The Startup Ideas Podcast
The ultimate startup naming guide (must watch for founders)
Wed, 02 Oct 2024
In this episode, we dive deep into my process for naming my startups and businesses. I share my 4-step guide for coming up with memorable names for startups and how you can apply these principles to come up with your own scroll stopping name. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:09 types of names01:53 Naming Strategy 1: Descriptive 03:11 Naming Strategy 2: Phrases 05:39 Naming Strategy 3: Funny08:17 Bad Name Examples12:19 Good Name Examples16:53 Tofu Name Examples18:10 Hack your way to a novel name20:25 Use AI for brainstorming22:22 Greg's personal name list1) 3 types of names:• Bad names• Good names• "Tofu" names (bland, forgettable)2) 3 winning name strategies:• Descriptive (e.g. @somewhereilive)• Phrases (e.g. Boss Babe)• Funny (e.g. You Probably Need a Haircut)3) Bad name examples:• WhatsApp (fails telephone test)• GameStop (negative connotation)• Google Bard (sounds like barf) 4) Good name examples:• Perplexity (matches brand promise)• Bump (action-oriented)• Autopilot (clear value prop)5) Hack your way to a novel name:• Create "Name Game" note on your phone• Jot down catchy words/phrases• Check handle availability bi-weekly• Test with friends/family• Create logo mockups6) Use AI for brainstorming:• Prompt Claude: "I'm brainstorming names around [your topic]. What are some interesting, clear, direct names that speak to this community?"7) Greg's personal name list sneak peek:• AfterParty• PrettyPerfect• InvitationOnly• InCred8) Pro tip: It's okay to have bad names on your list. Keep refining!9) Remember: A great name can be the difference between viral growth and crickets.Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas 🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com/70,000+ people are already subscribed.To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://www.boringmarketing.com/FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/
Full Episode
Okay, this is going to be a fun one. Today, I just need to get something off my chest. I think that the name of a startup is more important than ever. There's a lot of bad names out there. So I don't want you to be naming your startup something bad. I want you to name it something good. And why does it matter more than ever?
it's because you need a name that's going to be scroll stopping so in today's podcast i'm going to just walk you through how i think about names some of my frameworks and if you stick until the end i'll even tell you a few of some names that come from my list that you can have so this is going to be a tutorial on how to name your startup how to come up with a good name
I believe that there's three types of names. Bad names, good names, and what I call tofu names, which are kind of like mid names. So what I mean by that is it doesn't really stick out. You know, tofu takes on the sauce of whatever is around it. It's kind of bland. So it's kind of a bad name, but it's not, you know, it's not offensive. And I do have a framework for naming.
I took this from our membership community empire.co website. And there's three ways where you can actually, you know, I come up with names. So the first thing is I come up with a descriptive name, a phrase, or a funny name. And I'll explain exactly what I mean by each name. So a descriptive name is something like the Instagram account at somewhere I will live.
So if you go to that Instagram account, and we can put it up on the screen, I think it has millions of users or millions of followers. 838,000 followers. And what does it mean? When I quick follow, what am I getting? Well, I'm getting beautiful photos of somewhere I would live. So this is also a takeaway, which is the name of your startup could be the name of your handle.
Um, and you know, or it could not, and you could have a separate process for, uh, coming up with the name of your handle, but having almost a million people, uh, who are interested in somewhere I would live, you can sell them a lot of things. You can sell them real estate, you can sell them furniture, interior design services.
So I think that having a descriptive name, uh, is really important, um, nowadays and just works really well. Um, because, uh, people see it and they're like somewhere I would like to live. Yeah, I could use some, you know, furniture, interior house inspo in my Instagram. I'm a click follow. So descriptive names, super underrated, uh, and something I use a lot. Phrases.
So what do I mean by a phrase? So a phrase could be something that is starting to take off in the cultural zeitgeist. So a few years ago, I'll just pull up Google Trends, there was a popular term and is now less popular, but it was called boss babe. So as you can see on my screen, let's go to Max. And this is Google Trends.
And I use a tool called Glimpse to just give you some more information and just some related terms. So a friend of mine, I think it was around 2013, sort of picked up on this name Boss Babe. She grabbed the handle, created a meme page, theme page called Boss Babe on Instagram. And it just started to grow as... searches for Boss Babe grew.
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