-space.

I wonder if you get the other drirector to kick it for you, as way of starting things off?

Hyacinth.

By: Chris Pietschmann

Chris Pietschmann — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:40:20 +0000

You hit on some good points.

When I chose the name “Simplovation” I came up with a ton of possible names as well. The biggest factors that I chose to help me determine what name to use were 1) Uniqueness (fewest result when searching it on Google) and 2) Domain Name availability. I checked quite a few until I finally settled on Simplovation, where when I first looked generated zero Google search results and all three .COM, .ORG and .NET were available. This was not an easy feat and I’m still surprised it worked out that way.

http://simplovation.com

By: John-Daniel

John-Daniel — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:35:24 +0000

@Dave We still spot some of the older games on local auction sites like TradeMe

@Dan Thanks for the encouragement. If I was building a mISV I’d probably do something with my name just for simplicities sake.

@Configurator – Snap it up, I’m sure somebody would want it eventually

@Kevin – We did everything with our lawyers. It appears that Mindscape (the other one) is a publisher – not a creator of software. We obtained the various Trade Marks for our name and they were obtained without objection. I think the subtlety is that they sell on behalf of others while we create the software itself. We haven’t had any issues so far. The original Mindscape is still going strong (listed on the french stock exchange I believe?). I think we can co-exist happily as we have for the last 2 years.

Cheers for the comments guys

By: Kevin Pang

Kevin Pang — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:10:29 +0000

IANAL but aren’t there legal considerations to take here as well? I’m pretty sure I couldn’t just go and register Microsoft.co.nz if it were available. How did you get around this with the original MindScape or were they defunct by the time you guys started your website (or maybe they simply haven’t noticed or don’t care)?