A Checklist for Naming A StartUp

Dharmesh Shah wrote an article on Inbound.org that detailed his checklist for choosing a start up name. Shah writes he has been thinking about naming and branding for 20 years. He also mentions some of the data points he looked at when coming up with his checklist. He looked at over 4,000 start up names, he looked at length of name, starting letters, TLD, etc…

From the article:

The S.M.A.R.T. Startup Name Checklist

So, let’s start with my handy-dandy checklist for what makes for a good startup name. I call it the S.MA.R.T checklist. Your company’s name should be short, memorable, available, repurposeable and timeless.

Simple

What makes a name simple?

For one thing, your name should be short. There are several reasons for this. Short names are:

1. quicker to type-in (especially on mobile)
2. easier to spell-out to someone over the phone
3. more efficient to include in a tweet (or other “length constrained” channels)
4. simpler to come up with a logo for
5. less likely to be acronymized or otherwise shortened by others

Great examples of short names: Domo, Gusto, Trello, Uber.

But, your name doesn’t have to be as short as those. How short does it have to be? Based on my analysis: Your startup name should have nine or fewer characters.

You can read the rest of the checklist on Inbound.org, I thought the comments were worth reading as well, some good back and forth on how people think about certain naming conventions.